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Porto to Santiago

By Gabriel Wyszynski

6:30AM on the 28ᵗʰ August and I have folded my swinging limbs

into my Easyjet seating ration. With the seat in front filing down

my knees and the row behind occupied by children

hurling their feet and screaming, any attempt at sleep was futile.

This lack of sleep did not dim the sparkling tiles of Porto on

arrival however, which set a good precedent for the long term

sleep deprivation I would endure throughout this journey. We

didn’t spend long at our first stop (just one night) on

account of a tight schedule, but Porto charmed us. We spent the 

day trying as hard as possible not to be tourists: between our

dawdle along the estuary promenade and our cathedral visit (a

colossal structure gleaming over the city and decked with blue

and white tiles all over its complex interior) we sought out the

dingiest looking eateries in a desperate but by no means fruitless

effort to find the best food Porto had to offer. Our bellies full

from a day of eating and drinking, we got ourselves into bed by

11:00PM, readying ourselves for a two week, 270km odyssey along

the Iberian West coast.

We began at 9am the next day; we were engulfed in mist, 30

pounds heavier (on account of our packs) and 100 euros poorer

(on account of the previous day’s indulgences). In spite of all

these adversities we knew the Cathedral of Santiago de

Compostela awaited, and held our spirits high. That was until

about 15km in, when the sun came out and sizzled off the

tarmac of Porto airport, where we found ourselves once again,

this time walking the length of it. Dazed and confused on

account of the heat and our hunger, a little inconspicuous cafe

slowly revealed itself to us, bringing with it offerings of braised

gizzards, fresh bread and perfectly creamy espressos. We

left the café feeling lighter while Oliver (my travel partner) and I

found ourselves snapping at each other much less than we had

before our lunch. After a very long day of walking, ending

in Povoa de Varzim, a suburb some 35km North of the centre of

Porto, we scouted out a suitable spot to set up camp before

sundown, settling on a clandestine corner of a public park. Our

bohemian approach to sleeping arrangements was another

symptom of my austere budgeting, something that only

occasionally caused rifts between me and my travel partner. We

settled down for a night of half sleep, preparing for our 6:00AM

start, which would be daily practice for the next two weeks.

The next day brought us to the blinding white beaches of

Esposende. Having started our day once again enveloped in

the Portuguese morning mist, it was with great relief that we

arrived at our next scheduled destination by midday, greeted

with a resplendent sun and a beautiful beach caressed by the

ice cold Atlantic waters. We camped again that night a little

further North, approaching the town of Marinhas. Two days into

the walk, we were starting to take note of the many reappearing

pilgrims, some of whom would become very close friends of

ours. This feeling of pilgrim fraternity was quite evident from the

beginning of our walk, with the “bom caminho” (which later

became “buen camino” as we crossed the Spanish border)

wished from the lips of every pilgrim we passed, and the familiar

smiles of people we had never spoken to. Maybe Oliver and I are

too acclimatised to London’s lingering sense of dread, but this

palpable joy in everyone we passed resonated greatly with us.

We agreed to camp for one more night before settling in a

hostel, having planned to spend total of four or five nights in

hostels, just to break up the wearing stretches of nights spent

under tent cover. The sun was strong the next day as we

crossed bridges connecting the banks of great estuaries, but

the mist began to roll in as we approached our destination of

Carreço. We pitched our tents on a bed of decaying leaves in

the vast Litoral Norte nature reserve, sheltered by a canopy of

bark-shedding eucalyptus trees and fog. This day was the

hardest, on account of a disagreement between me and my friend 

which left my lunch of tripe and butterbeans tasting sour.

One of the joys of pilgrimage, however, is the daily meditative

reflection that comes with walking, something which becomes

ever rarer with society’s increasing lack of balance between

work and leisure. So, with an hour’s walking and some

exchanged apologies, we went to sleep feeling light and

appreciative of each other, quite relieved at the prospect of a

hostel the following night.

From the plastic mattresses and pillows to the cold stone floor,

our municipal hostel in the border town of Caminha was pure

luxury. Unlike our camping days, with the evenings spent

waiting for sunset to put our tent up, today Oliver and I have the

whole afternoon to take in the town. We dawdle across the

glittering cobbles, free of our bags, the slap of our flip flops

against our sore soles making quite an unpleasant sight (and

smell) for the locals. It was a delightful day, however. We ate a

lot, we drank a little more, and we had the most beautiful

encounters throughout the day. Just 20 minutes after waking in

Carreço, a grumpy toad crosses my path, disgruntled by the

disturbance, then, an hour before sleeping in Caminha, three

Eurasian spoonbills fly over my head in a chevron. Caminha was

a charming town, dotted with medieval churches in the

Portuguese Manuelino style, an elaborate twist on the Gothic,

leaving no room for lack of detail in the complex masonry. We

spent the evening sipping cold beer in the town square,

serenaded by a sweaty and sun-creased busker tearing at his

violin strings, and got an early night, jumping at the chance to

sleep in a real bed.

The following day started with our entry into Spain,. We crossed

the Minho estuary crammed onto a little motor boat, with the

Galician rain reaching out to greet us. The rain dampened our

spirits as we made our initial ascent into the mountains, but a

few hours later, after filling our bellies with croquettes and fried

cod, the sun came out to greet us, which was all the better

because we had a soggy tent to dry out. Whilst folding our tent

up, after leaving it out to dry, I spotted two inquisitive faces peering

at us over a wall. They were two noisy Italian boys who were in

our hostel the night before. We didn’t exchange any words last

night, save a “ciao bello” from one of them, but I smiled

and waved nonetheless. That night we camped in Baiona, or

rather on the rocky edge of a hill overlooking Baiona. The tent

pegs barely made it in the ground, a recurring problem

throughout our time sleeping on Galicia’s rough terrain. We

walked an obscene amount that day (another 35km) so we

agree to limit our distance the next day, to avoid getting to

Santiago ahead of schedule.

Again, we rose at 6AM, we walked along Baiona’s seafront and

swampy marshes, we stopped for a coffee and a pastry an hour

in before resuming. By noon we were beyond our destination for

the day, which was an apt excuse to spend the rest of the

afternoon on the beautiful beaches of Panxón. I ate a pork loin

sandwich, drank a beer, waited an hour or so to digest it all and

charged into the Atlantic, without giving myself a second to

reconsider submerging myself in the ice cold waters. The sand

sparkled with tiny fragments of quartz, gently exfoliating my

sore feet. A lanky spire lords over Panxón’s skyline, sparkling

over a domed roof, tall and thin like a moorish minaret. After

spending a few hours letting the sea and sand lull us away,

evening approaches, and we set off to find a supermarket

dinner and a camping spot. We settle for a plot just at the side

of the Camino path, and, on account of our conspicuous spot,

cross paths with a dog walker. He is lovely; he introduces

himself and his dog, tells us of the 20 pilgrimages he’s taken to

Santiago over the last 20 years, and gives us his exact address

in case we need anything. An hour later, as we squeeze into our

sleeping bags, the exchange still has us beaming.

The next day brings us to Vigo, a hyper industrial and fast paced

port, and the most populous city in Galicia. It’s a charming

place; art nouveau apartment blocks stand boldly in front of the

cranes lining the port. The architecture is tastefully modern: the

few obtuse 21st Century glass structures are drowned out by

ornamentations of the last two centuries, the floral and geometric

motifs of Vigo’s buildings frame the Galician mountains and sea.

We feel quite at home there; a hideous P&O cruise ship has

brought with it a haggle of old tomato-faced Brits, and I can’t

help but smile as I overhear their endearing attempts at

speaking Spanish as they order their black teas with milk. We

soldier on out of Vigo and camp later that night on a mountain

side overlooking the small town of Teis. We decide to spend the

next night in a hostel in the medieval streets of Redondela,

leaving ourselves with a cool 8km walk for the next day.

By 10:00AM the next day, after just four hours of very slow walking,

Redondela revealed itself, an isolated refuge tucked away in a

valley, its viaduct rolling through the mountain fog, a steel and

brick ode to Durham. We find our hostel, 34 beds stuffed inside

a 16th Century townhouse, and deposit our bags outside.

Check-in starts at 1PM, so we have a few hours to kill. We

explore a little, we get some stamps in our credencials (pilgrim

passports that verify your route and enable you to claim your

certificate of completion) and we settle down in a grubby little

café, watching the local children hurl abuse and encouragement

at each other across the fútbol sala pitch, the focal point of the

town. At 1:00PM we get back to the hostel, and a few heads behind

us I spot those two pesky Italians from days before. They end up

in the bunk opposite ours. Despite feeling very tired and socially

drained, I am obliged to engage with them, because of an

unwritten rule enforcing socialisation between Italian speakers.

After a while, however, I talk to them less out of obligation and

more out of interest. Out of courtesy for my colleague, they

switch to English with great fluency, unlike most Italians, who, in

my experience, speak it with unwarranted confidence. Ollie and

I split from them to find some dinner, but we reunite a little later

for a drink. My partner and I are friendly enough, but these boys

behave as though they’ve known us for a lifetime. Their

familiar manner is refreshing and homely, and we very willingly

accept their request to walk to Pontevedra together the next day.

The weather showed no mercy the following morning.

Waterproofed and not quite ready to go, we stop off for a slice of

cake and a splash of espresso just before leaving Redondela. As

we sit with our new friends outside, looking hopelessly at the

cobbled streets shrouded in rain, a blue eyed man with a serf-ish 

haircut takes a seat next to us. He’s a builder from New Zealand and he’s nice enough, so we

spend the day walking together. In spite of the harsh weather

conditions and the endless trudging through muddy puddles,

the day’s walking goes by quickly. Being in a bigger group keeps

a good pace and distracts you from the distance left; in just a

few hours we’ve reached Pontevedra. The unpredictable skies

leave us with no choice but to stay in a hostel for a consecutive

night (we’re not complaining). Despite our initial panic at seeing

the queue outside, we nab a bed, deposit our affairs, then run

off to the supermarket to buy bread, lamb’s lettuce, fresh

cheese, cheap white wine, and tinned fish, because good

Catholics don’t eat meat on Fridays. The rain has dampened our

touristic intrigue, we barely venture into Pontevedra, but we

allow ourselves one church visit. The Church of Our Lady the

Pilgrim is built in the shape of a scallop, the symbol of Saint

James and all pilgrims. It’s an elaborate baroque building, with a

statue of Our Lady above the altar, wearing a pilgrim’s hat and

gown, decked in scallop shells. We do a circuit of the Church,

then meet our Kiwi friend in a bar (he stayed in a separate

hostel to the rest of us). We have a few, go back to the hostel to

cook some dinner, and fall swiftly asleep. We’re only four days

away from Santiago.

After some very poor quality sleep, we were up and half-alive,

somewhat ready to venture off to our next stop, Caldas De Reis.

Once again, the walking went quickly. We caught up with our

Kiwi friend, and bade him goodbye again later as he split off to

follow the Camino Espiritual (a variant of the Portuguese route

along which Saint James’ remains are said to have been brought

to his final resting place). We went on, and as the sun appeared

through the cloud-draped sky, Caldas de Reis started to rise up

over our heads. Since the ancient Roman occupation of the

Iberian peninsula, Caldas de Reis has been a coveted spa break

destination for Galicians, having been built up over natural hot springs. 

Being a pack of strapped-for-cash pilgrims, we could

only allow ourselves the pleasure of the public foot-baths. We

followed the smell of sulphur, which eventually brought us to a

wide, seated stone tub, akin to a large trough. The sight of

pilgrims throwing their heads back ecstatically as they eased

their feet under the water drew me ever closer until my

calloused feet joined theirs in this great ugly vat. It was divine.

The feeling of the mineral-rich hot spring water melting away

your blisters was enough to make you forget the pungent

sulphur stink and the blackened algae lining the surface. I must

have spent an hour with my lower quarter submerged in there.

Eventually, however, the waning sunlight called us to seek a

camping spot, which was found in good time, on the edge of a

valley. We had our dinner of supermarket empanadas and warm

beer, and burrowed into our sleeping bags.

Having exhausted our budget for hostel stays, we were

supposed to camp the following night as well. We decided to

stretch the budget a little, however, after hearing of an old

Franciscan monastery, not far off the route, where pilgrims

could spend the night, with dinner and breakfast provided, in

exchange for a donation. The morning after Caldas, we reunite

with our Italian friends in a café and a few more pilgrims who

we’ve befriended, and we walk on together. The Camino route

should take you to the town of Padrón, but we split off a few

kilometres before to get to the Monastery of Herbon, where we

will be staying the night. We get there, deposit our bags, and

escape to a bar, fleeing the second-hand embarrassment of one

of our Italian colleagues relaying a crass German saying to a

group of German pilgrims sitting outside the monastery, gravely

offending an old lady in doing so. We have some drinks and

tapas of tripe and chickpeas, I have a roast pork sandwich, and

then we make our way back to the monastery in time for the

Sunday evening mass. The priest makes the kind effort to greet

all the pilgrims at the end of the service, then we bundle back

into the living quarters for a very rustic dinner of stewed lentils,

washed down with red wine in plastic cups (the carafes were

left bone dry). Our hostess is working her first night at the

monastery, and delivers a moving speech: she implores us to

stay sitting after dinner, to enjoy each other’s company, and she

reminds us that the Camino is not the route we take, but the

people with whom we walk it.

We’re just 15km out from Santiago de Compostela, but we have

to stagger our walking over two days, as we still have 3 days

until our flight. In the morning we split from our colleagues, as

they are going straight to Santiago, whereas Ollie and I go

towards Padrón to wander aimlessly. We take in the sights, the

churches and the chapels, and have a very long coffee break;

we don’t want to cover too much distance today, suitable

camping spots will become increasingly scarce, and we want to

allow enough distance for tomorrow to build up our excitement

for our arrival. The route for our penultimate day was not

especially interesting. Aside from Padrón, we went mostly

along an ugly motorway, so we were relieved to eventually find a

nice forest off the road to camp in, but considerably less

relieved to find that the cacophonous birthday party happening

on a nearby farm would continue until 4:00AM.

Two hours after the party ended, we were awake for our last day

of walking. We had about 10km to go, a mere fraction of what we

had walked up to that point, but when you’re so close to your

final destination, the distance seems to increase with each step

forward. We didn’t let this dishearten us; Oliver and I

had never walked so fast in our lives. About one hour in, we see

some pilgrims snapping away on their phone cameras at a view

point. We cruise up to them, and upon seeing the two spires of

Santiago jutting out on the horizon, those same two spires we

had seen depicted in every hostel we had stopped in on the way,

we leave the amateur photographers eating our dust and

resolve to make it into Santiago within the next hour.

Each time the cathedral peeks out at us, teasing us, we go

faster, grabbing the odd cake sample offered by hopeful

shopkeepers out of their doorways to keep us going. As long as

it seems to take us, the Cathedral keeps looking marginally

bigger than it did the last time it popped out through the

rooftops. At this point we can’t feel our legs; we’re moving

unconsciously, delirious with the joy of having made it. Anything

can still happen, I tell myself, until we’re face to façade with the

cathedral itself.

It would take a million words to convey the extravagant beauty

of the exterior alone: a thousand different motifs line a hundred

different statues on just one side of the Cathedral. Three

statues of Saint James beam down at his devoted followers,

countless pilgrim heads bowing in disbelief, incredulous at the

endurance they have found within their faith in God. We can’t

take our bags in, so we resolve to see the inside after checking

into our hostel. We do so after getting our pilgrim certificates

and wolfing down a decadent breakfast of churros drowned in

thick hot chocolate.

Over the 12 hours that remained of our time in Santiago, free

from the bondage of a heavy backpack, we felt liberated. We

basked in the beauty of the town, we ate and we drank, we

reunited with all our old, new friends, most of whom I haven’t

had the chance to mention properly, we danced and we laughed

and we appreciated and shared everything we had done and

seen and felt. It was beautiful. Just as I had ended many nights

of this adventure, I went to bed smiling.

I woke up with a headache, but after sharing a few laughs in the

café where Ollie and I had breakfasted with the two Italian boys, it

subsided. We walked to the Cathedral again, and insisted that

we would see each other soon whilst we split ways. Ollie and I

went to mass; we were lost in the beautiful inconsistency of the

interior, wide-eyed and gaping under the gilded ciborium,

sustained by gargantuan cherubim. We were shrouded under

the billowing incense smoke of the botafumero, swinging yards

above our heads, and hurtling down ferociously. All this

accompanied by the resonant baritone of the cantor. It was a

beautiful mass.

Two hours later we were in the airport. Having spent the last two

weeks learning more about myself than I thought possible, I

maintained a smile, comforted by the thought of our new

friendships, and the prospect of my inevitable return to

Santiago, as well as that of getting home and applying some

roll-on.

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