Le Puy or Not Le Puy

Galway, 16 days ago...

Clemont: Ah, you want to walk St Jacques de Compostele? Are you Catholic?

Me: No, I just like walking, that´s all.

Clemont: And you start, where?

Me: St Jean Pied du Port.

Clemont: You will walk through Spain? Noooooo, you must start in Le Puy, it´s very beautiful to walk from there, I did it. It´s very beautiful.

(Blaise nods)

Clemont: In Spain, all you´ll find are, how you say...

(Clemont and Blaise speak quickly in French)

Clemont: FAR-NAR-TEEKS. They whip themselves, scream "Jesus, Jesus!" They´re very racist, homosexual...no, homo...they hate the faggot, you know. No, you should start in Le Puy, very beautiful, and then you cross the PEER A NEE and go to Barcelona.


For years now, one of the main goals I´ve considered accomplishing while over here in Europe is to walk the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, a historical pilgrimage from the French side of the Pyrenees to the city of Santiago de Compostela in the north-west of Spain. It´s about 800kms in total. When I bought my plane tickets I even spent a lot of time looking at maps of the walk, reading up hints on how to accomplish it successfully and the like. It was, as anyone close to me can recall, a bit of an obsession.

However, while traveling I´ve found myself to be really quick to change my mind. I highly valued the input of locals or experienced travelers, to the point of abandoning previous plans for better informed ones. So it was that, after talking to Blaise and Clemont, as well as some other people, that I jettisoned my entire idea of walking the Camino. Stuff the drab, northern plains of Spain, I thought, I´ll just walk through beautiful France and then hightail it to late night parties and funny buildings in Barcelona.

And then, in my last night in Paris, my mind just cracked. I´d spent my entire trip so far, typing online, sending emails, using my credit card to book flights and accommodation in euros and, generally, just being a slave to the dates I´d scrawled in my little travel bible. I had too many dates, codes and addresses in my head - enough was enough!

I´d also been sleeping beneath this terrifying water heater that would make explosive belches every five minutes, threatening (in my mind) to douse me with either fire or disfiguringly hot water. I was a little unhinged.

This was just the right amount of a personal breakdown that I required, and the very next day I bought a ticket to St Jean Pied du Port. Stuff Blaise and Clemont, though their advice was probably really useful - I´m going back to Plan A and walking across the north of Spain.

Jump ahead to now and I´m sitting in Pamplona, with my right knee and left ankle strapped tightly and about 75km worth of mud caking my boots. I couldn´t be happier (I´ve also just swallowed a bottle of cheap Spanish red, Hemingway-style, which I promise you was consumed as quick source of pain relief).

The most obvious thing I´ve noticed about this walk is that there are a lot of Germans doing it. In fact, almost everyone here is German, and retired. But, there are a few others like me, young, or nicht Deutschlander, walking along here. Also, almost no-one is walking for religious reasons. Most people are, if not retired, between jobs, or have just recovered from an illness, and really liked the idea of walking through the Spanish countryside.

And, without a doubt, it is such a beautiful way to spend a season of unemployment. If starting from St Jean Pied du Port, you are thrown headfirst into the imposing heights of the Pyranees. I was even fortunate enough to have it rain heavily on my first day, turning the dirt tracks of the of the mountain into sucking mud slides. From what I´ve heard this first day is a real crucible, testing quite quickly how hardy your pilgrim desires are. Two boys, cyclists to boot, were trapped on the heights of the mountain and had to be rescued by an ambulance crew, as they developed hypothermia.

Even so, the mountain crossing was amazingly beautiful. To put everything into a nerdy context, the French side of the Pyrenees is like a jaunt through "The Lord of the Rings". However, once you cross the peaks and descend through brightly lit beech forests, you´re right in the middle of "Pan´s Labyrinth".

Actually, to continue the nerdy flavour for a moment, I´d have to say that one of the major things that keeps me going is the thought that I´m in one of my favourite fantasy novels, or a character in a game like "Morrowind" or "World of Warcraft". The scenery and architecture alone is worthy of such daydreams.

One other observation I´ve made about this pilgrimage is that you´ll encounter one of three types of local along the way. There are the pro-pilgrims who, like this fantastic old lady I met in Pamplona today, will guide you to find your refuge, chattering away in Spanish despite knowing that you don´t know what she´s saying. Then, there are the people who profit from the pilgrims, charging you money for the cheapest, most under-nourishing fare. This is quite easy to get away with too; if you´ve just spent eight hours crossing a mountain range, any pint of beer will taste like heaven, even if it´s actually another man´s phlegm.

Finally, there are the people who´ve seen so many damned scallop shells and they don´t care who or what you are, as long as you don´t stand in their way. I quite like these people, because they´re a nice reminder that the walk I´m doing isn´t essentially some amazing, life-changing adventure, nor is it some honourable, rare achievement. It´s just a walk, a fantastic one, but a walk just the same.

Of course, if I didn´t care about making this pilgrimage, that would be another story.

P.S. You do not know pain until you´ve spent your third night in a row in a 120 person dormitory, where over a third of the inhabitants snore as badly as the French man I endured in Galway.