Camino de Santiago Day 36: Santiago to Negreira
A small group of us set out for the final journey - a three day march to the ocean and the End of the World. It hits us all around the same time though, that the walk now is entirely different
I’m coming to the end of my Camino de Santiago odyssey (it’s not quite over yet). It’s ended up being not just a physical but a creative journey. Sign up to keep in touch with weekly stories, essays and blog posts about travel, the outdoors and all kinds of journeys.
The Third Visit
It’s time to leave. I finally man up and go to join a potential queue for my Compostela – the certificate of completion that confirms your starting point, distance covered, date of arrival and so on, along with a neat translation of your name in Latin (Galvanum FYI) – but thankfully there’s none. The other box to tick is to attend mass at midday, which I’m open to being a powerful experience to mark the end of the journey, but unfortunately it’s just like every other mass, and even more boring because it’s in Spanish.
Jobs done, we filter out onto the plaza. It’s arrival time again, even though it’s always arrival time, but I happen to bump into some people I know. Fittingly, perhaps inevitably, I meet Kathryn, the German lady who paid the two euro for my credential back in St. Jean, and perhaps even more fittingly and inevitably, as soon as we mention our mutual friend Ran, we look over and he’s just strolling on into Santiago.
I realise as I hug him that we could probably spend another five weeks catching up on everything that’s happened since we last saw each other, and in many ways it feels like we did the whole thing together. What can I say in a couple of minutes, which story or shared experience best captures it all? Maybe it’s better to not even bother trying, to just say nothing. It’s time for me to leave anyway.
Third-Person View
There’s a different energy here again from the day I arrived, and from yesterday. I actually know a few people here today, that I met at some point along the way. I’m introduced to one or two through mutual friends but quickly realise I shouldn’t interrupt – they must share this day with those they walked with, and those who arrived today.
It's different to yesterday – instead of the whole thing being flat, I can see the energy there present in the tears and the hugs, the smiles and the embraces, the photos, the cheers and the prayers – but again, as a detached observer, like a ghost in the open air or the conscious spirit of an awakened pilgrim.
It’s not my day, there’s somewhere else for me to be today.
It’s time to go beyond Santiago.
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The Road Out
A road out of the city quickly dissipates into a pleasant overgrown country trail, five of us continuing on feel like schoolkids on a late-evening adventure.
We’ve 20km to do – about 4 hours – but we don’t leave til 3pm.
About halfway through we all begin to voice the same thought:
This is totally different.
Even though we’ve all decided our ultimate destination is Finisterre, and the destination is whatever you want it to be, we can’t escape the feeling that Santiago was a definite ending point. People we know have already left to go home, or to go somewhere else in Spain or Europe. There might be other pilgrims on the way to Finisterre but the energy in the air is different – we know it’s almost over. The sense of shared purpose that energised the last few days and made us stronger the more we walked seems to have evaporated, and it’s becoming apparent that we’re more alone than we have been in a while. We’re going to have to pull this one out of the bag by ourselves.
It's not the same now and we all know it. The enthusiasm of earlier in the day has waned
The part of a dream where you start to become lucid, but only enough to know that you’re waking up and can’t do anything about it, there’s no more Dreamworld, and no going back to where you were.
We arrive in Negreira at last light
The whole trip is crumbling apart
We are waking up.
If you’ve done the Camino, are thinking of doing it, or are just interested in discussing the Camino or travel in general - then please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.