Albergues: hundreds of them, ready to put pilgrims up for the night, at times competing for business, at times all seem to be full.  Vary from austere and basic to those with swimming pools.

Bikes:  Most pilgrims are on foot, but there were enough bikes to have to be on the alert.  Some are quite considerate, moving at a moderate pace and ringing the bell well in advance.  Others come hurtling down the hill, shouting something like “passant”.  Walkers who, unlike me, are also cyclists agreed that this co-existence on the path was difficult.

Cafes: again hundreds of them, and we were pleasantly surprised by what we found several times day after day.  We developed a real taste for cafe con leche (hot milk, Caffe Latte in English ho ho), which neither of us drinks much at home.

Dogs: hardly any, in contrast to our usual mountain walks where we normally meet some with their owners even in tricky terrain.  We saw one in a smart red coat walking with his/her owner one day: the dog was moving gamely on, but only had short legs.

Empanadas: lunch fare in Galicia, envelopes of a dough that’s a cross between bread and pastry, with tuna or chicken in the middle.  We remember them tasting better in 1988 to be honest.

Fountains/Fuentes: one of my worries was whether we could carry enough water on hot days to stay hydrated, but it’s much easier now that so many villages have “fuentes”, drinking fountains, with “aqua potable” in them.

Graffiti: masses of it all over the place.  I normally quite like graffiti, but most of this was neither artistic nor clever.  I got heartily sick of the way some heroes had crossed out “Castile y” in front of “Leon” on signposts, presumably as part of an independence campaign, except where that involved climbing too far up.  And there was also “Jesus didn’t start in Sarria”, a catty reference to the fact that if you walk at least the 100km from the town of Sarria you can get your compostela certificate.  My lay minister wife tells me that we have no information about Jesus and the Camino, but he was very clear that you should “love your neighbour as yourself”.

Horreos: traditional structures in Galicia to dry corn and other crops, and apparently now to store bikes!  You see very old ones built of stone or wood, sometimes crumbling, and also modern ones in the gardens of new and very well-appointed houses, presumably as decoration.

Iglesias, or Igrexas in Gallegan: churches, in each village.  Not always open, but usually in a pretty good state of repair.

(St) James: since it’s the way of St James, it’s not surprising that there are frequent statues of him along the way, usually in traditional pilgrim dress, with broad-brimmed hat, scallop shell, staff, and gourd as water bottle.  Indeed it’s surprising in some churches that there isn’t any reference.

Koreans: singled out with affection and admiration.  We met people from about 25 different countries, and one of the most common outside Western Europe were Koreans.  They were constantly cheerful and friendly, in spite of varying degrees of English or Spanish, when not a single other pilgrim could talk to them in their language.

Lights: streetlights mattered in the early mornings to help find the right way out of town, as we sometimes set out before dawn, occasionally using head torches too.

(Virgin) Mary: even more prevalent than St James in terms of dedication of churches and statues and altars within the churches.

N120: Spanish equivalent of an A road which we criss-crossed many times in the middle section of the Camino

O: prominent letter in Gallegan, meaning “the”, and used more than before, I think.  When we were here in 1988, the important stop of O Cebreiro was often called El Cebreiro, but not now.

Pilgrim menu:  Daily fare in the evenings, in albergues and cafe.  Amazing value for money: for between 10 and 12 euros, you get soup or salad, choice of pork or chicken or sometimes fish with chips or occasionally rice, some kind of dessert – creme caramel, ice cream, occasionally cake – plus wine, water, and coffee.  The food was always edible and often much better than that.  Not their fault that it can become repetitive. 

Quechua: prominent brand of rucksacks and other equipment, sold by Decathlon.

Rivers: of course we crossed many rivers, though only a few big ones, especially early on.  Often there were impressive bridges dating back to medieval times, with several arches and not much water.  

Senda: path created alongside a main road for the walkers.  Very helpful, though often the roads weren’t very busy in practice.

Tortilla:  Spanish omelette, and very popular lunch fare especially early on.  Again, I didn’t think I particularly liked these, but developed a taste for them.  Better hot, and I preferred to have a bit of cheese or ham in, but not essential.  In a posher cafe on the approach to Burgos, they even had one with vegetables in it!

Urban areas: the Camino goes through several towns and cities, and the route is not always pretty.  I actually found it interesting to see some of city life, after days in the countryside, and in any case, the Camino is following a historic route, not starting from scratch.

Vines: an attractive feature, especially obviously in the Rioja region, but at other times too.  Looking forward to drinking the fruits of those vines in years to come.

WCs: in the cafes, much better than I feared.  Only one set of footprints on the whole Camino, and most so clean you could eat your dinner off the floor.  The Spanish have taken to using magic eyes to regulate the light timings, so you sometimes have to wave your arms around.

X: letter much used in the Basque language

Yellow arrows: these mark the way in town and countryside alike.  The waymarking is excellent, and makes for good progress.  We are going to notice the difference when we get back to studying Ordnance maps in the Chilterns, and debating whether this is our left fork, or whether we need to carry straight on, or indeed should have turned left at the last one …

Z:  letter often used in Spanish registrations, though come to think of it, it’s in ours too.

Engaging with the history of the Camino was always one of the appeals of the journey to me.  The rationale for coming this way is that we are walking in the steps of medieval pilgrims – there are plenty of other places to walk in Spain if you want – so I’ve tried to look out for things they would have seen along the way.

This has felt a bit harder than I expected.  Perhaps that’s because when we followed the Camino in the car in 1988, we naturally stopped at places where the medieval heritage was clear, which may have distorted our perspective.  And in several places, that does indeed remain.  The great cathedrals of Burgos and Leon are obvious examples, along with well known sites such as Santa Domingo de la Calzada and San Juan de Ortega.  There are also smaller places which have been closely linked to the pilgrimage since the Middle Ages, where it’s easy to sense that atmosphere: Rabanal is one example, and O Cebreiro, though the considerable growth in modern facilities there means you have to use your imagination a bit more.

In other places, it’s frankly harder.  This is not surprising, given that the heyday of the medieval pilgrimage ended over 750 years ago.  Buildings fall down, and styles change.  Spain used its riches in the 16th and 17th centuries to rebuild and refurbish churches, so sometimes what you think may be a medieval church turns out to be later.  And many have added 18th century altarpieces, which, shall we say, are not my thing.  In some cases, the job of finding out is harder, because the church is simply not open: maybe there are good security reasons for this, but it seems a pity.  But that’s offset by those places where not only is the building open, but a dedicated person is there to welcome you, answer your questions, and also stamp your “credencial” (pilgrim passport).  Those places lift the spirit on a tough day.

There are also a few moments where you see a view that perhaps is what the medieval pilgrim would have seen – here is the approach to San Esteban in Zabaldika, near Pamplona (minus the telegraph poles of course!)

As to the pilgrims themselves, I am in awe of their achievement.  As Judith put it during a rough stretch in the rain, “imagine doing this in sandals with a heavy woollen cloak”.  I thought about them first, actually, before we started, as friends kindly drove us to St Jean Pied de Port and the Pyrenees loomed ahead.  Would our predecessors have felt daunted?  After a bit, I decided probably not.  Contemporary accounts suggest they were more concerned about being robbed, being cheated, being attacked by wild animals, and falling ill, perhaps because of rotten drinking water, than about a few hills.  But as we relax in Santiago, with the prospect of a short flight home, we remember that if our predecessors wanted to get home, they had to do the whole thing again, by whatever route, in reverse.  Respect.

Well we’ve made it!  It was quite emotional walking up to the top of the Monte de Gozo, ie mount of joy, from where you can see the towers of the cathedral below.  The medieval pilgrim wouldn’t have seen the current towers, which weren’t built, but would have seen the city and cathedral below.  And it was equally emotional walking in to the Plaza de Obradoiro in front of the west door of the cathedral.  We were very lucky in arriving on a beautiful sunny day in late October, so we could not only take photos, but sit on the ground and take it all in for a bit.

Santiago is a mixture these days – my recollection from 30 years ago is that the churches and narrow streets were more prominent in shaping the atmosphere than they are today.  Those building still dominate the old town, of course: the cathedral, the church of San Francisco, the university, the town hall, and the old pilgrim hospital now repurposed into a 5 star hotel.  And the process of getting the compostela as a certificate of having walked here was moving and rewarding, though it brought home the numbers: arriving at about 3pm, I was number 688 for the day.  But right alongside all this are the signs of a tourist centre and of quite a big city.

There are souvenir shops everywhere, selling T shirts, shells, pins, stickers, models of St James, wristbands, neck chains, saucers, coasters, fridge magnets, notebooks, earrings, models of the waymarker stones, and that’s just what I can remember quickly.  Some we have bought, some are quite valuable, others are not, shall we say.  Young people dish out flyers for coach trips to Finisterre, which we actually did today – didn’t see much in the rain.  And there are masses of bars and restaurants, predictably quite a lot more expensive than on the road.

Alongside this again is a busy city.  The traffic here is far more congested than anywhere else we have seen, even Burgos and Leon.  As you come in from Monte de Gozo, the housing estates and industrial and commercial premises stretch up the hill in the distance, and it was clear from our coach trip that this activity extends on other sides of the city too.  The popularity of the pilgrim route will have something to do with this, but it must be linked to wider economic developments in Galicia.

So a medieval pilgrim destination is a bustling modern metropolis.  Personally I don’t regret that: the Camino is not a theme park, and pilgrims and local residents have always interacted in this way.

For the last few days, we have been in Galicia, the fourth administrative region of Spain on the Camino, and the one which includes Santiago.  

It’s very different from the others.  Weather wise, it’s cooler and wetter.  There’s a song from “My Fair Lady” which runs ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain’: not in our case, since the section across the plain was bone dry, and we have had plenty of rain in Galicia, as we expected.  This has predictable implications for the scenery: greener, lusher, and hillier than much of the rest of the Camino.  The path has taken us under chestnut trees generating large conkers at this time of year, and under oak trees so abundant that at times acorns have pretty much covered the path.  There have also been groves of very tall eucalyptus trees.  If much of this sounds like home, it looks that way too, as the picture shows.

The change came quite abruptly, though partly by coincidence.  The long hot spell broke as we reached a town called Villafranca del Bierzo, about 20km from the border between Leon and Galicia.  The route out of Villafranca was a gradual climb, but as the Galician border approached, this became steep and rocky as we left a village called Las Herrerias.  Most unusually – having crossed a few national frontiers invisible on the ground in the past – the path changed as well, within metres of crossing into the new region: a rocky mountain path became a well made wider gravel trail.  Generally, the Camino seems to matter more in Galicia than in some other areas.

Other things are also different.  The Gallegan language is quite prominent:signs explaining, for example, the history of a church will be in Gallegan as well as Spanish, though the place names are less often put in both languages than in the Basque Country.  One clear exception is the first place you come to as a pilgrim, O Cebreiro, which has been welcoming pilgrims for about 1,000 years – when we were here in 1988, it was sometimes known by the Spanish name of El Cebreiro, but not now.  Visually, the farmyards and fields include “horreos”, ventilated cupboards on stilts used to dry maize – the picture shows a fine example with a stone base.  And the dogs are allowed to roam a bit more: many farmyards and villages include a resident Alsatian off the lead keeping an eye on things, though fortunately for me (and no doubt other walkers) they haven’t so far done more than look us up and down.

They must be used to pilgrims.  The Camino is still busy, with an injection of more people and more support vehicles after the town of Sarria, which is a bit over 100km from Santiago, so you can walk from there and still get your compostela certificate.  If we can complete two more days walking (totalling 33), we can get ours.  In the meantime, dinner!

When we followed the Camino in 1988, nobody had heard of the internet.  Now many pilgrims are using apps rather than books for directions and advice, and we are using them as back-up too.  But like many of our generation, we are using a book as the main source of information, and this post celebrates that plus two books which helped shape our first visit.

John Brierley’s “A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Camino de Santiago” has been our constant companion.  First written in 2003 and updated almost every year since, it is several books in one.  It sets out the route in some detail, split into 33 stages,with sketch maps of each stage, and town plans of the main places.  It also lists accommodation options, and talks about the history and the buildings along the route.  Not for nothing is it subtitled ‘A Practical and Mystical Manual’ – Brierley offers regular reflections on the spiritual side of the Camino as he sees it.  These won’t appeal to everyone, but we’ve certainly found the book as a whole helpful.  Thank you.

Our enjoyment of the 1988 trip was much enhanced by two very different books.  Robin Neillands’ “The Road to Compostela” is an account of a cycle trip from central France to Santiago, bringing out both the ups and downs of Camino life, and the excitement and romance of following in the footsteps of medieval pilgrims.  There are dozens of tales of Camino trips these days, some factual, some fictional, most upbeat, but none of the ones I have read have quite captured the atmosphere in the same way.  

Neilands died some years ago, but the author of the other book from the 1980s, John Hooper, is still writing, now for the Economist.  He has been in Italy for some time, but was then the Guardian’s Spain reporter, and wrote a book called “The New Spaniards” which explained the journey, then barely a decade old, from Franco to democracy and the social changes that had followed.  It was a fascinating companion to what was a new country for me.  Hooper updated it in 2006.  Much has changed since then, but I read that with interest before coming.  With riots in Barcelona as I write, Hooper was far-sighted in commenting that regional nationalism was “the single biggest imponderable in Spain’s future”.  Thanks for all the insights here too.

Some readers may have done the Camino and have their own routines, others wondering what it’s like.  Here is a quick summary of the routines we have observed and adopted.

0600. Camino life starts early.  In high summer, you want to walk before it gets too hot.  In dormitories, people can’t always sleep well so might as well get up.  We didn’t always start this early, especially later on.

0700 or a bit later: breakfast.  Most Albergues and cafes will serve coffee/tea, orange juice, and toast.  Some people do a few km before they have theirs.

0745. On the road.  Needing a head torch now. One of the rewards for the early starts has been the sunrises.

0930. First cafe stop.  Cafe con leche (hot milk), not normally my drink but very good here.  With a small bit of cake if we haven’t had much breakfast.

1100. Maybe visit a church if there is an interesting building on that day’s route, and it’s open.

1200. Lunch.  Another cafe, for tortilla or a roll with eg cheese and ham.  Coke Zero, Kas Limon, or Nestea.

1500-1600. Arrive at the next place, and book in.

1600. Washing.  With not many spare clothes, keeping ahead of the game means washing a few things every day, and hoping they get dry – here’s where there is competition for the best slots on the airers and washing lines!  

1630. Refreshment.  On a hot day, it’s hard to resist a cold beer.  This week, it’s been coffee and cake.

1700. Showering.

1900. Dinner.

2000. Depending on where you are staying, and the weather, you can go for a stroll round the town (if your blisters or injuries don’t forbid this), or sit and read.  But in the dormitories, people start to turn in amazingly early.  I don’t know whether it’s tiredness or lack of other things to do, but it’s not unusual to see six people all in their bunks by 2100, having a last look at their phones before lights out, hoping to get a good night’s sleep before …

0600. Get up and do the whole thing again.  And again.

One of the memories from our visit in 1988 was a village named El Acebo, between Leon and Ponferrada.  It was clearly a pilgrim village, with a narrow street and buildings dating back centuries, but it was showing obvious signs of rural decline, and frankly looked remarkably primitive.  I made a note at the time: from the cairn at Cruz Ferro, we went down “on one of the worst ‘proper’ roads I’ve ever been on, to Ponferrada.  Going through a place called El Acebo, the road isn’t metalled at all.  Some of it is derelict, but there are a few new houses among the old, and it’s bizarre that such a road survives.” I will post a picture from 1988 when we get back.

Things have changed over 30 years.  The road is now properly made up, and all the houses in El Acebo have been reroofed in the same way – it’s very striking as you come into the village from the mountains above.  Similarly, doors and windows are mostly modern, and the attractive balconies overhanging the still narrow main street (Calle Real).  At the far end of the village is a new pilgrim hostel with its own swimming pool, and half a dozen flags on tall flagpoles, like an international hotel, visible for miles.  

It’s not clear why this has happened, apart from generally greater prosperity and development in Spain, though the greater popularity of the Camino has clearly helped.  It’s the most striking transformation we’ve seen comparing what we remember of the 1988 visit and our current trip.

We are now most of the way across the Meseta, a high plain running from Burgos to Leon (where we are currently) and a bit beyond.  As you prepare for the Camino, you read about it – bleak, arid, bare, long stretches with no stops for food or water, and no shade from the hot sun.  One old Camino hand quoted us a remark that the first third of the Camino is for your body – you get better at the walking, I guess – and the last third is for your soul – might come to that when we get there (or not).  The middle third -the meseta – is for your mind, implying a tough mental test.

In practice, as with some other things in life, like the tax return, thinking about it is worse than getting stuck in.  We have been lucky in that the weather has been dry throughout, and not baking hot most days.  And it hasn’t been my favourite stretch so far.  But we haven’t found it as much of an ordeal as some made out, and nor have the many people we have talked to in the evenings and on the trail.

The first thing to say is that the territory does vary.  At times it is very bare: you can look in all directions and literally not see anything engineered by man or woman: no fences or walls, no farm buildings, no rusty old agricultural machinery (thankfully), just big fields and the very occasional tree.  But stretches quite this bare are the exception.  There is a certain amount of up and down.  The landscape varies, eg around Itero de la Vega, just after you enter into Palencia province, there was quite a lot of activity, with more traffic, corn still not harvested, woods, and vines planted.  That then dwindled to just fields with hardly any trees on the way in to Boadlilla.   At this time of year, many of the fields have been harvested, so look pretty bare, whether re-ploughed (see previous blog) or not.  In other areas, the farmers are busy getting the crops in, and we saw someone hoover up a field of sunflowers very quickly one afternoon – think we will still buy the seeds at the supermarket when we get home …

Changes are on the way.  Saplings have been planted in protective shells in places, presumably for commercial purposes, though in the last couple of days, there have been some offering shade to the walkers.  You see quite a lot of wind farms in the distance, though surprisingly few solar panels.  And there are some interesting cloud scapes: at one point, just over a crest, the hazy sky reminded me of  a seascape with islands, off the coast of Scotland or Ireland.  Wish I could paint a better picture in words, never mind use a brush.

The other thing is that I’m pretty sure that there are more villages with facilities than there were a few years ago, as part of the development of the Camino all round.  When we drove here in 1988, I remember concluding that I would not be able to walk the Camino, because I couldn’t carry the water I would need to cover the long and hot empty stretches.  But the gaps are manageable now.

Finally, I can’t resist a pun.  One human-made feature in the latter stages is a new rail line, presumably high-speed.  Until then, we hadn’t seen any trains on the Camino.  So with apologies to “My Fair Lady”, the train in Spain runs mainly in the plain …

Something I saw on the Camino the other day reminded me of a line in one of my favourite poems, “The Windhover” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

The line is “Sheer plod makes plough-down sillion shine.”  And here, indeed, a rich dark soil had recently been ploughed, and the sun was catching the cut earth at a particular angle that meant light glowed from it. 

Expert critics have analysed the layers of meaning in Hopkins’s line.  Did he, for instance, invent the word “sillion”, which doesn’t have much of a pedigree in English, though sounds very much like the French word “sillon” meaning furrow?  The interpretation which strikes a chord with me is regarded by the experts as at least plausible – that Hopkins was arguing that hard work will make anything look and indeed be better.

“The Windhover” is subtitled “To Christ Our Lord”, and is fundamentally about how the beauty of a bird in flight prompted him to think about the greater beauty of Christ.  He saw the hand of God in all things – another poem begins “The world is charged with the grandeur of God”.  And he would have had plenty to enthuse about on the Camino.  My own favourite moments have actually been walking at sunrise – the picture shows Carrion de los Condes yesterday – but there have been mountains, valleys, and big skies to enjoy, for instance.  There hasn’t been so much wildlife, though we did see some of the windhovers or other birds of prey that enthused Hopkins the other day.  In terms of man-made beauty, Burgos Cathedral stands out with a series of magnificent pieces of work, and some of the smaller churches are very fine.

The same day as we saw the ploughed field, however, we also passed through an area linked more to other explanations of human progress.  Near the village of Atapuerca, archaeological excavations have uncovered remains of from over 400,000 years ago, the earliest evidence of humans in Europe.  These are changing our understanding of human development.  Some of the finds are housed in the Museo de la Evolucion Humana, which has excellent explanations in English as well as Spanish of both the theory of evolution, and the accumulating evidence as to how our species developed.  Fascinating stuff.

I owe my love of “The Windhover” to an English teacher at King Edward’s Birmingham, Tony Trott.  So do thousands of others.  He died a year or two ago – RIP, Mr Trott, and thank you.