The start point.

I honestly don’t know much about the Camino, it’s geography, history, religious symbolism and well anything really due to an inability to be arsed to do the research. So, the little I gleaned from our tour guide is that there are the remains of St James held in the cathedral at Santiago De Compostela and many many people have walked from start points, all over the place, sometimes for weeks or months, to end up in this place of great spiritual import.

However. There are a couple of places en route where, if you change your mind about going the whole hog, you can get a pardon and then it is ‘as if’ you have done the full pilgrimage. Except you haven’t. Which makes me feel a bit better about getting a taxi ride to fill in the less interesting bits of the route. Like this ‘portal of forgiveness!’ for example.

The way is really well marked with shells and yellow arrows and posts and really, even a hopeless numpty like yours truly would struggle to lose the trail and just to be in the safe side I have a guide.

There are a few really cute things about the walk. People leave messages along the way to encourage those that come after them. And everyone wishes everyone t hey meet along the way with ‘buen camino’. Have a good Camino.

‘May all bad things leave us forever’ Amen 🙏

‘God’s House’ in the middle of nowhere loosely run by Tamino (of the Camino) the Swiss where you can help yourself to fruit, drinks and snacks and leave some money if you want.

Lisa and Ken sharing taste in sunglasses.

I’ve got to be honest with you. I am not feeling much like a pilgrim because this Camino starts in places hundreds of kilometres away from Santiago and the idea is that you do the whole lot in I suppose a state of contemplation. Instead, as I mentioned, we are doing the highlights while skipping the boring bits by travelling in a taxi, listening to Sia and singing along.

Nevertheless we have covered 31 miles and today we visited a monastery and did some meditation by a river.

I really thought we had done 4 days of walking but it turns out we’ve only done 3. Says much.

It’s time I introduced you to Jordi our Spanish guide. He is lovely, kind and very enthusiastic. We are teaching him to speak Geordie wey aye man. And developing his list of life rules for when we leave him. The first being ‘don’t for God’s sake ever guess a woman’s age and if you do, knock 10 years off what you think. Says the woman who he thought was in her sixties!!

Got a thing about belfrys. You might have noticed.

It might be hard to believe but this bit of Spain looks exactly like Dorset. I mean apart from the fact that there are hordes of multinationals all walking the road like refugees. Then again that is exactly like summer season in Lyme Regis.

Today we walked something like 22km. It sounds much more impressive in km. In any case it was A LOT. And I don’t know whether it’s global warming or not but it was HOT - 32 degrees by the afternoon. Which is nothing like Dorset. So while there are no ill effects as such, fatigue has definitely set in and with it my internal Tourette’s has returned. Buen fucking camino.

Anyway, a little bit of excitement today as we passed the 100km marker meaning we have 100km to go to reach Santiago. The sad part is there are no more taxis and we have to literally walk the rest of the way ffs.

This. At the end of the days walk.

Our country house that came with pool. One of the highlights of the trip.

I have been very bad at updating this blog and for that I’m sorry but it’s been really tough walking and not much time at the end of the day for writing and I’ve been pretty monged out to be honest. But.

I made it.

So a little bit about the last few days. Our little team of unlikely heroes have covered something like 160km in 8 days with most of those in the last 4 days. We have a variety of aches pains and blisters and are pretty worn out.

The walking pace has been pretty quick for 4 old farts so much so that our 37 year old team leader asked us to slow down a bit.

I have cycled through each T-shirt twice and so I’m at the end of the road laundry wise. I don’t think I stink but I’m not entirely sure. My hair is a haystack. I am looking forward the most to washing all my clothes and not living out of a small case of slightly damp clothes.

We have laughed loads. We expanded upon Ken’s endearing embrace of life’s ‘golden moments’ to include life’s less enchanting, freshly titled ‘brown moments’. These include walking through bad smells (of which there were a surprisingly large number), any disappointments however small, and private moments in the lav of course. We have tried, with a limited measure of success to teach Jordi a variety of terms of endearment with plonker being our firm favourite along with how to pronounce ‘prawn’ which it appears is much more difficult than you’d think.

I don’t honestly feel that I deserve to be called a pilgrim. Many people arriving at Santiago de Compostela have walked 100s of miles and have been walking for weeks. I guess many of them have been through more deeply profound physical, psychological and spiritual experiences than I have. Nevertheless, I have somewhat settled in myself. I feel like I need less, can give more and can dig pretty deep when I need to. My travel companions are a really special bunch of people and I think I have made some lifelong friends. That is pretty special. They say the Camino provides. You know, I genuinely think it has. And I think this experience is something that will keep on providing.