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Writer Paul Catmur has long wanted to walk the Camino de Santiago, the ancient network of pilgrimage routes leading to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain. Diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer in 2022, he decided the time was now. Two weeks ago, Catmur wrote of his preparation; in this second instalment, the walk - the equivalent of a half marathon every day for six weeks - begins.
It was somewhere around Roncesvalles, close to the Spanish border, when the doubts began to take hold. I had been warned that at some stage, I would inevitably start to question my sanity in undertaking the Camino and think about packing it in. I had really not anticipated that those thoughts would surface as early as the first afternoon.
I’d been walking steadily uphill into the mountains for hours. I was tired, my feet hurt and I had nobody to talk to. I could probably keep this up for a day or two, but another six weeks? It would be incredibly embarrassing to not finish, but right at that moment it seemed more sensible than 40 days of pain.
I’d set off that morning from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, a historic French town in the foothills of the Pyrenees and the start of the Camino Francés, the most popular route to Santiago. This is the Basque Country, which straddles the French and Spanish borders, whose people have their own language and where the road signs are all multilingual.
During the years, there have been simmering calls for Basque independence but my taxi driver told me he loved being both Basque and French. He said if he had to choose between the two, he would go with whichever one had not asked him to choose. I suspect the world would be a happier place if more people shared his attitude.
“Adequate” would be a generous description of my hotel room, but after 36 hours of travelling it was as good as a suite at the Ritz. I dumped my bags and set out to look for dinner, anything other than airline or airport food would do. I found a friendly little tapas bar, only, sadly, the food was as unimaginative as my room. The sausage casserole, for example, consisted of just that: sausages inside a casserole dish. Accurate, but hardly appetising. I never thought I’d miss airline food.
The creaky greyhound
I was keen to get away at dawn the next morning but for “security reasons” the hotel wouldn’t let me out until 7am. Once I’d escaped through the front door I followed the Camino signs and painted yellow arrows, until I joined the dribbling trail of fellow pilgrims, eyeing each other up as if it were the first day of school. I soon started overtaking everyone in front of me, though in truth, I had only a day pack, whereas many of them carried everything for six weeks. I knew I should take it easy at first but I was like a greyhound out of the traps, albeit a fairly creaky greyhound with plenty of grey around the muzzle.
As I climbed into the mountains, proudly following the footsteps of those other famed conquerors, Napoleon and Charlemagne, crops gave way to free-roaming sheep, cattle and horses. The horses were big and chunky rather than sleek stallions, so I checked the guidebook to see what they were bred for. Food, apparently. Still, at least up here they would have a pretty good life until their appointment with the abattoir.
High above, vultures circled waiting for the unwary to spend too long adjusting their packs. It was as the uphill kilometres crawled by that my doubts started to form. The weather was perfect for walking, so imagine how bad this would be in the rain? Six more weeks of voluntary pain made no sense. What if I lost my iPhone charger?
Eventually, the climbing stopped and the last hour was a relative sprint down through beech forest to the little Spanish town of Roncesvalles, where my hotel was much flasher. The receptionist apologised that my room was on the second floor and inquired politely if I’d be okay to walk up two flights of stairs. I took mild exception to this challenge to my fitness, but I guess the previous six hours of struggle were showing. I chatted with pilgrims at a communal dinner, met a couple of nomadic Kiwis from Auckland and slept well on cheap red wine.
As Woody Allen said, 80% of success is just showing up, so the next morning I put the previous day’s misgivings down to jet lag, showed up, and started walking. The path was much flatter and everything was going well until I realised that the Camino markers had disappeared and I was on my own except for an Asian guy foolish enough to think that I knew where I was going.
We consulted our apps and found our way back to the path. He was a retired engineer from Shanghai and keen to practise his English. We walked together for a few hours, though I declined his offer of a mid-morning beer. I asked him about a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan and he was keen to demonstrate his goodwill by canvassing further opinions from a passing Taiwanese woman. She was somewhat alarmed at the prospect of engaging with a hostile invader, so I quickly did my best United Nations peacekeeper role and hurried him off in search of more beer.
Fellow traveller
That evening, I had dinner with a 22-year-old from Oregon who’d just finished her masters in biology. She had run past me earlier in the day so was clearly too fit for her own good. We had arrived at a small hotel at the same time, and she had to convince the proprietor that, no, we weren’t sharing a room. Still, as we were the only guests, it made sense to eat together and discuss perspectives on careers, relationships and geography from differing sides. I don’t think she was completely bored by my dad talk, though she may tell her friends a different story.
A couple of days later, I reached Pamplona, a bustling Basque city and my first rest day. I sought out the Café Iruña for dinner, which was supposedly a favourite of Ernest Hemingway. I had anticipated an atmospheric but overpriced restaurant. What I got was one of Dante’s early stages of hell. It was a large, colonnaded room where families out on their weekly treat competed with each other to make the most noise. Children ran the show and a small boy walked triumphantly from the bar clutching a bowl of chips and a beer. Amidst the throng, a table of Americans cautiously eyed the menu like dogs sniffing a piece of dropped broccoli. I drank my beer and slunk out.
More to my liking was a street near the bullring lined with busy pintxos (Basque tapas) bars. I picked Bar Txirrintxa for no other reason than its unbeatable Scrabble potential and dined on craft beer and pintxos, feeling much more Hemingway.
The next morning, I reviewed the situation. I had a blister the size of a grapefruit on my toe, a mildly upset stomach and a pile of dirty washing. If I had a god I would have prayed that these issues would sort themselves out before the next day’s walking. Being a heathen with a day off, I went in search of a pharmacy and a laundry. I still had 700km to go.
