WHEN WALKING

Home to Santiago – Day 58

Santillana del Mar to San Vicente de la Barquera: 35km

This morning as I stop at a small church in the hills above Santillana del Mar. I meet Thomas from Germany. He has a lean and hungry look, but a happy one. He looks so familiar that I just want to sit by him and chat.

I don’t know he’s German when I take a seat opposite him at the little stone table in the churchyard, but when he speaks, he says he has no other language. He is walking the whole of the Norte and sleeping out on the streets every night. When it rains, he finds a place that is sheltered. He is walking stages of 50, 40 kilometres a day. He has his food with him. He is walking with us, but apart.

When we part outside the little church he says in English, “Good luck,” and I struggle to get into the right language to wish him “Viel Glück” in return. As I walk away, I think back to the reading from the night before. The pearl beyond price, for which you should sell everything to obtain. I doubt I will see Thomas again.

It’s a fine walking day today, and soon I’m bumping into others.

At the first café, I fall in with Jamie from the States, German Markus, and unrelated German, Alois. I met Alois at breakfast in Güemes, the most fresh-faced, super-German young man, who would not look out of place belting out songs in a Bavarian beer garden.

At breakfast, he told me the origins of his name. He said his mother had walked through a graveyard when she was pregnant, trying to find an interesting name on the graves. Only later, when he was at school, did he find out from a history teacher that his name was the same as Hitler’s father. “They weren’t thinking of that, though, I promise,” he assured me.

Marcus and Alois could be the rebel father and the clean-cut son, both in little straw trilbies, both German in their own way. Jamie is in the States, a teacher, a fellow non-swimmer. “I learnt to swim once” she says. “Once, as a child, I lived by the sea. Being hear brings back memories”.

When I mention my encounter with Thomas to Alois, he says, with no malice, “Oh, the homeless guy,” and I go out of my way to impress him with the tremendous feat that Thomas is undertaking.

We all part in Colombres, where I was too late to book a bed, and I carry on very slowly at first, starting on my 11 extra kilometres to San Vicente. It’s warm. I’m feeling sluggish. I stop for a tortilla and a coffee to get me going.

And then, with great luck, about 50 minutes after starting to walk along a pleasant paved coastal road, a pilgrim walks towards me slightly flustered. This is Eric from France, who I have seen but not spoken to before. He is unsure where he can sleep tonight and asks me where I’m going, and I show him where there are still rooms to be had in San Vicente.

“Will it bother you if I walk with you?” he says.

“Not at all,” I reply.

And he is the most useful pilgrim to meet at this point in the day. He’s a fast walker, and I know now that I will arrive at the hostel in good time.

We talk occasionally and both take a diversion across the beach as we walk towards our destination. Two strangers, two companions, walking across the sands.

At San Vicente, I book him into my hostel for tomorrow night, and we go to the bar together, where he gets something to eat. I introduce him to Javier and Javier’s Spanish friend of the day, Nuria.

Javier is determined we can all join in. Nuria has been at the point of stopping her camino and going home to Bilbao. She hasn’t been able to find anyone to speak Spanish with, and we don’t want to stop that.

So he slows down a gear, starts talking very slowly in Spanish with me, and slowly speeds up until he can feel that the engine is running smoothly. In this way, we manage, with various levels of Spanish, to discuss what for us is the magic of the Camino.

For Nuria, the Camino is a mirror in which we can consider our lives.

For me, it is a possibility to be open to whatever may happen in the day.

For Javier, it is the freedom of not having to make decisions.

For Eric, it is because the Camino goes past his door, and it has always been there. He cannot give any other reason but this, but it’s a very good one.

These are the pearls of today.