Camino de Santiago Day 39? Fisterra - Santiago - Vigo - Porto
And just like that there's no more walking. I leave last of my pilgrim friends and take a series of trains to Porto, where I try to adjust to life away from the Camino
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 End of Fisterra
After the ocean I find a place to stay in town with the others. The albergue guy makes jokes and I get my credential stamped for the final time.
I shower and start walking up the road to the lighthouse. It’s another 2 or 3km but with no backpack I feel like I’m in a Youtube video running at 1.5x speed. Light comes from some corners of the sky, but there’s different lights in different places; other sections are erased by bulging pregnant dark blue-grey clouds. The views across the bays to other parts of the land are stunning.
I find the guys sitting with their legs dangling over the western side of a chunk of rock. The sky across is half cloud half light,
Half death half life
Half destruction half creation
There’s only about ten minutes left of it.
There’s no sunset this evening that we can see. On the right hand side of the divide, we can see the storm approaching, it eats up the ocean before our eyes.
The sun disappears.
The storm keeps coming.
*
We take photos in the last light by the Camino milestone – the light grey stone one with the blue tile and Camino logo of a yellow shell with lines converging onto one point – that reads:
Km 0,000
We go inside to the restaurant and get something to eat. Night falls outside, and then the rain falls. A monsoon downpour so powerful we can’t hear ourselves talk. We’ve to order a taxi to bring us back into town, and it’s the sort of rain that you’re soaked just running to the car.
Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t walk anymore.
Leaving the Camino
I’ve to make my way to Portugal today. I’m flying home from Lisbon in a couple of days. I naively assumed you could get a train directly down the coast from Santiago to Lisbon, like going from Belfast to Dublin but it’s not that simple, it’s more like going from Ballina to Cork.
This is the first day of my new life, where my core activity is not walking 20 to 30 kilometres for the day, though I do have to travel by a series of trains.
We’ve to leave Santiago on a bus in the dark after just a few hours’ sleep. We’d found a pub in Fisterra called ‘Titanic Pub’ – after the boat – though it should have been called ‘The End of the World’ – it was probably the worst pub in Spain, like something out of Twin Peaks.
The bus stop is full of pilgrims. The first person I meet when I get there is Ignacio – the friendly round-faced gentleman from Sardinia, who in the earlier weeks was a reliable reminder of the pointlessness of walking too fast; no matter how quickly I thought I was walking, when I’d break I’d turn around and see 71 year old Ignacio bobbing along on his calves roast ham calves with a smile on his face.
I give him a big hug.
“Tutto bene?” he asks me, as always.
“Tutto bene” I reply, as always.
Looking through my photos when I got home to Ireland I see the picture I took down the street as I joined the queue for the Pilgrim’s Office in St. Jean, six weeks before, my first activity on the Camino before I’d even checked into my hostel. In the small crowd in the queue just in front of me is the unmistakeable head of Ignacio, smooth tanned head wrapped with white hair and thick black glasses.
So it goes.
*
The bus goes to Santiago. The train only goes as far as Vigo. Then there’s another train 5 hours later to Porto, where I’ve to spend the night before getting another train to Lisbon. There’s worse places to spend the night, I suppose. At least on the train I can read or something.
For a different perspective on travel and the outdoors, follow me over on Instagram:
and Twitter:
The Pilgrimage
My friend Jonas gave me a copy of Paolo Coelho’s book The Pilgrimage on the hill outside Castrojeriz. He’d finished with it and thought I might enjoy it. If you’ve read the Alchemist you’ll know his style, this one is based on his own experience on the Camino back in the 80’s, though a lot of it is fantasy. It’s full of fairly heavy-handed “follow your heart” kind of messages, so naturally, I was loving it, fully buying into the Aesop’s guru-style advice of its characters, trying to discern the cryptic messages of what lessons one should learn on the Camino. I haven’t read more than two pages since Astorga, though, and any time I’ve tried I’ve had to back and re-read the same two pages. I’m determined to finish it, because I promised Jonas I’d pass it on to a ‘worthy pilgrim’ who would appreciate it and get some inspiration from it. I try to read it on the train but at this stage it’s boring me to tears, I find the messages condescending and hubristic, and frankly by now I think it’s a load of shite and am totally over it. I dunno if it’s because I’m too tired to read or if I reached a point in my own Camino where I’d learned my own lessons and had outgrown the need for someone else’s messages about the ‘right’ way to do the Camino, or if the book actually did deteriorate into a Dan Brown-esque cliffhanger and crypticism for the sake of it, or both. Maybe it’s a book better read as inspiration to do the Camino than if you’ve already done it.
Anyway, I did eventually finish it, so if anyone wants it, they can have it.
If you’re enjoying reading my travel stories then why not share them?
Vigo
I have a few hours to kill in the Galician port city of Vigo, which is great because I love killing several hours in Spanish cities. My gregarious friend Juan (former resident of Thurles and Clonakilty) is from near here so I’ve heard good things. I spend a lovely several hours writing and eating outside a café before going for a stroll. Vigo frustrates me though; everything is closed, the layout of the city seems to hinder the sun from finding its way onto any of the nicer ones, and they’re excavating a crater in the main street for a subway station or line, an activity which I learn is so loud that it should be a crime against humanity, and I feel for anyone working in the clothes shops adjacent to it, because it’s not a job that’d get done over a weekend. Also there’s unlit Christmas lights hanging over the streets even though it’s not yet Halloween and we’re still enjoying the autumn sun, though I suppose the sun isn’t actually shining on any of the streets so maybe they do need artificial lighting. It's a perfect example of visiting a place on the wrong day at the wrong time and letting your subjective exhaustion and neuroses frame your perspective of the place.
Though that’s what travels all about, isn’t it?
Porto
I visited Porto several years ago – it’s a stunningly beautiful city, the canyon-like Duoro river gorge a feature that few cities boast. It’s late though and I’m exhausted, and I wasn’t planning to stop here so anything I see of it is a bonus - I leave as early as possible in the morning. The hostel is one of those where it’s full of American kids playing fusball and playing drinking games and at the bar they ring a bell and everyone gets a free shot and they’re all backpacking and talking about their travels and trying to shift each other and they’re all going to the same places and they’re all exactly the same and they’re kids and their stories are shit and they think these free shots – half vodka, half pink stuff – are the best thing ever.
It’s exactly like the Camino, then, but the average age profile is about a third of the Camino and it’s completely shit. I take my free shot but talk to no-one in the crowd of young zombies gathered at the bar as I don’t want anyone to ask me what I’m doing here or how old I am, then leave the hostel immediately and go around the block to get some food, where I eat alone outside a pub.
I’m only in Portugal an hour and it’s confusing the hell out of me. I know how to say ‘Obrigado’ but hesitate every time as I’m convinced it’s wrong. Portuguese looks close enough to Spanish but sounds like Russian. Having to change languages after five and a half weeks of the Camino (which has its own pidgin language hybrid of Spanish, Italian, French and English) is a step too far. In making myself at Home within myself on the Camino I’ve inadvertently made myself at home in Spain. As an Irish person I’m ashamed to say the whole concept of Portugal is confusing me right now. I never thought I’d say it, but I wish I was back in Spain – life was simpler then.
I can’t even speak English now.
I wonder how much of my ‘tiredness’ is from once again ‘leaving home’ - I’ve become so adjusted not to Spain but the Camino, and the once-novel but now-comforting routine of walking, albergues, pilgrim menus and effortlessly (artificially?) deep conversations. You begin to take for granted that so many of your hosts know what you need simply because you’re on the Camino; in many ways, people already know what you’re thinking before you speak - you are just another pilgrim the same as all the others, and they can read your mind.
It’s a while now since I had to adjust to it in the first place - have I forgotten how to travel?
Though I guess being exhausted is what travel’s all about.
Still though - tomorrow I go to Lisbon. I can’t wait.
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.
Congrats. Gav. Well done. Some achievement and great writing.
Paul OReilly(friend of your Dad and prospective Camino walker).