The Sunday Times April 3, 2022 17
Fresh scallops? That’ll do
nicely, gracias.
The second day of the
Variante Espiritual is even
better. A valley of acid-
green ferns and chuckling
water beyond Monasterio
Santa Maria de Armenteira is
like Gaia’s boudoir. Where the
stream quietens, birdsong takes over.
Two hours later you’re bowling through
Spain’s best albariño vineyards beside the
River Umia. Another hour and the scenery
is of timeless hamlets: chickens scratching
beneath vines, farmers in tatty jumpers
who grunt hello. I pause in A Igrexa
beneath a stone crucifix. It’s carved with a
pilgrim holding a staff and scallop shell —
the first pilgrim I’ve seen all day. It’s the
sort of route walkers live for, an onrush of
scenery to uplift the soul.
I’m heading to Vilanova de Arousa.
They say disciples of St James sailed the
apostle’s remains up the Arousa River to
Padron in a stone boat. Mine is a glossy
fibreglass job operated by A Mare Boat
long sections track faithfully beside
medieval cart trails. You’ll know them
better today as A-roads. A few miles from
Pontevedra the path forks: right for the
Camino Portugues alongside the N-550
motorway; left for the Variante Espiritual
into deep countryside.
I ascend on back roads into farming
villages that smell of woodsmoke. It’s a
lovely walk. Without a car in sight, the
miles tick by to the metronome of my
walking stick. Cockerels crow. The sun
shines. Life simplifies. After three hours
the trail circuits a monastery, loops
behind a playground (“Buen camino!” call
a gaggle of children), and there’s a sudden
tang of seaweed and briny air.
No understanding of Galicia’s strange
mystic energy is complete without the
sea. Because the sun sizzles west into
the Atlantic, druids and Romans made
pilgrimage to Fisterra or Finisterre —
literally the end of the world — long before
Christians adopted their sacred sites.
Today it’s the sea that flows through
Galicia’s sense of self: fishing, honest toil
and soulful Celtic beauty.
Across the bay from the playground is a
fuzz of granite and terracotta — Combarro
village. Through tiny squares, past the
houses of former fishermen, I find a table
on the old dock at O Peirao restaurant.
Services from Vilanova marina. The
captain guns the throttle and we jet off.
It’s the fastest I’ve gone all week.
Cormorants stand with crucified
wings on commercial mussel beds.
Pilgrimage crosses and a ruined defence
against the Vikings dot the shores. Over
two hours the river narrows, low
mountains fall behind, then we’re
swinging through round hills up a reedy
channel where a heron stalks the
shallows and a marsh harrier patrols
overhead. It’s almost a holiday within
your holiday. It certainly beats 16 miles
of walking.
I won’t bore you with my long last day
going into Santiago. At 17 miles it’s the
stiffest walk in Inntravel’s brochure. Still,
no one ever said salvation came easy.
Suffice to say that after five hours I climb
to O Milladoiro, turn a corner and there,
finally, is journey’s end — Santiago, its
cathedral spires poking up among
apartment blocks. It feels a huge pity,
to be honest.
A Santiago pilgrimage has always been
a journey to quieten the mind as much
as revere relics. Today it is time out,
an opportunity to park worries
about utility bills and strip
life back to a nice day’s
walking. I’m not claiming
an epiphany en route. Just
that I can’t recall the last
time I felt such quiet joy.
In front of the cathedral
on Plaza del Obradoiro I
bump into Joao. He looks
like a man reset. Around us
pilgrims hug and take selfies,
their rucksacks off at last. Not even a
busker torturing some Galician bagpipes
can dampen the euphoria.
And that’s the moment it hits me.
A compostela requires you to acquire at
least two stamps per day in a credencial,
a pilgrim passport, as proof of walking.
I’d forgotten after day two — just enjoying
myself too much. Still, my accreditation
had always been a long shot. I didn’t get
lost once.
James Stewart was a guest of Inntravel.
Ten nights’ B&B on its Camino de Santiago,
The Old Way itinerary costs from
£1,190pp, including some extra meals
O (inntravel.co.uk). Fly to Porto
To paraphrase
Jack Kerouac,
you are on the
camino and the
camino is life
After three days I arrive into
Pontevedra. That was another reason to
like this trip — it takes you to places you’re
unlikely to choose otherwise. Galicia’s
finest town stuffs tapas bars between
granite colonnades and dangles heraldic
balconies over squares of camellia trees.
When I emerge from a pilgrims’ mass in
the Virgen Peregrina church — the liturgy
is beyond my Spanish except for
something about us all being pilgrims
on the camino of life — it’s into a new
destination. The paseo has vivified streets.
Tiny squares are cocooned in soft
lamplight. It’s wildly romantic.
Onwards the next day. What few people
tell you about big camino routes is that
CAROLINE BRUNDLE BUGGE, ANDRES GARCIAM, LUNAMARINA/GETTY IMAGES; JB/ALAMY
