16 April 3, 2022The Sunday Times
Travel Spain
I
n retrospect, I admit I didn’t
strictly adhere to the spirit of
pilgrimage. The Oficina del
Peregrino, the pilgrims’ centre in
Santiago de Compostela, will only
issue compostela accreditation for a
“pilgrimage for religious or spiritual
reasons, or at least an attitude of search”.
My week on the Camino Portugues —
which approaches Santiago from the
south, rather than the better-known
routes from the east — was definitely
a holiday. No matter — I could adopt an
attitude of search when I got lost.
And I wasn’t doing it quite like the
other pilgrims I met on day one beyond
Tui, on the Spanish border. While they
humped rucksacks bulging with kit, I had
a daypack containing sandwiches,
a cupcake, an orange and a KitKat.
“Buen camino!” I chirruped as I
passed while my luggage sped
to the next hotel by taxi. If it
felt a little like cheating
that’s because it was.
Perhaps the original sin,
though, was that I wasn’t
even planning to walk the
entire way to Santiago —
I had a day’s travel by boat
ahead too. Let me explain.
This week the slow-travel
specialist Inntravel launches a self-
guided holiday along the Spanish section
of the Camino Portugues: seven days’
walking from Tui to Santiago on flat(ish)
terrain; heritage and rural hotels rather
than pilgrim albergues smelling of socks;
luggage transfer and packed lunches
during walk days, pottering and vineyards
on two rest days.
Your 64 miles on foot just sneaks past
the 62 required for a compostela to count.
The trip’s real distinction, however, is to
be the first to include the Variante
Espiritual. This obscure three-day
diversion includes the Translatio, which is
the watery route the body of St James was
said to have taken in AD44, when it was
borne upriver for burial in the hills that
now bear his Spanish name, Sant Iago.
It is the world’s only waterborne
camino and is sanctioned by the church.
So if it’s cheating, it’s with the Pope’s
blessing.
The timing of the trip’s launch is
impeccable. This is likely to be a busy
summer on camino routes. After two quiet
years pilgrim numbers are expected to
edge towards the 2019 record of 348,000.
And this year is a Holy Year, when the
church grants plenary indulgences. These
are the years when St James’s Day, July 25,
falls on a Sunday— which was actually 2021
but, you know, Covid. Church’s
pilgrimage, church’s rules and all that. In
any case you’re more likely to find
paradise not penance on a quiet route.
For the first few days you’re on the well-
trodden camino north. People say rural
Galicia is like Wales. It’s not really. It’s too
colourful for a start. Villages in bosky
valleys are a splurge of rust red and
cream, terracotta and butter yellow.
Most of those along the camino knot
around a time-smudged stone crucifix
and stone granaries propped on
pillars like toadstools. Geese
honk. The air is resinyA new trip takes pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela the less
obvious way, via sleepy lanes, hushed villages —
and up a river. James Stewart gets on board
10 milesFisterraSantiago de
Compostela
O Milladoiro A IgrexaVilanova de
ArousaMonasterio
Santa Maria
de ArmenteiraCombarroTuiPontevedraGaliciaSPAINPORTUGALwith the smell of eucalyptus forest.
Once you’ve stopped gawping at
the scenery you notice something
else. The route is potent with
symbols. Sticks are threaded as
crosses in the wire fence of a water-
processing plant. Scallop shells,
the symbol of St James, might hang
as a mobile, serve as house cladding
or are imprinted into a concrete
bench. It’s like spiritual orienteering.
This way, good pilgrim.
Just as appealing are your fellow
walkers. Many, including Zara from
Hamburg, who switched south when
northerly caminos were rain-sodden,
or Sarah from California, who was
completing the pilgrimage she had to
interrupt in March 2020, have the
easy camaraderie of a shared
endeavour. There are also those
like Joao. Over a morning
walking together he tells me
how his father died last
year and how his business
succumbed to rising costs
in January. “It felt like one
thing then another,” he
says. “I wanted some space
just for me.”
You are, to paraphrase Jack
Kerouac, on the camino and the
camino is life.THE
the less
Monasterio
Santa Maria
de Armest.
ping at
omething
nt with
eaded as
of a water-
hells,
hthang
ddingng.CAMINO
This year is a
Holy Year, when
the church
grants plenary
indulgencesQUIET
A Galician scallop dish, top
left; low tide in Combarro,
Galicia, above; plane trees in
Padron, right; the cathedral
of Santiago de Compostela,
far rightThe credencial
document;
Pontevedra,
right