We're back live from Santiago

Acknowledgements
Sorting through my things I am grateful for the composite nature of my possessions and how they've all helped, so here are a few late acknowledgements: my rucksack from Mary which has been a faithful servant; my shell Gortex top bought with tokens from Phil & Maria; my Gortex trousers from Bernadette, which worked particularly well with my running tights from Adrian in wet weather to keep me comfortable and dry; my sealskin socks from Paul, that were surprisingly waterproof, and with inner socks, good at preventing blisters; my backpack flag & my silk pillow-case from David and Leila, my little torch from Christine; my warm snood from Helen; my 1000 mile socks from Rachel, which came with good advice from Helen; my water bottle from Constanze; my money pouch from Nico; my kindle and my posh evening underwear from Veronica; my travel towel from Phil and Maria; my boots that I bought with Chris; and my travel universal plug (for sinks, not electrics) from Laura.

After breakfast I make a second quiet visit to the cathedral. This time I can see the original Romanesque west front that is behind the eighteenth century facade built for its protection. Inside the cathedral, it is only when one looks up at the ceiling that the connection is made with the great Camino starting points of Le Puy and Vezelay. All have the same flat arched ribs to the narrow nave's vault.

For a second time, but this time in an almost empty cathedral I hug St James. There is something beautifully just right about this gesture. It sums up something that the Camino has been about: we make the Camino, not to prove anything, still less to earn anything, but we make our Camino because we don't know what else to do with our love.

Most of the group will depart tomorrow, either walking or bussing to Finistere or moving on to the next phase of their travels. So I head for the station to buy my train ticket to Bilbao, a journey which will take most of the day. Then back in time for my second pilgrim mass. At this mass there are pilgrim groups from Italy and the US. Some group has paid the €300 for the botafumeiro to be swung, and so after communion it is lowered into position, the presiding priest invited to concelebrants to add incense, and then one of the cathedral assistants pushes it off, like a Dad might a child in a swing. The team on the ropes then starts pulling. I thought I knew what to expect, but it is the most amazing sight. It swings from transept to transept, with an audible woosh as it passes in front of the altar. The charcoals start to really burn inside, and the whole thing is swallowed up in a shaft of light in the south transept. It is simply a joyous wonderful thing.

And there, dear readers, as the botafumeiro fills the air with thick, perfumed smoke, I must leave you ... at least until my next carbon-neutral adventure. Many thanks for the prayers, messages and comments, and most of all, thanks for reading.

Entry into Santiago

We all set off individually between 7 and half past. About half a km down the road yellow arrows send us into a wood where paths divide and it's impossible to see more directions in the dark. My torch is good for searching for stray possessions in dark dormitories, but not for woods in blackness. I stand running its feeble beam up and down tree trunks in search of a clue. A German couple come with a bigger flashlight and we find our way.

Ironically the Camino has now been diverted around the airport that will take many of these pilgrims home. It's one of the uglier sections.

I catch up with Jon and Andreas who somehow have got ahead of me. At Lavacolla, the meeting of two rivers, pilgrims traditionally washed for the first time since beginning their Camino. I wash my neck and face in the river. It's a bit too cold for this to be a real pleasure, but even though I have showered daily, I do feel a pilgrim grubbiness clinging to me that I long to shake off.

There is a Spanish equivalent of Durham's Mountjoy, Monte de Gozo, where pilgrims get there first sight of their goal. Unfortunately trees block any sight of Santiago from the papal monument there. Andreas and Jon take their shoes off here as traditionally pilgrims used to. Jon insists that this is a tribute to Constance, who regularly ran around town in bare feet. I decide I had better head on without them, but with boots, if I am to make the pilgrim mass.

I get into Santiago and meet Angela who gets me to the Pilgrim's Office. As I'm getting my compostela a man behind the desk looks over my credencial and asks where I've come from. I explain my journey and he reacts with great appreciation and not the bored disdain I had expected. His name is John, he is from Glasgow, and he offers to take me over to the sacristy so that I can concelebrate the Pilgrim Mass. I'm asked to offer an intercession, and as it is the feast of All Souls, I pray for our beloved dead and for Murdy in particular. I also offer this mass for him.

All the gang are at mass and I see them as they come up for communion. Afterwards we visit the shrine and hug the statue behind the high altar. Getting to Santiago is a time of hugs all round and it seems fitting that St James should be included in the hug-a-thon.

Then lunch -a very good pilgrim meal- and a room, a single room, in the excellent Seminario Mayor, en suite, half board for €23.

A relaxing, joyful, evening full of remembering, and slipping into old comforts. I get new shoes for just €20 to replace the hopeless plimsoles I've been using when not in my walking boots. I packed these thinking it would be too cold for sandals, but what i gained in uppers, I lost in sole comfort: these offered no protection from cobbled streets, and quickly grew holes to let in water. I can't tell you how luxurious it feels to be wearing comfortable shoes again. We have G&Ts, and huge Galicean steaks at a restaurant with a large tank at the front where you can choose which lobster will not be sleeping with the fishes tonight!

We joke about the hardships of the camino: trying to get dry and decent in cramped shower cubicles with one hook on which clothes and towel must be strategically hung, or getting sleeping bags crushed into stuff sacks and possessions packed in the dark early morning dormitories. "Life is becoming less complicated," I find myself saying, but Kris corrects me, "Life is about to get more complicated all over again!"

One stop to Santiago

Not much need be said about Thursday. We were forty km from Santiago, too far to go in one day, so an easy 20 km to O Petroso in drizzly rain and spells of sunshine. I and Nico, at least, were in reflective mood, calling to mind walking companions from the last months.

All Saints mass in the local parish and a fairly synthetic pizza out for dinner.

And now it's 6:44 (we are back live) and now 20 km remain between us and home, the 12 noon Pilgrim Mass in Santiago Cathedral.

Terrible News

Wednesday

Terrible news today that Muredach Tuffy, an Irish priest I knew in Rome, and exactly my age, took his own life yesterday. There's no information other than that. Of course it means so little, but as I remember him he was always so cheerful and full of fun. I spend a lot of today's walk wondering what can have gone so wrong for him.

The longer distances we've been walking, and possibly the fact that I lent my trekking poles to Jon these past couple of days means that I have a very tender left heal today and need to walk more slowly.

Nico wonders out loud, why has the camino become so popular? Everyone has different answers which are always changing, he observes. Then he tells a couple of stories: the Frenchman, deeply religious, who walks it for his brother who has leukemia, or the widower who walks because he had always planned to walk with his wife, and on the way he feels her close to her.

My immediate sense is that we walk it because we don't know what to do with ourselves: we don't know what to do with our lives and we walk to decide; we walk because we don't know how to be happy and the stripped down simplicity of the camino and the communion of it, offers a glimpse of an alternative to consumption and a more genuine route to happiness; we walk it because we don't know how to show our love, for one another and for God, and this is a way of showing love; and we walk it because we don't know how to find God, and we hope this will open something for us.

The death of Murdy makes me think of the others that I carry in my heart this camino: Luke Edwards, who walked the camino 20 years ago, was at university with me and died in a tragic accident in his early 20s; a great friend, Paul Simmons, who was ordained the year after me from college, but is out of active ministry suffering with depression; and, of course, little 3 yr old Molly Bottoms, from St Cuthbert's, Durham, who has a tumor on her brain. I walk the camino for her because I don't know what else I can do.

We stop in Melide for more pulpe at lunch time and when we get to Arzua I am designated to cook so knock up a spaghetti carbonara (to Nico's surprise, without cream). I don't share with the anyone other than Nico the news that I've received, and am glad to spend these two cheerful meals with my camino friends.

Party Time

We plan another 34km day today. At the start of the day Jon is slow with his bandaged knee. We cross a long bridge into Portomarin. Here a dam has submerged the old town which is partly visible as the water is low.

After our first coffee the pace picks up. The group chalks a birthday message to someone who is now half a day behind us. All the farms we pass have strangely ornate narrow, high outbuildings with slatted sides. These, it turns out, are for drying maize.

We pass Spanish ladies cleaning graves and putting flowers out in the graveyard in preparation for All Souls.

We spilt into two walking groups now: myself and Nico, and the younger group, Jon, Angela, and Andreas. This gives the latter group time to plan an evening meal which is a big secret. When we arrive in our small albergues in Palas de Rei they have a lot of fun cooking this in a hopelessly inadequate kitchen. It is mashed potato, spinach, scrambled egg and fish fingers (what some former student residents -Burbs & Matt- would call, with relish, a kids' dinner). I am relieved just to lie on my bed and recover from a long day while they head out to shop for it. It is a terrific fun evening.

Beautiful Sunny Galicea: the 100km post

Monday: to Ferrerios
The path crosses frosted fields and up a heavily frosted valley. However, by lunchtime I have stripped off the outer layers and am down to shorts and t-shirt. In frost and in sunshine, Galicea takes us all by surprise with its beauty. We pass a number of farms, some buildings abandoned and crumbling, all with slate roofs, but not tiled, comprising instead huge, roughly rounded plates of slate. They make very attractive collections of buildings.

We have walked at different paces. Jon has struggled with his knee since doing the harder route up to O Cebreiro, and is particularly slow on the downhill sections. We stop for coffee, but as the bar has a wonderful home-made empanadas this becomes an early lunch. Jon is quicker after this energy injection, but we all catch up in Sarria. Here disaster strikes. Angela loses her camera between the Magdalena Monastery and half a kilometer down the road. We go back twice, but without success. She had almost a thousand photos on her memory card which she was about to change. It is a tragedy for her, and she is obviously devastated, but she manages to be cheerful for much of the rest of the day.

I am in no great hurry to complete the camino. I don't want it to end, and yet I am torn as I also feel ready to return to England and work. The group, though seem in more of a hurry than me and for a mixture of reasons: Nico to catch up with his daughter; Angela to walk on to Finistere; Jon because, when his knee is not hurting he wants to walk for as long as daylight affords. And so we put in one long 30km + day after another.

By early evening we pass the 100km post (stone posts have been counting down the kilometers since we entered Galicea). The evening sun is beautiful, and finally we come to a modern albergue which has a huge plate glass window overlooking the valley and the sunset. We have this to ourselves, which is fantastic.

Est! Est!! Est!!!

Sunday:
We are rewarded for the privations and discomfort of our hostel by a stunning sunrise, giving fantastic views from the hostel steps. Galicea is so often shrouded in mist (it is Celtic in culture and in weather) that that we are incredibly lucky to get these views.

The path skirts the mountain side and through a wood. We edge to a signpost signaling a right hand turn. On this post, Helen (former CathSoc President) and her sister Mary have left a note. Helen walked the camino in July/August and I told her she should be like the cardinal's servant who went before him to Rome in the famous Est Est Est story. And so this was her message.

It's good to get this message on such a perfect morning. Helen gave such a lot of helpful advice. It's also good to have a connection with pilgrims ahead. There's a strange way on the camino that one can feel as much in communion and yet as much separated from those pilgrims who are just a day or two ahead as those who walked 600 years before.

The Galicean countryside is as green and rolling as anywhere in the British Isles, and usually (so everyone says) it is shrouded in weather as grey and damp as that which covers Britain. We are incredibly lucky to be seeing it under blue skies. The path is just enough of a challenge, and gives superb views.

We arrive at Triacastela in time to catch the back-end of some kind of festival. Market stalls are being packed away, people are riding horses, a jeep of hunters drive in causing huge excitement as they display their kill, but the major attraction is the pulpe stalls. Octopuses are being cooked whole in large copper pots, the cooks fishing them out by the heads and chopping up the legs with shears. It's served on wooden plates with paprika and salt. We all have some. After a free-form Roman rite liturgy celebrated by the local PP, we cook and eat chilli.