It’s now over four weeks since we got home, and five since we walked into the main square in Santiago and sat on the pavement with other pilgrims, gazing at the cathedral and contemplating the journey we had completed.  Here are some final reflections, with the benefit of a bit of perspective, but before the memories fade too much.

It was a great experience.  There’s lots to love about it.  You get masses of fresh air and exercise.  The landscape is beautiful at least some of the time, and mostly at least easy on the eye.  Food and drink are easy to come by, and remarkably affordable.  And you are part of an ever changing community of people from different nations, with different reasons for being there, all united in their desire to walk on, and with an outlook that’s mutually supportive rather than competitive. 

We were mostly lucky with the weather: like anything, it was much less fun on the days it rained, so too many of those, especially back to back, would make it harder, and a heatwave would have given me even bigger problems.  We were also lucky in that neither of us was ill or injured.  Blisters or sore feet are one thing – every shop, big or small, seems to sell Compeed, and there are vending machines for that and other chemists’ products, which I haven’t seen in the UK – but more serious problems would be tough to manage.

Finding accommodation was harder than we thought.  We were there at a very busy time.  So rather than risk not finding anywhere to stay, we started booking ahead, which worked for us, though we had intended to stay more flexible.  Others didn’t make any bookings, and mostly seemed to do all right, though you can’t always be too choosy.  We found some very good B&Bs that were very economical, and the hostels (albergues) we stayed in were mostly fine, though I come back to the point that if everyone arrived soaked, they would be much less fun.

But there’s more to a six week walk than just the practical side.  I felt quite emotional, from the time we stood on the Monte de Gozo a few miles from Santiago, and saw the towers of the cathedral for the first time.  There was then a strange interval as we walked through the outskirts of what is quite a big city, before we got to the medieval centre and finally rounded the last corner into the Praza do Obradoiro, with the west front of the cathedral on our left.  I was delighted to finish, looking forward to visiting the relics of St James, and attending pilgrim mass, as pilgrims had done for centuries, and also, frankly, to having a few days holiday when we could do something other than walk!  I was proud that we had completed the journey, walking every step of the nearly 500 miles from the Pyrenees with all our gear on our backs, and that a combination of plenty of planning and a fair amount of luck meant that we had done it in pretty good order.  I was relieved that nothing had gone wrong.  Some people report feeling sad: I recognise that, but didn’t feel that myself, since while I love walking, doing that for several weeks was not an end in itself, but part of a journey. 

Beyond all this, I was moved because I felt in Santiago that I had become part of something bigger than myself, a community of people spanning the centuries, who had walked a considerable distance in the footsteps of the medieval pioneers, and had made it.  I hadn’t intended actually to sit on the pavement to take it all in, but having got to the square, felt strongly that that was what I wanted to do, and not just because the weather was perfect.  The towers rise above you, and I felt at one and the same time rather small but a genuine part of the Santiago community.

I’m very glad to have gone, grateful to have the support of family and colleagues to be able to take six weeks out for this expedition, and glad that nothing went wrong.  But I was also glad to get back home.  The Camino is in many ways a world of its own, a curious mix of being in a bubble of a daily routine, while walking through cities, towns and villages where other people are going about their everyday lives.  Since I’m fortunate enough to enjoy my own everyday life, work and otherwise, it was good to get back to it after six weeks away.  I’m looking forward to doing more walks from place to place, for less time and with less kit, but unlike some people, I don’t plan to do another Camino.

Has it changed me?  Maybe that’s for others to say.  I said in the blogpost on 18 August, before we left, that I wasn’t seeking anything in particular, but was looking forward to the chance to think.  And I have come back with some clearer ideas about what to do in life, and also about how not to get so mad about minor annoyances: I need to hold myself to account on both those fronts.

Finally, a reflection on the Camino itself.  It’s worlds away from the Camino of 1988 which we followed by car.  I’ve written already about the explosion in the number of people walking, and there has been a proliferation of routes as different Caminos are researched and established.  Although I didn’t do the walk for religious reasons, I do worry that the route is losing its connection with St James, which in the end is what holds it together.  More and more people are finishing their walk not in Santiago but on the coast in Finisterre: I admire their energy, and understand the satisfaction of walking right to the “end of the earth”, but it’s not the goal of this walk.  Some of the traditional routes through the suburbs into the big cities are generating alternatives, maybe along a river, so that the route is prettier and today’s walkers can avoid unappealing housing or industrial estates.  Understandable, again, but the point of this journey is that we are following a medieval route, whether or not it is an area of outstanding natural beauty.  There are more and more companies organising the trip for you, taking your rucksack or indeed suitcase from place to place, and sometimes providing sustenance en route.  And more and more people are doing the route over two or more years, sometimes only a week at a time.

I’m getting to sound like a Camino purist or bore.  The only official definition of completing the Camino is that you have to walk 100km or cycle 200km to get your certificate known as a compostela.  Beyond that, different people will have their own versions of how you should do the walk.  Some people walk a lot further than us: if you start in the historic pilgrim town of Le Puy in central France, for example, you do twice as much.  Others reckon that if you stay in hotels rather than the hostels, you aren’t really following the spirit of the thing.  I tried to follow the advice in our guide book not to feel superior to people who started just in time to do the minimum 100km, on the basis that we all have our own reasons for doing the Camino.  But I keep coming back to the fact that what’s distinctive about this route is that it’s the way of St James, and the more you depart from that, the more it risks becoming one long distance footpath among others.

We shall certainly be maintaining our gentle obsession with the saint, looking out his statue in the line up of apostles everywhere we visit, looking for the signs in other countries, and boring everyone with these quests.  And we do so hugely grateful to have had the opportunity to walk the Camino de Santiago in 2019.