Last May I took the plunge and started what had been on my
bucket list for years which was to walk the Camino de Santiago or Way of St
James in Spain. The Camino de Santiago is an 800km ancient pilgrimage route
that runs along the top of northern Spain from near the Pyrenees in France to
Galicia just above Portugal. The remains of St James are meant to have been
found in 813AD in a place near Galicia at the Portuguese end of the camino.
They were discovered by a Galician hermit who heard music and saw stars above a
place known as “campo stella “– the
field of stars. The stars overhead directed him to a place where he found 3
graves, the remains of one confirmed to be St James. Over the succeeding
decades and centuries, a church and eventually several cathedrals were built in
the campo stella or
compostela which soon became
the city of Santiago de Compostela.
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| St James's Gate,Dublin |
So it was that I arrived to Dublin on a rare as hen’s teeth
balmy May Spring day to stay the night before flying out to France the next
morning ready to start the camino. After settling into my bed and breakfast
situated along the canal, I went for a long walk in order to seek where Irish
pilgrims used to begin their pilgrimage to Santiago in the Middle Ages from
Ireland. The front gate of the St
James’s Gate Brewery marks the boundary of the iconic Guinness brewery site.
There has been a gate adjoining this site since the Middle Ages. St James’s
Gate was traditionally a toll and customs duty collection point for people to
enter the city of Dublin. The holy well of St James was located in this area
and thus the medieval route to Santiago de Compostela originated here. It was a
day for it with the sun beaming down and the cafes and pubs thronged with
people and others jostling along like myself, taking a late afternoon stroll.
My quest to find the St James’s Gate and thus officially begin my camino from
Ireland took me past the Concern offices in Camden Street. Concern is an international non-government organisation with whom I
worked as a volunteer many years ago in various countries in Africa. It was
quite a jolt to see the offices and took me back 25 years or so. And so all in
all it was a very reflective walk very much in keeping with starting my own
camino.
Unfortunately I was not going to be able to do the whole
camino and was aiming to complete about a third which would bring me out to the
second province encountered on the camino – Rioja and the capital city of
Logrono. Then my plan was to head north to Bilbao on the coast and spend a few
days with my sister who was going to meet me from UK there.
One of the downsides of booking accommodation on line is
that it can be difficult to work out where you are geographically. I flew into
Bordeaux in France the next morning from Dublin to realise that the guesthouse
where I was staying was in a rather uninspiring part of Eysines, a satellite area a chunk of a drive away from Bordeaux.
The French camino to Santiago starts in a town at the foot of the Pyrenees
called St Jean de Pied de Port. Again I had misjudged a bit when booking my
flight. Bordeaux is a good distance away from St Jean de Pied de Port and there
are nearer airports such as Biarritz. On the up side I was picked up by a
lively, charming guy from the guesthouse. He explained that transport options
around Bordeaux are non-existent and they await with bated breath the
completion of a tramline similar to the Dublin Luas tramline which will improve things enormously. Meanwhile we
drove out of the airport passing through a rather depressing industrialised zone
and arterial roads with several lanes and corresponding lines of traffic. I was
not seeing Bordeaux at its best.
The guesthouse was charming, quirky and tasteful. The mother
of the guy who managed the guesthouse was an artist and this was definitely reflected
in the house. The next morning I breakfasted on croissants and pain au chocolat
with a watery sun seeping in and highlighting the paintings and African artefacts
in the living room. There was an amazing array of homemade jams all the colours
of the rainbow laid out on the table. I
had forgotten how in Europe tea is seen as a drink to promote health or to give
someone if they are sick .It is not entrenched as deeply as it is in the
English and Irish culture. So I was relieved when rifling through the many
sachets of jasmine, camomile and green tea to find a solitary sachet of robust
English breakfast tea.
I wished I could have
stayed longer in this guesthouse but I had to press on to the train station for
my train to St Jean Pied de Port. I chatted to the guy managing the guesthouse.
He talked about how his grandfather had Alzheimer’s
disease and was in nursing home. We had got on to the subject because I told
him that I was working in a nursing home. He said that his grandfather was in
the Resistance movement and was captured by the Gestapo and went to Dachau
concentration camp for two years. He has lost nearly all his memory and now
cannot recognise his family. Yet he still remembers and recounts regularly that
journey on the train to Dachau. Sometimes he jokes and says it was like being
on a Club Mediterranean holiday.
The guy who managed the guesthouse dropped me into Bordeaux
and I was so happy that I had got to see it and was not influenced by my
depressing glimpse of it the day before. Bordeaux is a majestic town with a
vast river running through it and is responsible for its dignified, maritime
bearing. I walked along the river to the
station of Bordeaux de St Jean, passing battleships and cruisers lining the
river port. I obtained my ticket in an easy enough fashion thank goodness and
mounted my train to Bayonne, the first stage of my journey to St Jean de Pied
de Port. As the train pulled out of the station, flame red poppies lined the
banks. That is my memory of Bordeaux and the guesthouse – colourful, flamboyant,
majestic and kindness itself. My train journey was leading on to an unpredictable
time over the next two weeks to unknown places and people. But I was sure that my memories of it would
be more peaceful than those of an elderly man who had survived the
concentration camp of Dachau, only to enter the prison of Alzheimer’s.
