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.