This Is The Way

“In the belly of the whale
In my bedroom, I can’t sleep
Well, all my friends got crooked tales
But that’s the way I like it
That’s just what I need”

Ratner / Delorenzo / Scolnick / Moore

The Camino is an oddly wonderful adventure.

There are days when it can seem crowded and others when you may only see a few people all day.

Some people are looking for something.

Some people discover something that they weren’t looking for.

People treat it as a spiritual journey.

People treat it as an escape from the everyday.

People do the pilgrimage in memory or celebration of someone who can’t.

People simply treat it as a walking holiday.

People walk alone.

People walk together.

It takes all sorts.

We were all sorts.

Our group of fourteen comprised Catholics, lapsed Catholics, Bouncy Castle Catholics, Capitalists, Anarchists, Protestants, Liverpool fans, and Agnostics. The only thing we had in common was The Squealing Pig public house and home to Bona Fides. For some bizarre reason my friend Raymond, owner of The Pig, and his trusty lieutenant Mary, decided that instead of organising a skiing trip for their clientele, they would organise a pilgrimage to Santiago in Spain. Even more bizarrely Brenda, Eddie, Mo, Dominic, David, Margaret , Linda, Conor, Austy, Catriona, Seamus , and I thought it was a great idea and signed up to join them.

Everyone knew someone in the group, no one knew everyone.

Two weeks ago we all met for the first time at the retail park on the Clones Road to get a minibus to Dublin Airport and fly to Spain to spend the next week walking 117k to Santiago. On the minibus introductions were made and everyone was polite , reserved and mannerly towards each other. Before we got to the airport being polite , reserved and mannerly towards each other was proving to be exhausting, so we all relaxed back into being ourselves. We made it onto the plane, off the plane and almost out of the airport in Spain before we lost Ray for the first time. He got into the wrong queue for passport control and then started to argue with the automated passport gate. This was the first embodiment of the Raymond Aughey leadership style – “If everyone does the exact opposite of what I do, it’ll be grand.” He was a bit flustered by the time he caught up with us at the baggage carousel, but the quick consumption of two Curly Wurleys had him back on track.

Our tour guide met us in Arrivals and did his best to steer us outside and onto the coach. We took off in good spirits , and the tour guide, clearly not reading the room, started our journey with a prayer…god bless his naivety. He was quite surprised when he concluded his prayer that he wasn’t greeted by the solemn murmuring of ‘Amen’s , instead receiving a round of applause and at least one ‘Hup ye boy ye !’.

The Camino , also known as The Way, can be quite busy in September and our chosen route, from Sarria to Santiago is the most popular stretch of all. As a result on a few evenings we weren’t all staying in the same hotel. Arriving in Sarria everyone else got off at a beautiful hotel in the old part of town, while Mary and I were sent elsewhere. We quickly checked in to our rooms and stomped the 1k back up the hill to meet the others , have a beer or two and then have our first meal together. By the time we left the table we all knew something of each other and the foundations of a community were laid. Most of us went to bed after the dinner, but a few dedicated pilgrims went back to check on the foundations.

Each morning of the Camino we had to have our bags down in reception by 8.00am for collection and dispatch to our next hotel. Some people got up earlier to take advantage of the cooler morning temperatures…or simply because they were weird.

Mary and I again stomped back up the hill to meet the others. By my calculations we had already done 3k between the previous evening and the first morning before the others had taken a single step on their Camino. Some of the group had already headed off, the remaining 8 took a photo together at a large SARRIA sign and then I quickly got distracted by a church, Ray stayed with me , and the rest headed off. Near Rente we bumped into Barbara, a regular scarer at our Haunting in Rossmore Park, who was also going the Camino with her sister. We chatted for a bit, but Ray and I were going at a much slower pace. Barbara asked if we knew the story of PortoMarin where we were all due to stay that night. We said no, and in typical, impatient, retired teacher style, Barbara shouted back over her shoulder, “Look it up!”.

Around 10.00am we caught up with some of the gang at a café and had a coffee and cake to recharge our batteries. From there Brenda joined Ray and I as we wandered through the glorious countryside , stopping here and there to sit for a moment in a wee grotto or church. We stopped for lunch in a beautiful garden café 8k from PortoMarin. Ray took the chance to read some of his latest John Connolly book, and every so often would ask Brenda and I to be quiet so he could concentrate. Ray is an avid fan of John Connolly’s novels, which I find too dark and menacing. My concern sometimes is that Ray gets so engrossed in them that he loses sight of the fact that they are works of horror and crime fiction and treats them as manuals or guidebooks.

A couple of kilometres from PortoMarin the Camino splits. There is the traditional route which is a sharp descent between two large ancient walls, or a new safer , easier way. I suggested that we go the old way, as the steps are formed from the natural rock and it looks spectacular. A loud American, Margorie, arrived and was loudly advising her coven/tour group and anyone else in the vicinity to go the easier way. We said that we were going the traditional way. The Coven looked us up and down and started making bets with each other that Brenda would be the only one of us to make it down alive.

We all made it. Ya boo sucks, Margorie !

Portomarin now resides on top of a hill over looking the Mino River. Up until 1963 Portomarin resided on the banks of the Mino. In advance of creating the Belesar reservoir they moved the old church and municipal buildings of note up to the top of the hill, stone by stone.

We had walked all day in 30 ℃ heat. It’s been a long hot summer in Galicia, so there was hardly any water in the reservoir and we could see the ruins of the old town and the remnants of the millenia old Roman bridge.

Then we walked up a bajillion steps to the new /old town of Portomarin and were immediately hailed by our fellow Pig Pilgrims from a café. Dominic , David and Margaret had already headed off to find their hotel, which had a pool. I went to find mine…which didn’t. It was also lacking a receptionist, but the bar next door rang someone and I got in.

I had planned to lie down for an hour after my shower before heading out to dinner, but I had several missed calls from Ray , so I met him in the town square. He wanted to get ice cream, I wanted to see inside the church of San Xoan. He said he’d get me an ice cream and we’d meet back in the square.

I am not a religious person per se. I do pray , and I do like to sit occasionally in a quiet church, and sometimes I like to light candles for people. There is a concept in Celtic culture of a ‘thin place’, where the separation between this world and another is shallow or faint. The church of San Xoan felt like a thin place. The evening sun shone through the large circular stained glass window behind the altar and cast a coloured shadow on the floor. I sat and prayed. I lit candles. And then I spotted a statue of a wee saint carrying a wee Jesus in his arms. Someone had knitted wee woolen underpants for Jesus.

I went outside and had ice cream in the square with Dominic, Ray and Brenda. The rest of the group arrived in dribs and drabs and we went for tapas. Over multiple plates of garlic prawns, roasted peppers, croquettes, squid, and scallops, beers and wine we talked about what we’d seen that day, and what bits hurt the most.

We all slept well.

Sunday morning and again we all headed off more or less at the same time. And again, stopping to look at something I fell behind. Seamus waited for me and we had a wonderful chat in the morning sun about people we knew, life, being and everything. At some point we caught up with everyone except Eddie and Ray. Eddie is a fast walker, Ray isn’t but has a competitive streak a mile wide and insisted on keeping pace with him. This day, to Palas de Rei, was the toughest, with the steepest hills. Ray sent me WhatsApp messages periodically saying that Eddie was trying to kill him. I suggested that he just stop and wait for us to catch him up, the reply was phrased in very, very un-pilgrim like language.

After a café stop Conor and I fell into company together. I’d never met or spoken to Conor before this trip , but we had a shared matter of deep concern , my evil niece Hannah is best friends with his twins Charley and Aoife. Again we chatted about life, business, and how annoying Hannah is. As she is my niece I argued that she is incredibly annoying, whereas Conor suggested that she was quite nice. I put it down to his young age. He’ll learn. Again I brought up the rear of our group, spotting a sign for a Roman fort, which I think Conor groaned when he discovered that it was adding a kilometre to our quest…and that kilometre was uphill. We later passed a sign on a gate which said ‘No Stupid People’, Conor suggested that I stand beside it and took a photo. I think the two things are unconnected.

I went ‘off-piste a little bit further on to see the Capilla San Marcos, which was guarded by the Puddy Tat de San Marco. Again, a thin place.

We all caught up together near Monterrosso, and took photos of ourselves in a cornfield. There was a local feast day celebration in the Church of Santa Eufemia de Satrexas and we witnessed the procession, with bagpipes and fireworks before trudging on. There was a large marquee set up in the village with a band stand and a bar for the celebration once the procession had finished. We made it to the next café and wondered where Mo, Austey and Seamus had got to… then we got a video in our WhatsApp group of them dancing in the marquee we’d passed an hour ago.

We staggered into Palas de Rei around 5pm, and checked into our hotel via a zoom/bot/thingammy and then was issued my code to unlock my bedroom door, which thankfully was on the first floor. I showered and then lay down for a minute and woke with a start an hour later as Ray was calling to complain about Eddie trying to kill him again.

We all dined together in one of the two restaurants that was open on a Sunday in Palas de Rei. The majority of us went to bed after dinner, but a few, inspired by the pilgrimage, decided to the Lord’s work and stayed out until they were sure that everyone in the hospitality industry in Palas de Rei had gone to bed.

The next morning Ray hid in his room until he was sure that Eddie had already headed off. After breakfast Catriona, Brenda, Ray and I kept company for the first kilometre until we came to the first café where everyone had stopped in Leboreiro. Ray and I got distracted by the Church ofSanta María do Leboreiro and lost everyone again. We said a prayer for them…and all sinners. This day was a shorter, and mercifully flatter walk than other days. We spotted an elderly lady making the pilgrimage hunched over a walking frame that had wheels at the front. She was accompanied by three younger members of her family. We wished her well. Every time we stopped to look at something she overtook us and we wished her well again. We asked for a selfie and Ray introduced himself. Every time she passed us after that she called ‘Buen Camino Raymondo!’ to us.

We made it to Melide by lunchtime, and before our bags did. So we sat outside in the sunshine and watched the world go by, and had a beer, just to be polite. We checked in and had a quick shower. Yet again everyone else was staying in the lovely three star Hotel Lux Melide, while Ray and I were escorted down the alleyway beside the bins and shown into apartments…with no windows. No , I tell a lie, there was a window in each room , on the floor of the bathroom. We went back out to sit with the crew and shortly after the bags arrived…all except Linda’s.

We kept vigil with her outside, and drank beer, to be polite. Twenty minutes later a van pulled up, double parked and a young chap hopped out carrying Linda’s bag. We all stood up and  cheered and the poor chap froze on the spot , thinking he’d done something wrong. Linda gave him a hug and we took photos. We then had a divine 3 course lunch, with coffee, for €15.

I went to bed for an hour or so , switching my phone to silent after the third call from Raymond to join him on a wine tasting tour. We met up in the bar beside the hotel that evening. Some headed off for dinner, most of us were still stuffed from lunch. After an hour or so we said that we’d go and find the others and have a nightcap with them, it was 9.30pm. We wondered which direction they’d gone, and then heard singing from the bar/restaurant around the corner and saw Spanish people taking photos of our fellow pilgrims dancing inside. The bar owner had foolishly given Conor control of their music system and Conor foolishly told Ray that he had it, so I left when they started playing the Venga Boys…on repeat.

We headed out early the next morning. Again Ray and I lagged behind the rest as we wandered into a graveyard and had a competition to find the longest resident. Ray won with Sen. Valeria Vázquez, 1781. Later we passed Igrexa de Santa Maria de Melide just as it opened. A gorgeous little church that Ray didn’t want to leave as soon as he discovered that it was a Templar church. We lit candles, and to make sure that they worked we moved them closer to the top and moved others that had had their chance to the bottom of the votive candle rack.

Along the way we came to a bridge over a low river just as you enter Ribadiso and decided to soak our feet. Within a few minutes everyone else that crossed the bridge was doing the same. This was a short day too, so we made it to our destination, Arzúa, around 1pm. Everyone else’s hotel looked lovely. My bag was there with everyone else’s so I assumed that was where I was staying. The hotel receptionist laughed as he took me two doors up to a smaller hotel where the receptionist was bored behind her bullet proof cubicle and not in the humour for any Irish pleasantries. She gave me a key card and then shouted instructions that I wasn’t staying here either, I was staying in an apartment building between the two hotels. I made my way up the flight of stairs and down a corridor, through a reception area, and then at the bottom of the next corridor found my room, which appeared to have been decorated sometime in 1972…or at least before the invention of air-conditioning. I had a shower, standing in the bath and holding the shower head.

The outskirts of Arzúa look industrial, but the centre is old and Brenda, Ray and I had a marvellous lunch in a square , under a canopy of trees, following the directions of Dominic, David and Margaret who were just finishing their lunch when we arrived.  The food was delicious. A couple nearby asked if we were Irish. They were Irish , but had lived in Canada for 30 years and liked to hear Irish accents. They asked where we were from and when we replied ‘Monaghan’ they said that they had passed through Melide earlier and that they were carving a statue in dedication to the ‘Monaghan People’ there. They also mentioned something about the Venga Boys.

The next morning we headed off in great spirits , all mistakenly convinced that we were walking 14k and staying in O Pedrouzo. We were wrong. We were staying in Lavacolla, a further 14k from O Pedrouzo. In hindsight this worked out for the best, as we all left Arzúa in great spirits thinking we had a short day ahead, and by the time we found out we had a total of 28k to do we were already half way through it. We were all glad to see the hotel in Lavacolla, which also had the speediest check in procedure. Everywhere else, including the autobot in Palas de Rei , had asked for your passport, which they swiped, then fill in your email, post code, mobile, and signature. This place just asked “Name ?” and then handed a key to you.

We were all very tired, so we all ate together in the hotel. I had the great good fortune to sit beside Catriona, one of my favourite people and someone I can always be honest with and simply myself. Everyone should be lucky enough to have a Catriona in their lives. It was a great evening. I think I went to bed first again, leaving everyone else outside on the veranda taking in the setting sun.

We were all sparky the next day because we only had a mere 10k to walk before we arrived in Santiago. We were there by 10.30am.

We took in the cathedral, then David, Margaret, Diminic and I went for a beer and a snack before ambling around Santiago, which I think is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever visited. The hotel here was probably the nicest of all, and I was allowed stay with everyone else, but they had a weird policy where if you were travelling under a group booking you could only check in after 4.30 pm, which we found out after queuing for 30 minutes at reception at 2pm. We went back and wandered around the cathedral, lit candles for our friends and pottered about. On our way back to check in we bumped into the rest of the gang sitting outside a café and living their best lives.

We all met in the hotel lobby at 8pm. Some of us went to Orixe, perhaps my favourite restaurant ever, and others went for a Camino Curry.

We all had a great time.

We all had an adventure.

The highlight for me was seeing friendships being created and a group of wonderful human beings thoroughly enjoy themselves . This group was different to any other I’ve been with , magnificently so. I will treasure the time we spent together walking the path of legends, and creating some of our own.

Flying home last Friday everyone dreamed of a lie in on the Saturday morning.

My Soulmate and I had other plans. What better way to celebrate seeing each other after a week apart than taking part in a 10k Ecotrail run up Bray head.

I was dreading it… until we met Becs, whom we’d last spent time with in Lake Garda with the Good Glow crew in April. A small gang of us , my Soulmate, Becs, Fiona, Georgie, Kelly, Jamie, and I, giddy with the memory of the great time we’d all had together in Lake Garda, and hocked up on Rioja and Gin, had signed up one Saturday night in April to do this EcoTrail run.

We all regretted it , standing on the seafront in Bray staring up into the sky ay the crucifix at the top of Bray Head. I wondered if they erected it in memory of the people who had died doing this run last year. Sorry, all of us, except Jamie regretted it. Jamie has this masochistic desire to spend every waking moment coughing up a lung on some desolate , bracken strewn hill top , breathing heavily as he records his adventures. I’m not sure what the opposite of a motivator is ? A Dementor perhaps. Anyway, he was positively beaming from ear to ear and wishing that he’d signed up for the 80k.

Becs and Jamie headed off before us as they were doing the 19k, and then we set off, with fear and resentment at Jamie’s joy in our hearts.

Guess what ?

We had a ball !

The sun was out, the path was so narrow in places that we were forced against our highly motivated and competitive will to slowly walk up the steep bits, and then wilfully shriek like a Banshee on a rollercoaster on the downhills.

Much like the Camino we ran together, alone, in various combinations of ones and twos. At one point I was running with someone who was waiting on news of a medical nature. I told her I knew, and also knew what it was like to have the scans, check ups, and know that somewhere in a drawer is the result, which you can’t see until you’re sitting across from the consultant. I call it Schrodinger’s cancer. In those days you both have, and don’t have cancer at the same time. It’s only when the file is opened that you know. I also told her that there will always be good news after bad news, and that I had prayed for her in the Cathedral in Santiago and lit a candle in her name. I told her I’d also lit a candle for her partner…but in a smaller, less well decorated and venerated church. This cheered her up immensely.

We all waited until we’d all finished and then we went for coffee and unfeasibly large sausage rolls.

We laughed and we smiled.

We were a good group.

We’ve all been part of The Way together.

We all vowed to never sign up for a race again while drinking wine on a Saturday night.

The news was good on Monday.

I am a lucky person to be a part of so many wonderful gangs of amazing people.

As they say :

“Here we are
Extending into shooting stars
In our houses, in our cars
You didn’t know it
Now you do
This is the way (this is the way)”

Ratner / Delorenzo / Scolnick / Moore

This is indeed The Way.

Toodles,

Paul

P.S. For all those that travel along the way with me, especially you , This Is The Way