Swan song …..

I have been thinking for some time about what should constitute the last message on this blog site.

Having said that, there may well be other things to say once we get home and sort through the pictures and diary notes etc. But for now, I’m going to finish with people.

I said early on in our trip that this whole journey has been a pilgrimage, and that the focus has been people. In the first phases of the pilrimage, it has focussed on family and as we started the third part, it was to focus on friends we were yet to meet. I would like to refer to some of our new friends byway of introducing them to friends of longer standing. I cannot mention everyone we met on the camino as I must restrict myself. And I apologise in advance for any new friends whose names I spell incorrectly.

Firstly I would mention Tom and Joyce from Canada. Both were very helpful when Gay was not well in Castlerejiz. We lost touch with them when we had a rest day, but did see some signs along the way. Pat and Jean from Florida talked to us about the Appalacian Trail and we introduced them to greenstone and cerveza con limon. Noah is a doctor from Indiana with whom we had many a discussion and who tried to find the hats we left behind. Kay and Garth, Carol and Howard, Rita and Max from different parts of Australia were always fun. Trish from Ireland was with us only briefly before having to get back to work in the Emerald Isles. Kathy and Halley, a mother/daughter combination from Canada shared rooms and stories with us on several occasions. Enza and Kareen we met on the first night and then we would meet again unexpectedly. Enza finished the camino a good week in front of us having put in  some long days. Kareen was another we introduced to greenstone. Martin, an Englishman living in France posed a question one night that I am still thinking about. He asked us to tell him what things we had bought on the camino that we would leave behind if we walked a second time. Sounds a simple question, but its not. And there is Gordon and Carrie from the Caribbean and Carlotte from Perth, with whom we had an entertaining night teaching 500; Carl from Texas who was keen to hear our story, Miguel from the Czech Republic who was using his camino to learn English and Ali whose awful experience one night warned us to be careful.

There are a number of others too. While I have mentioned different reasons for remembering these people, they, and all the ones I haven’t mentioned, have one thing in common. They all touched our lives and in that brief contact, made us better people. I can only hope they enjoyed the contact as much as we did. Someone said that the camino is like a family, but each day the family members change. One thing I do know is that in the whole 43 days, I only heard one voice raised in anger directed at a fellow pilgrim. That makes it a pretty special family.

Tonight we are in Barcelona, and tomorrow we fly home. We travel with 4 still unblistered feet, 5 and a half books of diary notes, 6 luggage bags, nearly 4000 photos and heaps of memories – but minus the beard!

Alan,

Barcelona, Spain.

A different ending …

One of the traditions on the camino is that the walk actually finishes at Finisterre (or Fisterra if you are Galician!). As you may well know, Finisterre gains its name from being literally the end of the known land up to the times of Columbus. One can imagine standing here and gazing westward and in medieval times really believing that beyond the horizon “there be dragons and monsters”.

These days we know that Finisterre is not really the most western part of Europe, and, thanks to Columbus, we know that there are no monsters and dragons beyond that particular horizon.

But in the  early years of the camino, that was the belief. It was also the belief that the  pilgrim, having ended his journey also symbolically ended his old way of life by burning his clothes. These days for environmental reasons if nothing else, that practice is frowned upon. There is, however, plenty of evidence exists to show that pilgrims still burn something – perhaps a shoe or a pair of socks or something. As I have noted before, we contented ourselves with each throwing a small piece of greenstone into the sea.

Now having been finished the camino a week, we can reflect more on what te camino has meant to us. We have had some practice today in trying to explain to others what the experience has been for us and it is plain that it is not easy to convey the full impact of this walk. We will have to choose our words carefully when we get home! One of the physical things is that we have both lost weight and we are not keen to regain that. Keeping up a regime of walking and eating less will be important. The mental challenge has left us stronger and we look forward to seeing effect that will have. One possibility is to consider hiking at least part of the Appalacian Trail in eastern USA. Another is to put together a written record of the trip, made up of the diary notes,  photos and the blogs. I am not that naive to  believe that anyone else would actually want to read it, but it would be primarily for my own use.

The spiritual challenge has also left us stronger and I am really looking to see how that will impact on my work as I return to the team ministry I left some 4 months ago.

I apologise for an element of repetition with this message and the last. I  hope that doesn’t annoy you too much.

Best wishes and God bless,

Alan

Marin, Spain.