Camino bore: being a pilgrim; being alive.

High jinks at Schev: No, it isn't me, and I don't want to do it either

Saturday 12th June 2010. Scheveningen.
At this point last year, we were feeling very much that the camino was almost over; we were 373 miles from home, a shorter distance than we'd walked from Roncesvalles to Santiago. We'd bought our 'Jacobs schall' (scallop) on the pier and taken photos of sandcastles and kitesurfers and all the jolly things happening at a normal Dutch seaside town. Perhaps there was even a feeling of the imminent cutting of an umbilical cord.

In 2011 an email from some travel firm came to me offering 'easy days on the camino', a trip described thus, and showing a pic of someone with a limp i.e. almost empty rucksack:

"French Way - Section Easy days 100km - 11 Days/ 10 Nights - 111 km - From €816 -
From Sarria to Santiago de Compostela

Our "Easy Days" trip makes it possible to absolutely everybody to experience the Way of St James / Camino de Santiago and reach the world-known Santiago de Compostela. On an  "Easy Days" trip, walking days are shortened to an average of 2hours/10 kilometres. You can also decide how to organise your day, starting at the time you like with no pressure about starting too early. The daily walk will fill a half day, leaving the other half free. With this walking holiday, you will have a chance to walk the last 50 kilometres to Santiago de Compostela and still experience the feeling of being a pilgrim of modern times.


Everyday, during the walk, you are guaranteed a high level of comfort and gastronomy. The Camino is clearly marked with the “Scallop Shell” showing you the way. We have split the stages to short distances, so daily walks are of 9 kilometres on average, which means there are accessible to absolutely everybody."

I've highlighted the bits in bold to illustrate where D and I are likely to harrumph. I'm all in favour of people with difficulties finding it possible to complete the camino. What sticks in the craw (oh I love that phrase) is that there are perfectly able-bodied people who set off with the intention of finding ways to make it as easy for themselves as possible. Perhaps 'twas ever thus. Sigh. Is 'experiencing the feeling of being a pilgrim' the same thing as to be a pilgrim? (Full marks to the travel company anyway for respecting the difference.)

A witty friend writes in response:


"He who would valiant be, come join the party; 

our way is slow and free, let's all be hearty; 

there's no impediment, the brochure's eloquent, 

just pay the travellers' fee, and be a pilgrim."

I miss it

Today in 2011, we have arrived at Pentecost. For reasons... reasons, we did not have the incense I expected at church today, and I was rather disappointed. Holy fire! I'd never describe myself as a 'spiritual' person, but  I am 'religious', as I find religious ceremonies and practices rather useful. I like the things I can see and smell and touch. I like to think of my prayers rising like incense, and incense rising like I hope my prayers do. The returned pilgrim likes to be reminded of Santiago too and of the idea of 'perfuming the world with our deeds'. It seems sad that it is OK to be noisy about finding incense offensive, when there are some of us who find its omission at least disappointing. 

Other things went wrong today, like trying to pick up friends from the station... but I went to the wrong station and so missed my post-windsurfing bathtime and evening prayer. I felt overwhelmed by my own medicority, and made a mental list of the many things I can do but poorly.

Windsurfing wasn't too brill, the wind was poor, and it rained... but I found that I didn't really mind the wet (how could I?) and the other windsurfer on the lake today described at length the progress he'd made since starting windsurfing just 18 months ago, then said that the rain lashing on his face 'made him feel alive'. There were many mornings on the camino like this; it'll do for me. Thankyou for your thought, fellow-pilgrim.

Camino bore: In the Netherlands and the Lake District.

Saturday June 11th, 2011. Home from wandering in the mountains.
Now of course I'm going to tell you why being in both the Netherlands AND the Lake District is 'Just Like The Camino': just about anywhere can be JLTC if you manage to be single-minded about the day's goal. I make a 'to do' list most days, and on a good day I stick to it and at the end of it it feels like arriving at the albergue. On the camino, there is no real choice BUT to make sure you arrive, and that is why camino living is so easy and in many ways not at all a template for normal life. Decisions in normal life are often a bit more complex than 'Shall I have a shower or a beer or a nap first?'

See mini-St James, bottom R H corner

Ah, Santiago....!

This weekend last year was our last on the continent, and we were already very near home as the crow flies. We finally succumbed to buying a scallop shell on Scheveningen pier. Why did we leave it so late? Don't know. But it seemed 'right'. On the continent, such shells are generally labelled 'St Jacques', and we were soon to return to the land where they aren't; and where the camino is little-known, and even less understood.

We'd spent a good day in the   http://www.catharijneconvent.nl/
the museum in Utrecht devoted to religious art and artifacts. There was no shortage of exhibits to remind us of the camino, our comfort-zone. If I'd been organised I could have told you what these pictures were of, so you'll have to - like I do - just enjoy them now without note of their provenance.

Square sand windsurfers at Schev

The Dutch of course are brilliant at sandcastles, and so I was very taken with the one shown here, of windsurfers. They have to use special sand. Square sand. You don't believe me? It's not the stuff on the beach where the castles are built every year, which is round sand. No, they have to bring in special river sand, which has square grains and so sticks together better. There you are - that's why YOU can't build a castle like that.

Where every need is met

But this was the Netherlands, and June 2010 football fever, and so here is an illustration of a scene in which almost every need known to man was met; some men anyway. The one with lots of orange. Be  glad I have not shown the grey thing in use. It'd never 'appen 'ere!

Catbells. Er - we're here - and how am I going to get down THERE?

Skiddaw. I know - the camera angle exaggerates it a bit.

But in 2011 we are back from a few days camping near Keswick in the Lake District. http://www.castleriggfarm.com/ I am reminded about the entertainment value in a bit of fear (see camino day 2). Some scientists once put a load of monkeys in a room where they were shown films that were frightening to monkeys. The monkeys were trained to operate the thing and could choose whether or not to watch the frightening films. Without fail, when the film came to an end, the screaming monkeys opted to watch it again. Thus we did several nice walks, and the mountain called 'Catbells' provided me with some of the slightly screaming-monkey-moments; not quite to crag-fastness, but on arrival at the summit of this cute little 1500-footer, my first thought, as ever was '...and how do we get down?', which I think you can tell from the pic here. Huge flat and slanting slopes of grey scree have a bad effect on me too. [Go on - click on the pic and make it bigger, and you might see what I mean.]

There are ways of getting round fear, though; this one I haven't tried yet: A friend of D's was doing the Lyke Wake walk back in the 1980s; he was very much prone to vertigo, didn't feel safe on cliff edges etc, got the leg wobble. So what did he do? He made sure he was fairly drunk for most of the time. I refuse to make a sexist comment, but the temptation.... My own best way was to hope for mist, and then you just can't see what's down there. I also tried to divide the awkward bits into small squares and think how you only have to do one bit at a time.

Almost at summit of Skiddaw, where hail prevented further pics

 But I end with a pic of a pattern in the hillside made by the passage of humans. I love the spirally green ribbon of grass between the places to plant the feet following the example of others. Add your own bit of soulful metaphorical nonsense, I've had too much beer. Ultreia!

Camino bore: Back on the camino in Chartres

Saturday 5th June: To Chartres.

Council of Europe camino sign.

Arriving at Chartres for a 2 day camping stay, we thought the camino was behind us; but walking into the city, we were delighted to find that the campsite on Rue St. Brice was actually on a camino route, and there in front of us was the familiar Council of Europe sign! This made us very happy. But then, Chartres has an ancient place in camino history, possibly earlier even that Paris, which has records of the existence of a Confraternity of St. James dating back to about 1295. It is possible that Chartres' connection goes back earlier, and that it was there that St. James with emblems of pilgrimage was introduced into French art in the first place, so my 'Shell Shell' book informs me. So it is hardly surprising that if there is anywhere a study centre devoted to matters Compostela, there will be one in Chartres.

So the happiness we felt seeing these signs shows just how much we were going to miss the camino. Even now in 2011 we can be like lost souls now and again, and when we find a St. James pilgrim in a church, a scallop here, a staff and gourd there, we fall upon it as though it is a relic of some lost kingdom to which we once belonged. It doesn't seem too healthy to me to have that sense of longing, it isn't a state I would choose; but I have just had an email from a friend who has been to an institution of a rector in Inistioge in the Republic of Ireland today, who wears a Spanish beret to remind him of his camino (I'll get one for David immediately). So there's a lot of it about. For a long time afterwards I didn't feel 'at home' at home, maybe until now, when I seem to be moving back into my own life. There's a curious sense of dislocation when you get back: all the weeds, having missed the apple blossom, people getting on very nicely without you... a bit like having died really (I AM selling it to you, surely??). It takes time to readjust. Perhaps a year and a week is long enough; it jolly well ought to be.

Another surprise on our walk into Chartres was the Frenchman who jumped out of some bushes and gave me a smacking kiss and got D to take our picture together. I don't know what has happened to his trousers, they don't seem to come to where they ought to. Perhaps he does this kind of thing every day.

Of course, D took pictures of Windows in Chartres; how can you not? And carvings on the cathedral doorway, which had a wonderful depiction of the jaws of hell, along with what I presume are pictorial suggestions as to how you might ensure getting there. Of course, I had to lurk in the doorway in a silly 'at; the camino has not cured me of that kind of thing. I noticed too just how better dressed are the people of Chartres than those in Santiago. And the trouble I had just finding a SKIRT in Santiago to wear on the Sunday! I had visions of finding some grand thing made of thick and crunchy black lace....

But I digress from the serious things that this blog has come to represent.

Sunday in Chartres cathedral felt very 'Anglican' compared with the Spanish experiences in cathedrals in Leon and Santiago. The music, the congregation, many of whom had a Cotswold-y look.  We were getting nearer to home.

And so in 2011 a week of wandering in the mountains is planned. Perhaps we will have time to think together about what work the camino did. We'll be able to see the film 'The Way' too, and can harrumph together at any inaccuracies or misrepresentations as well as delighting in the 'been-there' feeling.

When I crossed the 50-years-old-mark some years ago, I began to think that the part of life to come is one where you have to use yourself up; no more hoarding of any kind. Doing the camino has reinforced this thought. There's no exclusive secret-of-how-to-live that comes out of it. The only way to live is to get on with it, and you don't need to do the camino to know that. But there were still some more camino surprises to come, and there was a sense of rounding off on June 13th in a most unexpected way.

Camino bore: hula hoop moments (2)

Friday 4th June, Cherves Chatelars.

"And did those feet?" (Yes)

I suppose pilgrimages have ended like this from time immemorial, feet in a bucket of something, in this case the best eau de France (actually this pic is of Chartres 6th June, the tent guy line a giveaway, so it isn't strictly in order). The Caminella reports me 'lying down a lot' too. I've said a few times before that there is just (for me) 'one pot' of energy which can be used by brain or brawn, but once the daily amount is used up on one of these, there isn't any left for the other. Thus it happened that 4th June 2010 was a bit of a hula hoop day, and the Caminella reports 'interesting new ideas come unbidden', just as they did today in 2011! in 2010 an explanation of My Life's Work emerged onto a Caminella page, and it goes a bit like this:

You know how when you have visitors, they look around the house and look at ornaments and all the bits of junk that you keep, and ask you 'Where did this come from?' or whatever, and you say 'Ah, well, there's a story attached to that'. It came to me that the Bible is full of stories etc, and that I could make (and already did make)  objects that could be attached to them; simple as that! I was glad of the enlightenment, and it gave me a much-needed something I could say when people ask me at parties 'What do you doooooooo?' Thus there is the Ecclesiastes doll (= 'Cloth Q'); the Psalms skirt; the Ruth 'object' (work in progress); the Sarah and Hagar.... (work being conceived). The Paper Camino must be the object attached to the camino, I suppose - so far.

Tree wearing a skirt

In 2011, I went for a stroll around the garden and saw a tree, the walnut tree, and it appeared to be wearing a skirt (I hope you can see it too), and so that was my first 'good idea' of the day; a skirt made of some tree-bark-like cloth, with lime green Golden Hop leaves appliqued on, as well as Himalayan Musk roses, and round the bottom maybe the blue flowers of the Green Alkanet.

I can explain everything!

Then I thought about other 'good ideas', some of which have been simmering on for a while, but they seemed to bubble up with new urgency. Thus, I'm thinking about the Psalms Skirt, and how the idea for Psalm 23 came last summer, and here it is. I can explain everything! While in Najera, the pot of energy was not being used for walking as I was invalided out with the foot, and I wrote a camino-slanted commentary on Psalm 23. Thus it came to me that the textile thing for Psalm 23 must be the Council of Europe camino sign on its blue background. It's a watery background because the idea came when I was resting after a session of windsurfing (as I am today).

 Santiago Holy Year 2010 poster

There's a space waiting for Psalm 24, and this one has been simmering in my head for over a year now. Please be patient if I say that there is something deeply camino-ish about this psalm, and I'll explain. I'm indebted to David Clines who points out somewhere that there is a lot of 'de-construction'*  http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/poetry/critical_define/crit_decons.html
going on in Psalm 24; the worshipper or pilgrim is expected to have 'clean hands and a pure heart', and yet the hands of Yahweh are covered with blood, he is 'the Lord strong and mighty in battle'; this reminds me of the two faces of St James we see at Santiago: there is James the gentle with his hat and scallop, and there is Santiago Matamoro, 'Moor-slayer'. One gets the feeling that 'Lift up your heads, O ye gates' will be to allow both Yahweh and the pilgrims to enter, and so ever since early on in the camino we saw this poster, I have thought how it made me think of Psalm 24. Thus the textile piece for Psalm 24 will contain some visual reference to this poster, and I really want to get it done very soon. What is more, Psalm 24:6 says, 'This is the generation of them that seek after him, that seek thy face, O [God of] Jacob'. Words in brackets not found in the Hebrew, and 'Jacob' is Hebrew for what becomes 'James'. I know, I know, the psalms were written long before Jesus and St. James, and long before Santiago de Compostella, but that is not the point... (See more on this kind of comment). Incidentally we never managed to buy this poster, so we asked in the pilgrim office where we got our Compstelas, and they gave us it; thus it is priceless. To be framed next.

* "Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently solid ground is no rock but thin air." Or as in Psalm 24:2, the earth might seem to be on solid ground, but 'He hath founded it upon the seas'. (Clines again.)


It was ascension day two days ago, and we had exactly the right preacher for the occasion. She spoke beamily (I invented that word - I hope you know what it means) about how Jesus was taken up to heaven in a cloud, and afterwards told us how she, a Methodist, thoroughly enjoyed the clouds of incense & music which wafted about St. Mary's during the service. During the gospel reading I had already in 30 seconds come up with the sermon that I'd have preached (on Luke 24:44 where it talks about the law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms being fulfilled; I'd have said that the psalms were not written as prophecy, but since they dwell on both suffering and victory, then they can be said to be fulfilled in the life of Jesus). Smiling Enid's sermon was just what I needed; she appeared unconcerned about what might have led the gospel writer to describe Jesus' ascension as he did, and I wouldn't want to suggest that she never thought about that. But I'm not aware of any theologian having come up with a convincing 'explanation' of 'what really happened'; thus, some of us sometimes quite like just to be left alone to think of the picture at times like this:


http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ascension+%2B+art&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=aab&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=sHXqTdDqEtGEhQfS1bW6Bg&ved=0CEcQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=615

Why spend good sermon-time telling people what you don't believe? Tell them what you DO believe, it takes much less time, as someone once said.

DO judge a book by its cover

What is really taxing me these days is how it came to be that St. James comes to be depicted as a pilgrim to his own shrine. We have this lovely book on the scallop shell which looks like it might address this question, written in 1957: 'The Scallop. Studies of a shell and its influences on humankind' by eight authors, ed. Ian Cox. Published by 'Shell' transport & co (they would, wouldn't they).

The camino map arrives home

Today I went out to collect one of the several things we're gradually having framed that are to do with the camino. Today's offering is a reproduction of an antique (1648) map of the camino and the routes it takes through France. Oh I LOVE living dangerously!

Paper camino complete

The Paper Camino is complete, and just needs to be properly flattened out for a proper pic, and then I'll fold it up and it won't take much room up. It probably needs a small container making for it decorated with a scallop shell. You enter the camino by the middle square in the 3rd row from the bottom. It depicts the Portokabin we stayed in (turn your head 90 deg clockwise). To continue the journey, follow the squares going clockwise (go up three and turn right, and so on, ending at the square top left).

Paper camino folded

'Good ideas' (oh dearrrrrr!) went on and on today, including looking out of the back door and thinking how much I'd love a back door that opened onto a garden, and so could be left open to let the smell of roses waft in. You can see that this back door is not one of them, despite there being a lovely good-sized garden that could be opened onto from the kitchen, full of many 'old roses' like the one above that is growing into the walnut tree. (Vicarage architects of the early1980s, not moved out of the 1960s, lost opportunities, don't get me started...)  (I can't leave it open either as leaves gather there, ideal cosy place for mice to lurk.) For us, the camino 'began' at that Portokabin in Roncesvalles, but in the end we, like most pilgrims, arrive back at the door into and out of home. But not yet in 2010.... we still had unexpected parts of the camino to come!

Hula hoop moments (1)

Ooooh, that was a bit hippy! 'Mind games' and all that! Thinking about empty spaces in the head, and there came upon me a HULA HOOP MOMENT, yea, which lasted overnight and is still with us, and I had to get a notebook to write down all the good ideas I started to have before breakfast! (OK, friends, I know that means 'before 4 pm'). There'll be more about this later.... but I don't think I have such moments quite on the scale of this, which arrived in 'Bible Society Newswatch':

"A Dutch builder has asked London mayor Boris Johnson if he can bring his ‘Noah's Ark’ to the capital for next year’s Olympics. Johan Huibers claims he was guided by a dream to create the £1 million life-size replica of the biblical boat. Both model and real animals will feature on the 450ft by 75ft vessel, which sits on 25 barges wrapped in a steel frame. Huibers was inspired to undertake the project 20 years ago, but actually started building it on the river near Rotterdam three years ago – against his wife’s advice. ‘It is to tell people that there is a Bible and that, when you open it, there is a God,’ said the 60-year-old construction company owner."

I MEAN! I know just where he's coming from! But at least MY hula hoop moments are a bit... SMALLER  in their effect, you know, like little squares 6 x 7 cm.

More anon..... it's a sunny day... let's have Psalm 17:15
"As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake, with thy likeness." (KJV)

Camino bore: Mind games

Meseta hovels: people live HERE, like THIS?

Camino bore: Thursday 3rd June 2010. Corpus Christi. This was planned as the day we went to Poitiers to celebrate Corpus Christi there; but the Caminella had other plans, and it reads, 'The inevitable sleeping day to follow!' David's sister lives in a lovely old place in Cherves Chatelars, a hamlet between Angouleme and Limoges in the Charente region of France, and our loft room is spacious, and sunlight - lots of it - drifts in through small apertures in a way that doesn't happen at home in our large-windowed house facing south. You get gently bathed in a special form of soft sleep-promoting light; at home it seems like a mere hand-splash by comparison. 

Meseta tree

Also resting in 2011 at the end of the second of the 'Ladies who Launch' windsurfing training days, I leaf through the 'Camino Pevsner' cultural handbook to the camino by Gitlitz & Davidson. p. 235 describes the stretch from Sahagun thus: 'In 1974 and 1979 we found this stretch to be utterly desolate. Walking for many hours on the ancient pilgrim Road with no terrestrial points of reference except the wind in the thistles and the distant tinkling of sheep bells had a strong impact on us... in 1987 we found this section had been "improved" by  bulldozing and gravelling a pilgrim path... planting trees every 10 metres...concrete benches and picnic tables. The changes made it impossible to lose perspective, and the mystic effect of the Castillian plain seemed to have been lost.' This was a bit we didn't actually walk, but got a train to speed us over some of it. However, it seemed to us that there was still some pristine featureless meseta to be experienced; having done a good chunk of it, D found this kind of terrain very difficult. He's a walking satnav, constantly calculating our speed, amount of water consumed, time we reach the next landmark etc etc; without recognisable features to compare with the map, he went into inner melt-down. And him a native of Lincolnshire; perhaps that is why.

 Mind in free fall.

It would be hard to go along the camino and not do the sight-seeing bit; the artists and architects of the past would rightly be insulted if one didn't. But a big part of it for me was the discovery of the camino as creating or reflecting a big blank space in the head, which must be 'the mystic effect' referred to above. This was unexpected. I'd found the first couple of days a bit boring, until slight disaster struck, then there was the pleasure of 'things to be overcome', and mountains are always exciting. For those of us who eschew mind-altering drugs except alcohol, an alternative if laborious way of 'altering' must be traversing the meseta, and so the paper camino has an entry 'Mind in free fall' which documents the effect. If I want to go back, it is not to see the sights better, though that would happen and not be unwelcome; it is really to have that big, BIG sheet of paper to fill with blobs.

Camino bore: Swimming against the tide.

 St Jean Pied de Port

Wed 2nd June: Espinal to Cherves Chatelars. (That's in France). Oh dearrrrr! We had to cross the border from Spain into France soon after leaving our campsite at Espinal near Roncesvalles. Hopped over a Pyrennee or two and stopped in St Jean Pied de Port, where we would like to have started (a good day's walk to Roncesvalles) but couldn't, as we were in our car and needed somewhere good to park it, and Roncesvalles was the better choice. But I'd like to start in St Jean next time. Charming little place. They really do care about their pilgrims, some of whom obviously turn up having read about the wonderful fuentes along the way where water comes out on tap free to pilgrims, but without common sense, as you can see from the warning notice on the pic here.

 In case of gullible pilgrims....

Oh to be back in Spain, filling our water bottles from one of them.... some were just a simple tap in a village square, others were highly decorated like this one somewhere between Sarria and Portomarin on 25th May, almost at the end. But we passed them every day, and wonderful they were.

 Fuente

 Trying to get to church on time for Ascension Day.

Back in 2011, Ascension Day, and one of two days on the lake windsurfing, practising the equivalent of the motorist's 3-point turn. The great thing about any kind of sailing is that you get to understand that when it says in the NT 'The wind and waves obeyed him', that it is a double miracle; sometimes one obeys and the other doesn't. Today the wind didn't obey and didn't really turn up in quantity. And somehow at the end of the day it sort of turned up, but going the wrong way when I'd committed myself to be downwind, and I just couldn't get back to shore as there seemed to be a current flowing against me. Thus self-rescue was the only things to do (= lie down and paddle); and this was slow progress with arms already having done their bit for the dayI thought I was doing really well, I seemed to be zooming along, but then in a moment of enlightenment I noticed it wasn't me zooming ahead at all, rather the current against which I was swimming was going fast in the opposite direction, and I was going rather more slowly than a couple of people strolling along the bank, and I didn't get to shore until they came back (perhaps from Barrow Haven)! Not really moving at all! And yet such an illusion of progress! So I had to measure progress against bushes, and redouble effort to avoid going backwards as part of a body of water going where I didn't want to go (the waves weren't obeying me either).  This meant jumping in and swimming and using the legs, which had a little bit more oomph left in them than the arms. It was much like running up a down escalator, but took me much longer.

This seemed to be really good metaphor material, but I couldn't quite think what for.  I think it said something about self-knowledge and choosing the correct standard against which to measure progress. A very stern preacher could point to the necessity of measuring oneself against eternal values and not against the spirit of the age. I'm quite surprised Jesus didn't make more of such happenings, given he made those little boat trips now and again. The parables that come to mind seem to be about housework quite a lot, mending, searching for things etc. What made him choose one subject-matter over another? Did he just go to sleep when the going got rough in a boat? I'm intrigued. I must read the New Testament sometime......

but today I also thought how hard it is to go home against the tide of pilgrims going the other way.