DESTINATIONS CAMINO DE SANTIAGO | ACTIVE & ADVENTURE
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Laura French took on the final leg of the Camino de Santiago to see what lures travellers to this network of pilgrimage routes
he Camino is kind of like life – when you start it’s like you’re young. You don’t really know what it’s going to be like, who you’re going
to meet or how to make your way. But then you get into a routine. There are good days and bad days, but you know what your goal is and every day, you move closer towards it.” Those were the words of Darius, a 25-year-old
from Denmark I’d got talking to while on the Camino, who’d embarked on this ancient pilgrimage route to “think about life and what to do next”. Deep, yes – but deserved. He was walking the full
Camino Frances, a 485-mile route from Saint-Jean- Pied-De-Port in the French Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the famous end point. He’d been averaging 17 miles a day for the past month, carrying all his belongings in a backpack and staying at albergues (hostels) along the way for €5 a night. My efforts paled in comparison. I was walking 70 miles over five days, taking on the final stage of the same route from the Galician town of Sarria to Santiago on a self-guided, fully arranged trip with CaminoWays. I was staying in stone-built casas rurales with luggage transfers, private rooms and roaring fireplaces at every stop, and all without a bed bug in sight. Yet I still got what he meant. The Camino feels like its own little world, a life in miniature where you find
your groove, make your friends and carve your path, meeting people from all over the world and learning more about yourself thanks to that rarest of luxuries – time.
LOOKING BACK Of course, having time to reflect is really what the Camino has always been about. Pilgrims have been making this long, at times perilous, journey to Santiago since the ninth century, walking hundreds of miles to pay homage to the Apostle St James, whose remains are said to have been found in Galicia and transported to the city, where the cathedral was built in his honour. By the 12th and 13th centuries, up to 250,000 pilgrims were making the voyage every year, flocking from all corners of Europe and marking out a network of routes that have since been termed according to their origins – the French Way, the Portuguese Way and the English Way, among them. Some came out of choice, others as penance for sins. Not everyone these days is here for religious
reasons of course – in fact, many of those I met weren’t. Among the people I spoke to were solo travellers on gap years and couples celebrating retirement, tour groups on holiday and Spanish families on staycation, hailing from all parts of the world (the UK, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, ²
travelweekly.co.uk 6 MAY 2021 35
PICTURE: CaminoWays
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