A Visit to Christine de Pizan’s Paris

When working on the outline for my new book, a popular history book on Christine de Pizan, my publishers put forward a suggestion that made my heart pirouette with joy: ‘How about including a chapter on medieval Paris?’, they suggested, adding that ‘Paris is a big seller!’ Book sales aside, I jumped in my seat with excitement (if memory serves me, I was on the fabled X5 bus somewhere between Oxford and Cambridge at the time). Much as I was thrilled to be asked to write a book on Christine (more on her later) for a general audience, having an excuse to exhume the medieval depths of my favourite city (c’est un cliché mais pourtant…) in the name of research made me doubly excited about the project.

Part of the book focuses on Christine’s work in medieval Paris, showing how she engaged fully the cultural activity of the city in order to become a successful writer. And of course, any book featuring a city in a strong supporting role must include a map. With the help of the graphic designer Shay Hamias, my husband Pete, and countless hours spent poring over historical maps of the city, Google Street View, and the Atlas Historique de Paris, my map of Christine de Pizan’s Paris was born:

I had grand plans for this map. My publishers and I talked about engineering my YouTube début, in which I would walk around the city talking eagerly about various medieval landmarks – extant and vanished – that delineate Paris. This could be stretched out over several days – oh the pastries I would eat! Alas, a global pandemic and the recent arrival of my son have indefinitely postponed my dreams of stardom on the (very) small screen. But all is not lost and instead, I am able to present something that is arguably even better: an interactive map of medieval Paris through which you can tour the ancient city from the comfort of your own home (bring your own pastries).

This is what Paris would have looked like at the turn of the fifteenth century, when my leading lady Christine lived and worked in the city. I have taken some creative liberties with the map. Some of the landmarks were only just or had not quite yet been built – the Tour Saint-Jacques, for instance, was not constructed until later in the fifteenth century, but I included it for its significance as a point of departure for late-medieval pilgrims and because it is still standing.

In fact, although the boundaries and size of its ancestor are quite different to those of today’s Paris, many of its most important landmarks would have been the same for a late-medieval visitor as they are for their modern counterparts. Chief among those are its two most prominent devotional buildings, the Gothic cathedral of Notre-Dame, whose construction began in 1160, and the Sainte-Chapelle, built between 1243 and 1248. The latter building originally formed part of the Palais de la Cité – the seat of royal power in Paris since the Roman era, of which much also remains. Although now thought of primarily as a museum whose architecture dates mostly to the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, the Louvre was another significant fortress on the landscape of medieval Paris. Part of its medieval walls can be visited on a trip into the Louvre’s subterranean foundations, allowing a glimpse into the prehistory of the most-visited museum in the world.

Medieval Paris: the Parvis Notre-Dame showing the outline of the disappeared Rue Neuve-Notre-Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, and the Sainte Chapelle

Several of the landmarks unearthed during this research were new to me. One particular highlight was discovering the disappearance of the Rue Neuve-Notre-Dame, that once led right up to the portico of Notre-Dame de Paris. Until the large open space of the Parvis Notre-Dame was constructed under Haussmann’s nineteenth-century redevelopment of Paris, several streets occupied had this square. The ghostly outlines of the razed alleyways are still outlined in the cobbles in front of the cathedral. The Rue Neuve-Notre-Dame was one of the first streets outside of the Left Bank to feature book artisans and traders as its chief tenants. These included the husband-and-wife team Jeanne and Richard Montbaston, to whom the illuminations of 53 manuscripts have been attributed. Jeanne was even given the accolade of ‘illuminatrix libri jurata’ (sworn illuminator of books), a title that was granted to only one other illuminator. Among the work attributed to them is an image that depicts a man and woman working side by side, the man copying text and the woman painting an image. Above their heads, several pages covered in writing hang drying, suggesting that the couple are working in a scriptorium. It is hard to resist the temptation to see this image as a self-portrait, showing the Montbaston couple at work in their respective functions: he as copyist and she as illuminator.

Medieval manuscripts: marginalia showing an illuminator and scribe at work; Christine de Pizan at work; the Louvre and city walls.

Details such as this, concerning the booktrade in medieval Paris, were of interest to me since they are relevant to the main subject of my book: Christine de Pizan’s career as writer and producer of books of her works. Christine is often noted for being a medieval pro-feminine writer (some have even gone so far as to call her a feminist, a label that I call into question), a remarkable fact that has grabbed the attention of many a reader, myself included. However, over the course of the decade that I have spent studying her, what I have come to find most fascinating about Christine’s career is not the pro-feminine content of her works for which she is famed, but the fact that she earned a living from her writings. In fact, she was the first writer in France to do so – and she was a woman to boot.

Christine’s career spanned almost four decades, from around 1390 until 1430, during which time she composed around 30 major works as well as several shorter poems. These survive in over 200 manuscripts – an extraordinary figure for an individual medieval author. For comparison, just a single manuscript exists of the Old English poem Beowulf and even Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales only survive in 32 copies. What is even more extraordinary in Christine’s case is that she oversaw the production of 54 of her manuscripts herself, and several of them are even written in her own hand. Such an enormous literary production would not have been possible unless she had a pragmatic knowledge of writing, bookmaking and the book trade. It is possible that she learned the art of writing from her husband, a royal secretary, but on matters relating to bookmaking she was self-taught, learning the tools of the trade when she became a widow in her mid-twenties and turned to writing to make a living. Several of her texts certainly have a strong proto-feminist disposition, but she is also the author of a huge volume of lyric, devotional, didactic and moral poetry, political and historical works, allegorical and autobiographical narratives.

Extract from the Bale Map of Paris showing the location of the
Tour Barbeau.

Another discovery I made along the way: on the modern-day Quai des Célestins on the bank of the river Seine, a modest plaque informs passers-by that this was once the location of the Tour Barbeau. Few will have heard of this former landmark, yet this is where Christine and her family are believed to have lived from 1380, when king Charles V made a gift of the tower to her husband, Étienne de Castel. The Tour Barbeau complex was perched on the bank of the river Seine, its buildings, gardens, and inhabitants enclosed within a protective stone wall. In some of the illustrations seen in her works, Christine is represented at study or writing in a chamber whose shape suggests it forms part of a tower. It is often assumed that the tower must be the one that housed the royal library in the Louvre palace, but it is tantalizing to think that representations such as these might in fact show the author at work in her own home…

The Duke of Burgundy in counsel. Extract from BnF, MS 23279.

The Tour Barbeau and Rue Neuve-Notre-Dame are just two of the sites on the virtual map of Christine de Pizan’s Paris, which I invite you to peruse at leisure and perambulate at your own pace. Unlike a “real” walk, there is no set route, though should you wish to follow an itinerary, allow me to make a suggestion: start at the South of the city, where the Rue des Fossés Saint-Jacques meets the Rue Saint-Jacques, where the gate into the city, the Porte Saint-Jacques, once stood; make your way North, passing the Sorbonne and stopping off to see the Lady and the Unicorn in the Musée de Cluny before crossing onto the Île de la Cité to visit Notre-Dame, the Sainte Chapelle and Conciergerie (Palais de la Cité). Having reached the Right Bank at the Place du Châtelet, head East towards the Bastille, admiring the various medieval buildings and locations of aristocratic hôtels along the way. From here, stroll North along the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, peeking through the doors of the National Archives (once a medieval mansion) en route, ending up at Nicholas Flamel’s house, the oldest residential building in Paris, which is now a convenient restaurant. As you loop round the North of Paris, the Tour Jean-Sans-Peur is well worth a visit (Christine herself almost certainly did so, since this is where one of her most important patrons, the Duke of Burgundy, resided), then meander through the shops of Les Halles before finishing off at the Louvre.

From here, you can complete your visit to Christine de Pizan’s Paris by exiting the medieval city through the site of the Porte Saint Honoré – a gate in the city wall that was moved no fewer than three times as the city expanded. Here, you leave the medieval city behind and set foot firmly inside modern Paris… Should you wish to, you could complete the walk by proceeding into the 17th arrondissement to the Rue Christine de Pisan, a modern, minor side-street far from the medieval heart of Paris. To me, this seems an unfitting commemoration for a woman who was so deeply entrenched in the artistic and literary scene of fifteenth-century Paris, but I’ll leave it to you to decide!

Christine de Pizan, Life, Work, Legacy, published by Reaktion Press can be purchased here. A preview is available through Google Books.

Manuscript images: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 25526, fol. 77v; Brussels, KBR, MS 10982, fol. 2r; Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 65, fol. 10v (Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry)

Off-Peak Pilgrim

Days 1-3 on the Camino Primitivo (Oviedo to La Espina)
65.3km; 1,782m elevation gain; 17h45mins

Days before heading off on the Camino Primitivo, I came across this post on the Camino de Santiago forum: “I am writing this from Lugo, as I have just taken the bus from Fonsagrada where I stopped walking the Primitivo after 8 days on the Camino. In that entire time, I saw just one other pilgrim.” The writer continues that “water is a real challenge”, with sources of drinking water scarce, and bars and cafés along the route mostly closed. He seemed to be finding the elevations as difficult as the lack of company along the route, and concluded that he would abandon the route, take the train from Lugo and try walking the Camino Ingles instead.

This rather alarmed me. I immediately forwarded it to Martin, my pilgrimage partner for the upcoming Primitivo, who dismissed the concerns of the author and his sympathisers, responding “Pfft! They are old people chatting!”

OK then. If Martin wasn’t worried, then I couldn’t be (but I was – just a little).

The official start of the Camino Primitivo outside the Cathedral of Oviedo

Leaving Oviedo, the first part of the Primitivo felt like any day on the Frances: from the Cathedral, we navigated the city streets, looking out for yellow arrows or scallop shells to guide us through the traffic signals, street signs, and graffiti. These were scant, but the route easy enough to guess, and soon, we had left the urban sprawl behind leaving nothing but green hills and the beginnings of a perfectly bucolic landscape. Not another soul in sight.

Admittedly, we had chosen the unconventional finish-point of Escamplero, a mere 12km from Oviedo, as the end-point of our first day. The reason for this was that it gave us the first morning to stroll around the old city of Oviedo itself, visiting some of the Roman ruins, the ninth-century chapel of San Julián de los Prados outside the city centre, and the cathedral itself. Time very well-spent, but it did mean we would forgo the company of other pilgrims during the already quiet time of year on the trail of mid-March.

Climbing into the hamlet of Loriana, I turned around briefly and noticed a figure in the distance behind us. ‘Martin!’ I whispered. ‘There’s a pilgrim behind us!’ We played it cool and kept on walking, and our first pilgrim eventually caught up to us as we were taking in the views at the top.

The Asturian landscape opening ahead

‘Ah!’ she said. ‘I think I heard about you guys’. For a moment, I was tempted to believe my reputation (what for it did not matter) had preceded me, but we quickly said that as we had only started that morning, and that she was the first pilgrim we had seen, she must have heard about someone else.

We would have quite gladly carried on chatting, but whilst we only had seven kilometers to walk to Escamplero, she was heading to Grado that evening, a little over 13km further than us. We bid her a Buen Camino and she disappeared into the distance as quickly as she had appeared.

We pootled on.

Escamplero seemed like a reasonable place to stop: it had both a small pension (B&B) and a municipal albergue. For the latter, the keys had to be collected from the town’s only restaurant. Small but simple. Food and shelter. What more could a pilgrim need?

As we arrived, we noticed that the B&B looked suspiciously closed. Not only that, but it was attached to the restaurant — which was also closed. We went round the back in the hopes of finding some indication of where to find the keys to the albergue. After a moment, a woman opened a window. We couldn’t make out everything she said, but we did understand the word albergue. ‘Si si!’ came our response.

The woman came down, unexpectedly plonked her baby grandson (who promptly started screaming) into my arms, and gave Martin the rundown. ‘¿Y para comer mas tarde?’ he asked (where can we get food?). ‘Ah, no. Cerrado!’ she said (‘everything is closed!’). My heart sank. The baby screamed. ‘There is a supermarket, she continued, but that is also closed’. She smiled and shrugged, ‘or it is until 5pm’.

Hurrah! We had time to drop off our bags, get to the supermarket and stock up on provisions for the next day.

To cut a long story short, a supermarket it was not. We cooked ourselves a whole bag of pasta on the temperamental hob in the albergue, topped with tinned bean and pork stew and a few bits of cheese. We were the only occupants of the 30-bed albergue (which was no bad thing given that we needed to use 80% of the equipment in the kitchen to prepare our pasta feast).

The Monasterio San Salvador in Cornellana, where pilgrims have been staying for over a thousand years

The next day, over 27km from Escamplero to Cornellana, we didn’t see another pilgrim all day, until an untalkative Spaniard from Oviedo tumbled into our room in the monastery shortly after 6pm, by which time we had assumed we once again would have the place to ourselves.

Day 3 (21km to La Espina) was much the same, not a pilgrim in sight all day, even in the busy little town of Salas. It turns out not many people on the Primitivo stay anywhere but the main stops along the route, so although there were other pilgrims on the way, we were missing them by a few kilometers every day along those first few stages.

Did we mind? No, not especially! When I was there last Spring, the Frances wasn’t exactly the pilgrim superhighway it looks to be in the Summer, so I was used to occasionally walking a whole day without seeing anyone, but these consecutive days and evenings to ourselves made for a very different experience. The landscape of the Primitivo is also very different to the Frances — much more spectacular, mountainous, remote. It would be incongruous to experience it surrounded by throngs of other pilgrims. Although the route never seems to be crowded, I was happy to be there in low-season.

As for the other concerns of the pilgrim who gave up the route in Lugo (with four days to go – really!?), water for us wasn’t a problem. My two-litre waterpack occasionally ran out towards the end of the day, but I also carried a small 33cl emergency bottle. We certainly saw our fair share of closed cafés and bars, so always carried snacks that would see us through the day and restocked whenever possible. The terrain… admittedly, it was tough-going, but I’ll save that for another blog post!

The Camino Primitivo: Thoughts and Motivations

Looking back at the diary I kept on the Camino Frances last year, I’m surprised to see that even writing at the end of the exhausting first day, I was already talking about coming back (to do the Napoleon route, having been forced to take the Charlemagne route because of the weather). By the time I had spent a week on the trail on my own, I had compiled a long list of things to do differently next time in my mind: the Napoleon route, spending a day in Estella to properly look around the medieval town, visiting Pamplona cathedral… But I knew I wouldn’t be back to redo the Frances route any time soon. It’s not easy to be able to take five weeks out of normal life, and I was very fortunate to be able to do so last year. Besides, there are countless other Caminos to experience first.

There is another motivation to head back to the Caminos: once again, I have the opportunity to do so – one of the perks of a precarious employment situation! Since last year, I have worked flat out, commuting eight hours a week between Cambridge and Oxford, splitting my life between those two cities where I have worked up to six different jobs at a time. The teaching has left me feeling exhilarated, but this double life is mentally and physically exhausting. Some of this has borne fruit: I now have two book contracts under my belt, and will be spending the Summer completing one, and breaking the back of the other. The rest of 2019 is shaping up to be an excitingly busy time professionally, but I need some time to clear my head before getting stuck back into it all.

And so, I’m heading off.

The routes to Santiago de Compostela across Spain, Portugal, and France © Confraternity of Saint James

Last year, when deciding which of the Camino de Santiago routes to do, I had a bit of a conundrum on my hands. You see, personally, I was more inclined towards the much shorter Camino Primitivo – literally, the original route, that starts from the cathedral in Oviedo, bits of which date back to the ninth century. According to legend, when King Alfonso II undertook the first pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella, this is where he started. Alfonso is credited with both discovering the tomb of St James and with designing the Camino de Santiago itself, so if you like to proceed chronologically or are interested in origins, this is the route to take!

‘But why is the Camino Frances so famous?’, I hear you cry! Well, quite simply, the French invested a lot of money in the infrastructure of the route, building churches, hostels or hospitales, and settlements along the way (hence the number of Villafrancas – or French towns – through which you pass along that route). The efforts of the French to secure the path that pilgrims would take from France and mainland Europe mean that this became one of the safest routes for pilgrims who would be well provided for – which is still a feature of the Camino Frances today.

But back to the Primitivo… When doing my research ahead of doing the Frances last year, I came across this saying: “whoever goes to Santiago and not to the Cathedral of the Holy Savior [in Oviedo], visits the servant but not their master.” For my non-Christian, academic mind, this translated as visiting the facsimile but not the source. I knew I would have to go. This, however was not the time to do it. Last year was about walking in memory my father; this year is about me, walking in the present.

Martin and I in La Faba on the Camino Frances in 2018

This time will be slightly different to last. For instance, this time, I know what to bring and what to leave at home (hand cream a must; fewer books this time Charlotte!). I am not feeling as sick with nerves as I was this time last year, because I know more or less what to expect, and more importantly, I know that I can do it. A key difference is that this time, I won’t be going it alone. I am returning with Martin, one of the pilgrims I met on the trail last year with whom I shared many a happy day walking and talking. A well-seasoned pilgrim, having completed the Frances (a frankly perturbing) three and a bit times as well as the Portugese coastal route, Martin walks at the same pace as me, and shares my passions for history and red wine. I am confident we will make for happy trail companions. More importantly, he speaks better Spanish than I do, so he will be an invaluable help should any sticky situations arise!

So, are we doing, exactly? The plan is to set off from Oviedo, and walk the 255km to Melide, four days outside Santiago. Neither of us feel that the section from Melide to Santiago is one that we especially feel a burning desire to repeat, and so from there, we will skip these days by taking a bus straight to Santiago. Time permitting, our plan is then to continue to walk on to Finisterre and Muxia instead.

I very much hope and firmly believe that this will be the first of many returns to the various Caminos de Santiago in Spain. When I finish, I will ultimately finish back at exactly the same place – both in Santiago and at home. In some ways, it might seem that I won’t have progressed at all, but I will; at least I’ll have covered a little more ground.

Napoleon vs Charlemagne

Saint-Jean Pied-de-Port to Roncesvalles (Charlemagne Route)

• Distance: 25.57km

• Time: 6 hours 30 mins

• Elevation gain: 1,320 metres

The first day on the Camino Frances is, by all accounts, a baptism of fire. Fresh-faced pilgrims disembarking at Saint-Jean Pied-de-Port are faced with two options: the Napoleon route, a 25km hike with an accrued ascent of almost 1,400 metres, or the Charlemagne route, one kilometre shorter, and an ascent of just under 1,000 metres. Although the former is the “good weather” route, it’s the route most pilgrims will expect to take – it’s the one often depicted in documentaries on the Camino (it’s the route taken by the eight celebrity pilgrims on the BBC’s ‘Pilgrimage to Santiago’, for instance), the route that killed Emilio Estevez in The Way. The Napoleon route is for heroes; the Charlemagne route is for wimps.

Or so I thought.

On the train to Saint-Jean, I thought I was going to be sick. Along with Pete and myself, there were six other people on the train – all pilgrims. The one sat opposite me was grinning inanely out of the window. I envied the awe-struck sparkle in his eyes, whilst mine were almost brimming with tears. He kept switching sides on the train so that he could take it all in – the gentle peaks, the meandering streams… I hated him immediately. How could he be so excited? Didn’t he know what the next morning had in store for us? (No he didn’t, actually, as I discovered over dinner that evening) I kept my eyes fixed on the window and concentrated on not throwing up. What on earth was I doing!?

Shortly after arriving in Saint-Jean, we paid a visit to the Pilgrim Office. This seemed like a sensible thing to do. Having an ‘office’ dedicated to people like us gave the whole thing a reassuringly bureaucratic air, a bit like the man checking in the crucifixion victims on his clipboard in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. I picked up a scallop shell with a hole drilled into it, popped €1 into the donation box, and attached it to the keychain on my pack that also held one of my dad’s Virgin Mary medallions. The man in the office stamped our credenciales, using a special, extra big stamp as it was our first one. How delightful.

‘Let me show you the route!’ said the man. I didn’t really feel this was necessary, as we were carrying a trusty guidebook, and the whole thing is marked out with scallop shells and yellow arrows every few metres, but it seemed rude to refuse. He pulled out two sheets. The first, a black and white line drawing of the route out of Saint-Jean, showed the two possible routes out of the village.

‘Là, c’est interdit! INTERDIT!’ he said, punctuating each vehement repetition of interdit by stamping out part of the Napoleon route with a red cross. I had been speaking in French to the man in the office, and translating for Pete as I went along, but he understood this alright.

The man explained that the Napoleon route was forbidden until the start of April. We were 14 days too early. ‘Because of the snow’, he explained. Ah, yes, the snow. The lush green countryside around Saint-Jean looked as if it manufactured chlorophyll. Snow? What snow? ‘If anyone gets stuck up there, the fire crew have to come all the way from Pamplona, almost 100 kilometres away. If they have to be called, it’s a €1,000 fine!’

The snow-covered peaks of Saint-Jean Pied-de-Port

We walked up to the old citadel, from where we could view the surrounding peaks, and squinted into the distance. All green. Not a snowflake in sight (well, except for the wimps in the pilgrim office).

In the end, we decided to be sensible. We were confident we would manage the Napoleon route – but if not, we would forever be labelled as the two numpties who bit off more than they could chew. We would take the Charlemagne route.

I don’t know what prompted Napoleon to take a different path over the Pyrenees in 1813. I like to picture a scene in which one of his generals lays out the elevation profile of the route taken by Charlemagne before him, to which the Emperor responds – quite rightly – sod that for a laugh! Aaah, Napoleon, little did you know that the route you were to eventually take would have an even steeper profile… Alternatively, perhaps it was the fact that one of France’s great military heroes had fallen on the other route, that put him off – the lofty emperor walk in the shadow of another military hero and along a pre-existing imperial trail? Unlikely. There again, taking the same path as Charlemagne might have been perceived as a bad omen: the battle that took place at the Roncesvalles pass wasn’t exactly a huge success for the French. If that were the case, it did not succeed: the battle of Roncesvalles was just one of Napoleon’s many defeats over the course of the Peninsular War.

The next morning, we set off bright and early from our albergue. Our hospitalero looked on as we tied our boots.

‘Ah! He said to Pete, let me show you a little trick!’ He bent down and took over the tying of Pete’s laces. ‘See, if you do it like this, there’s a little bit more give at the top, you won’t get tendinitis!’

I have never seen Pete look quite so offended. Mountain goat Pete, master of maps, completer of the 55-mile Ten Tors Challenge, veteran of Everest Base Camp, Mont Blanc, and the Himalayas, was being told how to tie his shoelaces. The poor hospitalero. We had been getting on so well. Our first experience of a hostel could not have been better. And he had lost Pete’s esteem as he waved us out the door. ‘Bon Camino!’ he enthused in French, as he waved us goodbye from the doorstep. ‘Merci!’ I trilled in reply; Pete sneered.

First steps in Saint-Jean Pied-de-Port

The beginning didn’t seem too bad. We meandered through peaceful, tranquil bucolic scenery. There was a tinge of regret as we took the road to the right, rolling our eyes at the large ‘FERMÉ’ sign that had been put over the top of the sign for the Napoleon route.

Two other pairs of pilgrims had set off around the same time as us, and we passed them, and they passed us in a kind of mountain waltz as the day went on. We were all too timid to speak around each other, not knowing what languages we might each speak, and instead simply mined our hellos by smiling and nodding exaggeratedly. Eventually, we got close enough to notice that one of the pairs was speaking in English. English! We would be able to communicate with other pilgrims after all! (This pair turned out to be a Scottish couple, Andy and Michelle. They followed the same itinerary as me, but finished one day sooner than I did. They were waiting for me outside the cathedral at Santiago when I finished my walk 37 days later)

Shortly after crossing over the Spanish border, the climb into Valcarlos was steep, and I was starting to lose faith in my legs. Respite soon came in the form of some bread, cheeze, and chorizo, and (more importantly) the reassurance that my limited Spanish would still enable me to obtain food. This was the only place for a rest on the Charlemagne route. Should you be reading this looking for advice on the route, my recommendation would be to start the Camino as soon as you arrive in Saint-Jean, and stay in Valcarlos. That way you don’t have to spend a day sitting around eagerly waiting to get going in Saint-Jean, and you’ll be able to break what for me was the hardest day on the Camino (and I did the Camino Dragonte!) into two days. Hurrah!

The climb ahead into Valcarlos

In addition to sustenance of a comestible kind, Valcarlos also offered me a mental boost. Valcarlos, literally, ‘Charlemagne’s valley’, gets its name from Charlemagne (Carlos/Karlus); this is supposedly either the place where Charlemagne and his troops rested on their way back from their defeat at Roncesvalles, or where he was when he heard Roland’s distress call, as told in the Chanson de Roland. The connection between Roncesvalles and Roland was one of the reasons why I had been determined to start my own Camino in Saint-Jean, and I was delighted to see a mural in Valcarlos, part of which commemorated the death of Roland at Roncesvalles. I was glad to be on the Charlemagne route!

Elevation profile of the Charlemagne route.

If it hadn’t been for this mental boost, I would have really struggled. The route from Valcarlos onwards is a continuous, steep ascent. On top of which, it started raining.

By the time we reached the summit of the Alto de Ibañeta, I had climbed almost 1,300 metres – 720 of which from Valcarlos. My heart rate had hit 182bpm, and I was exhausted. The mountain pass on the Alto de Ibañeta is the low point in the mountain ridge, and therefore acts as a kind of funnel. The last hour of our ascent had been spent being buffeted by gale-force winds with rain whipping against our faces.

Eventually, there was nothing further to ascend. The winds were still growing in strength, but at least the terrain had leveled out. On the horizon, marking the summit, was a large stone. We drew a little closer to take a look. I made out a word at the top: ‘Roldan’. Roland! Overcome, I rushed towards the stone and climbed up to take a better look, shouting the opening lines of the Chanson de Roland: ‘Carles li reis, nostre emperere magnes, Set anz tuz pleins ad estét en Espaigne!’.

An excited pilgrim at the Roland stone, on the summit of the Alto de Ibañeta

In the end, I was delighted to have done the Charlemagne route. It was plenty hard enough for me – in fact, I find it hard to believe the Napoleon route could possibly be harder. Sure, it goes higher, but the Charlemagne undulates a lot more, whereas the Napoleon route is just a long steady incline. Easy. Crucially, pilgrims who take Napoleon’s way will not come across this monument to the fallen Roland. I doubt I would have felt quite so elated at the end of this tough first day if it hadn’t been for this to spur me on.

I was going to be fine.

Closing in on Cyprus

Kalavasos to archaeological tenta: time – 1hr 18mins; distance – 5.25km; elevation gain – 53m.

When we checked into our delightful hotel in Kalavasos, we asked Lydia, the lovely receptionist, for a map of the village. It looked worryingly basic: two main roads, represented by thick white lines, with a few little stepped alleyways running in-between, a shop (‘but is closed’), an old watermill at one end, and a small park at the other.

‘Do you have a car?’ Lydia asked.

‘No’, we answered.

Her eyes widened, she looked alarmed. ‘Do you want a car?’

‘No’, we answered.

Her eyebrows jumped into her hairline.

‘We like walking’, I explained.

‘Ah, ok…’ she replied, quizzically. It sounded like more of a question than a statement. ‘In Cyprus, everyone drives’.

It soon became clear why.

We knew we were going to be staying in the middle of nowhere for our three days in Cyprus, but a spa hotel in the countryside seemed much more… well, ‘us’ than one of Larnaca’s big beach resorts. Besides, it was only 6km from the shore! Our plan was at follows: day 1 – walk to the beach and back, attend wedding in the evening; day 2 – hungover day spent at spa; day 3 – hiking in the surrounding area. Perfect.

Flora and fauna of Kalavasos

This was not to be. It turns out, there are a couple reasons why you don’t often hear of hiking holidays in Cyprus. First, there aren’t really any trails (at least, not on the part of the island we were on). But the main reason is the heat. Oh good lord, the heat. Coming from the UK, where temperatures have been struggling to reach above 16º the last few weeks, 33º in Cyprus was a bit of a shock. ‘You’re visiting Cyprus at a good time of year!’ Said the taxi driver who picked us up at the airport. ‘It’s nice and cool!’

When we arrived in Kalavasos, we walked from one end of the village to another – an enterprise that took about fifteen minutes. We saw the park at one end, and the old water mill at the other, around fifty or so wild cats, and then, overcome with heat and, frankly, knowing that we’d have to walk quite a long way down the tarmac road before coming to the next point of interest, walked back to collapse in the comfort of the air-conditioned hotel room.

 

Day two was still spent at the beach, but we did not walk. Getting a taxi involved its own share of difficulties, though: see, for all its charm, Kalavasos does not have a cash machine (it does, however, have a bank, but that too was closed). For that, we would have to either walk for an hour and a half, or we could get the taxi to stop there on the way to the beach. It was an easy decision.

Pomegranates ripe for picking

Before leaving on Saturday, our final day, we decided to make the 2.5km walk to the nearby archaeological dig, the Kalavasos Tenta – a Neolithic settlement, one of the most important ones in Cyprus, dating back to 7,000BC. We took all necessary precautions: got up early to avoid walking in worst of heat, slathered selves in SPF 30, wore light and airy sweat-wicking clothes, took a ruck sack carrying only one thing: water.

The walk to the tenta was pretty delightful: after passing the (closed) café at the end of the road, we left the jasmine-scented streets of Kalavasos, loaded with a kaleidoscope of bougainvillea, hibiscus flowers, ripe limes, and heavy pomegranates, crossed a dried-up riverbed, and headed out into cultivated land. Here, we walked along a quiet road bordered with olive groves, fig trees laden with fruit, and giant cacti. Pete persuaded me not to pluck a ripe fig from a tree. Two drops of sweat ran down from both of my temples and into the corners of my eyes. My back was already soaked with sweat, and I could feel my head getting heavy. We stopped for a few big glugs of water.

 

Kalavasos tenta

The tenta rose ahead in the distance, against a backdrop of turquoise sky, energy plant, and cement works. Two men stood in the shade outside a plantation. Is it just me, or did they seem to be laughing at us? My t-shirt was now very wet. Sweat was starting to seep through the front as well as the back. We stopped for another glug of water.

The tenta entrance came into view – it seemed oddly deserted. It was just gone 10am though, and might have only just opened. It did seem quieter than it should be though… Pete was first to arrive at the door. He read the sign aloud:

‘Closed: Saturday, Sunday’.

Mountains of my Mind

The Pointe Percée: distance – 11.74km; time – 6h 7mins; elevation gain – 1,156m

It pains me to write, dear reader, that I haven’t been doing too well lately. In an intense pattern that repeats itself over a cycle of roughly 28 days (make of that what you will), I have been rollercoastering along a path that consists of high-highs and desperately low-lows. The latter have been exacerbated by a relatively isolated Summer, during which the bulk of my time has been spent writing at home or at the University Library, and endlessly drafting and redrafting my CV and research proposal for job applications. Being on the academic job market takes resilience. I was recently interviewed for a position for which I spent two weeks researching and writing on the required topic of the teaching presentation – the only job to have been advertised in my field in the UK in the last year. When I found out I didn’t get it, still high from the interview buzz, I cried solidly for an hour and got straight into bed, still wearing my best interview dress.

As treatment for the low-lows, I have found three relatively dependable remedies: food, friends, and walking. Whilst I’ve (ahem) been (over?)indulging in the first of these, the second and third are hard for me to come by in Cambridge, and often have to be sought out further afield.

View from the summit of the Pointe Percée, with Mont Blanc in the background

The last day of our four day trip to Villaz was to be our big mountain day. Originally, two of these were included in the plan George and Lise had prepared for us to all do together, but the climb up the Tournette was cancelled due to hiking-inclement weather at the summits. That left us with time for just one quality mountain day: the Pointe Percée. Pete and I had been looking forward to climbing this since George sent us a picture of the view from the top almost exactly a year ago to the day. The pressure was on: this hike had to count.

Not even half an hour into a three-hour ascent, the mean blues hit. On the way up the first part of the approach, I lagged towards the back of the group, taking photos of the surrounding valley. My mind wondered onto two applications I need to complete this week. I felt a familiar dark fog seeping into my mind – a big black cloud that starts with a negative thought, and expands like a tumor, first filling my head with darkness, working its way down until it gradually paralyzes my body. I stopped. I couldn’t walk on. A whole mountain still left to climb, and I was frozen to the ground.

Pete ran back towards me, and gently offered me a series of choices. Did I want to go back to the car? No. Did I feel strong enough continue? I didn’t know. Would I keep walking until the refuge? Yes.

We carried on together, one step at a time, Pete two steps behind. It felt good knowing he was right there.

An hour and a half in, we had reached the refuge de Gramusset at 2,160 metres. I was still quiet, still shaken, but my mood had lifted – I guess the adrenaline had started to do its work. At this point, it didn’t occur to me not to carry on.

The refuge de Gramusset

The next part of the path became busier and busier. There were three tents near the refuge, and it looked like quite a few hikers had stayed in the refuge overnight to be in a better position for the ascent the next morning. The Pointe Percée is a well-known hike in itself, but it also forms the pinnacle of the magnificent Aravis range, so we were in the company of several climbers who were kitted out with ropes and helmets, as well as couples hiking with mountain guides, and amateurish hikers walking in jeans and trainers.

Limestone, smoothed out by the hands of countless climbers

From the refuge onwards, the ascent is roughly 50% walking, 50% climbing and scrambling. The trail is easy to follow as it is marked out with red dots painted onto the rocks every ten metres or so, but the route is just as easily felt as it is seen: you can immediately tell when you’ve made a false move because the rock is rough, not having been softened by the hands of countless climbers!

After an ascent over a rather arduous scree slope, the crowds began to bottleneck and we came to a stop. A young red-haired girl was tackling a particularly difficult move over a smooth and slippery boulder. Her boyfriend had already made it over, and was looking on, slightly worried. An older man (possibly the boyfriend’s father) was helping the girl up. Suddenly, she pulled away.

‘No, I can’t do it. I can’t go on,’ she whispered, turning her back to the mountain and taking a step back, putting both hands to her eyes. The older man put his arm around her while her boyfriend watched helplessly. We waited a moment, then George and Lise slipped on past. As I waited my turn to clamber over the mighty boulder, I heard the man tell the girl: ‘It doesn’t matter that you can’t do it, just look around you. What do you think of the scenery? Isn’t it extraordinary?’. He was right, it was. I desperately wanted to go over and reassure her – she wasn’t the only one to break down part way up a mountain! I had been in her position before, but it would have been so much worse to be surrounded by an audience!

The move on which the girl had got stuck was not easy – a big step up from a steep slope onto a slippery foothold that was just out of view, and a big pull through a narrow gap. It took me a bit longer than the first two, but I made it through, and spider-Pete followed – as usual, without the slightest difficulty.

Forming an orderly queue for the final scramble!

Despite occasional difficult moves like this one, I really enjoy this kind of scrambling. Unlike walking over rough ground, the pace slows right down, the mind has to focus. It’s still tiring, but each step is measured and carefully thought out. It’s concentrated: the only thing it’s possible to think about is the climb itself. The steps up, across, and over chained on from one another like the momentum of inhaled and exhaled breaths, and next thing I knew, we had made it onto the ridge itself. All that remained was to join the queue to reach the summit. A spectacular view towards Mont Blanc had opened up ahead of us, but at this point, it’s dangerous to take your eyes off the trail.

Another 60 vertical and 150 horizontal metres to go, and we had made it. So had the red-haired girl who had been struggling further down the mountain! I was so thrilled for her, I had to keep myself from going over to congratulate and hug her! I wanted to tell her how difficult I had found my first scramble, and how I had broken down the first time I finished my first proper outdoor climb. That would have been patronising; I kept my thoughts to myself.

On our way back down the Pointe, the clouds started to roll in, but the ones in my head had well and truly dissipated. Back at the refuge, we picnicked on baguette sandwiches. Over coffee afterwards, we did a four-way fist bump to mark the end of the arduous part of the hike. It was one helluva mountain, but we did it!

Food, friends, and walking – I’m telling you, they work!

A Postcard from Paris

Midnight stroll around Paris: distance – 8.98km; time – approx. 6 hours, including multiple food stops!

There aren’t that many things at which I excel. You could probably say that walking is one of them. I’m a pretty decent public speaker. I’m a good close reader, and I make a mean brioche French toast (come over! I’ll make it for you some time!). But one of the things at which I know I’m pretty darn good is speaking French. I’m so good, in fact, that I’m allowed to teach it at a decent little spire-filled university in the Cotswolds. My accent isn’t quite perfect, and although fellow Brits usually mistake me for a native, the French tend to look at me through narrowed eyes, trying to place my accent – is it Belgian or Swiss?

Which is why I get so annoyed that when I go to Paris, only to find people insist on speaking to me in English.

It’s three years since I was last in the city, and when I returned last month, for the first time, it felt like the city had really changed. The last time I was in town, for a research trip in July 2015, it was only a few months since the Charlie Hebdo attacks. The city did not feel too tense: the series of coordinated attacks that were to devastate it later in the year could, at that time, still hardly be imagined. The effects of these events have left their mark: a new ‘perimeter defence‘ is being erected around the Eiffel Tower, and to visit the Iron Lady itself, you now have to pass through not one, but two sets of security barriers (the first only permits you entry to the forecourt). Bags are now searched on the way into the busy Châtelet underground station and shopping centre, and no doubt these are not the only parts of the city to have bumped up their security over the last few years.

Du Pain et des idées: at first glance, a quintessential French boulangerie. ©World of Wonderlust

These measures are not so much annoying as they are disheartening – a reminder that the City of Lights is not safe. Growing up in the Paris suburbs in the wake of a string of bombings in the 1980s, I similarly remember public bins being sealed up so that they couldn’t be used to hide explosives. It’s sad to see the city is still in lockdown.

But another change I noticed on this visit was linguistic: no one seems to speak French any more.

Pete and I visited the bakery Du pain et des idées on our first morning in the city. I began to place our (somewhat extensive) breakfast order. After every item, instead of inviting me to continue enumerating pastries with the traditional ‘et avec ceçi?‘, the assistant kept addressing me in English. ‘She’s determined to talk to you in English!’, Pete even remarked. She might well have been, but I was insistent on speaking French. I made every effort to come across as Parisian as possible, adorning my sentences with nonchalant bens and euhs, delivered through lips pursed in a sulky a Parisian pout.

The padlocks have been removed from the Pont des Arts, but clumps of them still cling on to its lampposts.

I was surprised to see that the coffee menu in the bakery included cappuccino and latte – a glaring break from the three usual French options for coffee: express, café crème, and allongé. When we stepped outside and sat at one of the two tables provided for customers to savour our escargots chocolat-pistache and crème fraîche-fruits rouges, the reason for this became clear: not one of the patrons was French. Even the eminently Parisian-looking woman sat next to me sipping a coffee and reading a novel turned out to be American. There was an uncomfortable air of conviviality about the place, as if this was a known Anglo-Saxon tourist hangout. All around us, pleasantries, enquiries as to whether seats were taken, and comments about the weather were exchanged in English. We ate our pastries as quickly as possible, and left.

In the evening, we went for a stroll that would let our eyes to take in all the usual favourite Parisian spots: the Tour Saint-Jacques, Conciergerie, Louvre, Pont des Arts… For a while, we stopped and watched street performers on the Parvis de Notre Dame. The troupe of four men delivered their whole introduction in English. They were witty, charismatic, engaging and captured a large crowd. But when they cracked a joke in French, I noticed that I was the only one to snigger.

Any night out in Paris for me tends to end with an ice cream from Amorino, and so our wonderings took us onto the Île Saint Louis. Whilst queueing inside, I was horrified to see that a large framed sign containing instructions on how to place an order (the only one in the shop) was written not in French, but in English.

The real Parisians can still be found, sous les ponts de Paris

This was the last straw for me. I appreciate that a vast amount of the clientele in such touristy areas will not necessarily speak French (or make even the tiniest effort to do so), but I find this almost as troubling as the defence barriers that are materialising around the city’s monuments. In Paris, it feels as though the city operates entirely around its tourists; English is now the main language, and French spoken by a marginalised minority. This Anglicisation of the capital awkwardly clashes with its new defences: whilst one suggests a warm and comforting welcome, the other forms a reminder of the perpetual and very real threat of danger – and of the fear and discomfort that is still ever-present in Paris. But if Parisian landmarks need to be protected, so does the city’s language.

Our walk ended with a stroll along the Seine embankments that come to life in the Summer evenings. Lined with pop-up bars and beaches, here, not a word of English was to be heard. Parisians scoot along on their rollers and Segways, sip apérols, and make out in that oh-so public way that causes only foreigners to blush. The Parisian Paris is still there, and arguably occupies one of the best spots in the city. You just have to know where to find it.

À la prochaine, Paris!

Women Walking: Life as a Peregrina

Santo Domingo de la Calzada to Belorado. Distance: 22.68km; time: 5h 14; elevation gain: 360 metres

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about female pilgrims.

In the twenty-sixth story of a medieval collection of bawdy tales called the Cent nouvelles nouvelles (One Hundred New Tales), Katherine uses the pretence of going on a pilgrimage to visit her lover in a nearby town. Because travelling as a female pilgrim is so dangerous, Katherine’s father suggests she travels with a large entourage to keep her safe. This hardly lends itself to a secret rendez-vous, so Katherine presents her father with a better solution: ‘It seems better to me that you have men’s clothing prepared for me and leave me to my uncle’s charge. We will be able to leave sooner, in greater safety, and at less cost’.[1] Of course this is all part of a clever ploy to see her lover, but the point is, Katherine uses the fact that female pilgrims will not be safe on the road to her advantage, using the need for a male disguise as a better and cheaper alternative to an otherwise large (and nosy) entourage.

One of the questions I have been frequently asked about the Camino is whether I felt safe travelling as a solitary peregrina. Put shortly – yes, absolutely. In fact, one of the appeals of doing the Camino Frances was the fact that this is a busy route with good infrastructure, so if one does run into trouble, help should be easy to come by. In terms of numbers, I was surprised to hear one girl remark there were so many more men than women on the Camino – to me, it felt more like half and half, perhaps even like there were slightly more women than men. Recently statistics also show that slightly more women than men actually completed the Camino in June 2018.

Lesmes and I in San Juan de Ortega

On the whole, sex or gender rarely factored into my thoughts on the trail. I realised this for the first time when I spent a very pleasant day walking with a lovely gentleman named Lesmes. We talked about everything, from the Chanson de Roland (a medieval French text that I teach, that he had studied at school and that remembered leaving a deep impression on him) to the unlikely (for us) existence of God. When we went our separate ways at the end of the day, it struck me that I had spent a day one-on-one with a complete stranger of the opposite sex, and not found this strange in the slightest. It’s rare that this can happen. Although I tend not to think about gender being a factor in most of my interactions in “normal” life, this is even truer on the Camino. I spent several nights in a room full of strange men, walking with men, eating, drinking, and getting changed (discreetly!) in-front of men. None of this bothered me, and after the first few days, I didn’t find it at all weird or uncomfortable.

Fortunately, women no longer need to dress like men to stay safe on pilgrimage (everyone wears the same gear on the trail these days anyway!). That said, there are a few things I’d suggest any female pilgrim bear in mind…

1. Packing tips

I became weirdly fascinated by the products available in shops along the Camino. Most places don’t have a super or even minimarket – in many villages along the Camino, you’ll be lucky to even buy a few supplies from a small stall or a counter in a workroom. I regularly took stock of the items on sale: men’s razors, men’s deodorant… I guess these items are fairly unisex, and I’m not going to get upset over a lack of women’s razors (it’s the Camino! Who’s shaving?), but one item that was notably absent from most shops was sanitary wear. Sanitary towels and tampons are hard to come by, especially if caught off guard on an especially rural stretch. Some albergues might be able to help out, but a lot of these are run solely by elderly gentlemen (Tienes un tampón, padre?). Using a menstrual cup can be messy and impractical – in Navarre especially, most bathrooms don’t have soap or any kind of drier, let alone a bin. My advice? Be aware, be prepared, bring wet wipes.

2. Girl walks into a bar…

The day I walked with Lesmes, I was exhausted. My night at the hostel in Santo Domingo was the worst night’s sleep I had all Camino. A room with 19 other people; a group of Spanish cyclists who didn’t get in until 1am; a snorer who became legendary all the way to Santiago; a snoring-induced 3am mass-exodus from the dorm to the couches; and another group noisily departing at 5am. Tired didn’t begin to describe how I was feeling. Belorado was therefore the first of three occasions when I splashed out and on a private room in the lovely Casa Walala. €25 for a good night’s sleep? Bargain.

In my room, there was a handy little laminated guide offering advice on places to eat, drink, and see in Belorado. I was freezing, so when I saw the owners recommended nearby Bar Acha for its hot chocolate, I had my coat and boots back on before you could say chocolate caliente, por favor!

Approaching the café, I couldn’t see through its voile-curtain clad windows. I pushed the door open, and nine grey heads – I counted – turned to look at me. Oh god. I was the younger than everyone there by at least forty years, and the only female in the room. The men all quickly went back to their card games and to watching the bull fighting on the TV (yes, the scene really was this clichéd!), and I nervously approached the barman. I ordered my hot chocolate, and sat at the far back of the room, where I hoped not to draw too much attention. Probably used to the sight of errant pilgrims wondering into their natural habitat between the hours of end-of-walking and bedtime, unlike me, the men weren’t bothered in the slightest.

Gendered activities in a Belorado café

My hot chocolate came, and I prayed it would be cool enough to gulp. I held it nervously, trying not to look uncomfortable. Moments later, the waiter wondered over, and dropped something down casually onto the table in front of me. A menu perhaps? Oh no: he had presented me with a copy of Yo – a glossy women’s magazine with a woman holding a baby on the cover, and a bright pink background. Clearly this is what women are expected to do whilst the men play at cards.

Being a woman alone in a bar is never a comfortable experience, but one I got somewhat used to on the Camino. However, you are unlikely to see local women in the smaller villages doing the same. The moral of the story is: always bring a book.

3. Shit does happen

Peregrino and peregrina

Although I didn’t have any problems to speak of, a minority of peregrinas are less lucky. The hospitalera in Puente la Reina was particularly concerned to hear I was walking alone, and checked I had a whistle with me (I did). She told me that this time of year should be fine, but that in the Winter months, they occasionally got wind of a female pilgrim who had gotten into trouble. Similarly, a pilgrim from Korea was deeply concerned about walking on her own amid rumours of a rapist on the Camino that had spread amongst the Korean pilgrim community. For some incomprehensible reason, this group, who keep in touch through a WhatsApp thread, had decided it wasn’t worth reporting these multiple suspected incidents to the local police who were believed to be “inactive”. Unfortunately, violence against women happens everywhere, including in Spain and on the Camino. If you are worried, avoid the quiet ‘alternative’ stretches, or team up for safety in numbers. If in danger, it is worth contacting the Spanish police on 112, or through the Alert Cops app.

4. Dickheads are everywhere – even on the Camino

Despite all of the above, my Camino experience wasn’t entirely free of gender prejudice…

After my hot chocolate in Belorado, I met up with Bjoern for dinner, who brought along a South African friend. A tall, bulky man of Viking stature. The kind of man who looks like he could pick you up and crush you in his palm. Now, I’m always wary of men who won’t meet my eye – as if my looks could kill or turn them to stone. This was a warning sign to me early that evening.

The Plaza Mayor in Belorado

As soon as my friend went up to the bar, my parental status came under scrutiny: ‘Do you have children?’. No, I don’t.

‘Do you want children?’ I don’t know. Maybe.

He raised his eyebrow at me critically. ‘How old are you?’ I’m 33.

He widened his eyes and scoffed, seemingly delighted that his assumption had been correct.

‘Oh! Well, you’d better make your mind up!’ He took a big glug of beer and tossed another slice of chorizo into his ample gob. ‘What’s stopping you from having children?’

This was getting a bit sensitive for me, and I told him so. I calmly explained that I’ve only just finished my studies, don’t yet have a stable job, and that to take time out to have children now would be career suicide.

‘Oh! So you think a career is more important than people? You’re wrong. People. People are what matter. Children are what count. Fuck your career. Having children is more important. Not having children is selfish; focusing on your career is selfish…’

I cut him off, trying to smile. I explained that this was a very difficult subject for me, and that I’d rather not talk about it. Besides, there are both children and people in my life, I’m a teacher, after all.

‘Me, I have two children. I’m sorry, he said, but you have a bad attitude. I think that’s selfish! You should definitely talk about it…’

He was clearly up for a debate I was not willing to have. I repeated again that this was a difficult subject for me, and that I’d rather not talk about it. When he objected that I should, I got up, put enough money on the table to more than cover my share of the food and drink, and walked out. I managed to hold back the tears until I got round the corner, but by the time I got back to my room, I was half choking.

The next morning, I found a note had been pushed under my door, containing the cash I had left on the table and a deeply apologetic note from Bjoern. See, there are bad eggs everywhere, even on the Camino, but there are plenty of good ones, too.

Reyna, Clare, and Lily: three of the amazing women walkers I encountered on the Camino. I was delighted to bump into them on the trail on my way out of Belorado!

 

[1] Translation my own. ‘Si me semble bon […] que me faissez faire un habillement d’homme et me baillassez en la conduicte de mon oncle […]. Nous irons plus tost, plus seurement et a mains de despense’. Les Cent nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Franklin P. Sweetser (Paris: Droz, 1966), p. 171.

A Pilgrim’s Life for Me!

Waking up on the first morning after getting back from the Camino, I had no idea where I was. The 40 different rooms I had slept in over the last 42 nights were spinning around my head, and I lay there, trying to figure out in which one of them I had woken up. It was 4am, and just starting to get light enough that I could make out there was a window at either end of the room. This was weird. There definitely weren’t two windows in any of the rooms I had slept in in Santiago! Wait. I’m in a double bed – and there’s someone else in it! What the… Pete! It was Pete! It hit me like a botafumeiro swinging full pelt across the transept of Santiago de Compostela cathedral – I’m home!

Hostel life: home it ain’t.

I tried to go about my morning. Showering was OK, nothing too unusual there, but the next steps seemed totally unfamiliar. I stood and stared at the dozen or so bottles on my dressing table. All these products for – what? To make my skin “dramatically different”, “firm and smooth”. “Beauty shots” promising “satin perfection”. Really? Who was the person who had bought these things? Worse, who was the one who actually used them? It couldn’t be me – I was getting by just fine with only soap and sunscreen, and had barely touched the 15ml bottle of moisturiser I threw in my pack at the last minute – “just incase”.

Getting dressed was another mind-boggling experience. So many clothes! And all clean! Was there really a time when I needed more than three t-shirts? More than two pairs of trousers and a couple of warm layers? Why? I’d only needed a few items to see me through up to eight hours’ walking a day through snow and sleet, hot sunshine and icy showers; they kept me protected, comfortable, happy. What could more be needed for? My jeans felt constrictive and even my favourite socks no longer made me smile.

The simple life: just follow the yellow arrows.

There was one word to describe my mental state that first week back: shellshocked. Total disorientation, complete body shock, and sense of absolute purposelessness. It seemed I could no longer function without a yellow arrow showing me the way. The house felt too big, too clean, too ordered, the outside world hostile and unfriendly. No one says ‘hola!’, strangers don’t smile. With this also came a cool kind of openness on my part: the first time I made the two-hour drive to Oxford, I was much calmer behind the wheel than usual. Getting angry and irritated seemed like a waste of time.

One of the things people have wanted to know since I got back was what a typical day was like on the Camino. Looking back, each day was very different to the others — the scenery changed from mountains to flatlands to snow covered peaks to a bucolic springtime tableau; walking companions strolled in and out of my life, changing roughly weekly; my own strength and resilience grew daily… But nonetheless, every day followed roughly the same pattern. Here’s what a typical day on the Camino looked like:

7am. My watch vibrates gently on my wrist, waking me up. I fumble to turn it off, and hope I haven’t woken anyone else up in the dorm. I snooze it for 10 minutes. When it goes off a second time, I unplug my earplugs, peel the eye mask off my face, and am surprised to see that only three other beds are still occupied, everyone else having already left. Panicked, I grab my wash bag and the clothes piled up at the foot of the bunk. Brush teeth, wash hands and face with soap, pop in contacts. Slap sun lotion on face and chest. Done.

Pilgrim pit-stop. And an excellent place to leave a couple of walking poles.

Before leaving, pack bag. The absolute worst part of my day are the five minutes I spend leaning on my sausage-shaped sleeping bag, trying to shove it into its tiny carrier, then rotating it into a kind of misshapen canon ball as I tighten its four straps. I put all the ‘accessories’ (chargers, spare battery, ear plugs, sun lotion) in my accessories bag, that I then put in the accessories bag compartment of my bag. Pack up my book bag, wonder why I bothered to bring a book. Tell self it’s these kinds of things that have made my bag too heavy. Promise not to make the same mistake next time.

7:45am. Leave hostel, realise left walking pole behind and make swift return. Hunt for breakfast, which typically consists of coffee or fresh orange juice in a local café, served alongside two slices of toast with jam and butter or – heavenly discovery made too late on in the Camino thanks to Lindsay – tomato. Eat dry toast and daydream about how wonderful breakfast could be: pancakes with bacon, blueberries, and maple syrup… Bircher muesli with fresh berries and a swirl of nut butter… Porridge!

8:30am. Head out on the trail, already looking forward to lunch.

8:32am. Return to location of breakfast, retrieve forgotten walking pole.

8:33am. Walk. I tended to walk on my own first thing in the morning, and pick up another pilgrim at the first coffee stop or lunchtime. I only walked on my own all day on a couple of occasions.

Pilgrim pit-stop!

Throughout the day. Stop for coffee, fresh orange juice, beer, a little vino tinto, cake, or a bocadillo as and when the trail permits and depending on mood – or depending on fullness of bladder. Each stop provides an opportunity to scope out and get to know potential new walking partners, and to leave behind walking pole. Many pilgrim friendships were born over a cafe con leche and an exchange about blisters, the soreness of feet, or the gradient of that last hill. In-between stops, walk. With company, talk. Occasionally stop at cultural sites along the way — typically churches, nearly all of which are closed most afternoons, but can still be admired from the outside. When alone, occasionally remember part of purpose of coming to do the Camino was to think about life. Try to think about life. Realise all can think about is walking, so walk.

Cultural pit-stop: the C.12th church at Eunate, slightly off the main Camino route.

2-3pm. Start to seriously think about where to spend the night. Like most pilgrims, I roughly followed the schedule suggested by John Brierley, which I’d also used to plan a rough itinerary for the trip. So, most days, I simply had to merrily trudge along until reaching my destination. Where to stay though? In most towns and villages along the way, there was a choice of at least a couple of albergues (pilgrim hostels), pensiones (B&Bs), or hotels. In shoulder season, when I was in Spain, there was absolutely no need to book anything anywhere. Facilities between hostels vary: some offer breakfast and a pilgrim dinner in the evening; rooms can contain anything between two and 180 beds; not all have laundry facilities or kitchens; some have private rooms. The Brierley guidebook handily tells you what’s on offer, along with how many beds there are in each hostel, divided by how many rooms. I learned early on to avoid the first hostel reached in each town (which tended to be more expensive and crowded), and started to aim for the one with the smallest number of rooms, preferably one that also offered dinner, and was located in the centre of town or just beyond (making for an advantageous set up the next day!).

Downtime, hostel style.

3-5pm. Arrive at hostel. Take off boots and leave walking pole somewhere it will definitely be forgotten. Stagger to bedroom, scope out other residents for familiar faces (to be approached) and known snorers (to be avoided) whilst surreptitiously stretching in the corner. Collapse on top of plastic sheet for an hour or so and tend to feet. Think about showering/unpacking/writing/blogging. Read news and social media instead, and description of next day’s route in Brierley book, laughing at the “mystical” guidance offered.

5-6pm. After rest, realise am somewhat gross and rather sweaty; time for a pre-dinner shower. Pull out wash bag and travel towel, cables to recharge GPS watch and phone, sleeping bag, clothes for the night and next day, earplugs and eye mask. Leave items in piles at foot of bed. Shower together with dirty clothes, stamp on them and rub with soap to clean, then leave to dry somewhere the hospitalero won’t notice. After showering, put on underwear for next day and something clean – preferably clothes that can both be slept in and worn out for dinner, lessening amount of changing required.

Paella: a welcome variation to the menú peregrino!

6-7pm. Vino tinto! Time to hang out with other peregrinos and get the rounds in.

7:30-9pm. Menu peregrino (pilgrim meal). Nearly always: ensalada mixta (invariably: lettuce, onion, tomatoes, olives, sweetcorn, tuna) or lentil soup to start, some kind of grilled meat with paprika and boiled sliced potatoes, rounded off with either rice pudding, flan or – my personal favourite – a bowl of custard topped with soggy biscuit.

10-11pm. Lights out, wedge in earplugs, pull on eye mask. Buenas noches peregrinos! Please, no snoring.

Camino Frances: The Last 25 Kilometers

A Brea to Santiago de Compostela: 25km; 5h 18; 430m elevation gain. Route details here.

No matter how far you’ve walked on the Camino – whether you started at the Spanish border or even further afield, joined somewhere along the way, or simply walked the last 112km from Sarria (the minimum distance required to get a Compostela) – I dare anyone not to feel jittery when setting off on their last day, and making the final ascent into Santiago de Compostela.

The last stretch from Sarria to Santiago was a very different experience to the rest of the Camino for me. For one, most of the pilgrims I had met along the way had walked on, and in their place, dozens of new faces had appeared, clean, fresh, unfazed, excited. They carried smaller bags than the rest of us, and they were clothed differently too: all were dressed in brightly-coloured sportswear, rather than the more muted tones and practical clothing worn by the hardcore hikers, the women wore leggings. Suddenly, I found myself in a landscape of unfamiliar faces. There was a welcome exception to this though, as my brother Ben came to support me for the final leg of the journey. Apart from his clean t-shirts and as yet untanned skin, he had taken my grumblings about new pilgrims on board, and I was glad that he blended seamlessly into the group of well-seasoned pilgrims (especially carrying Pete’s ancient rucksack) !

I know how this trash can feels.

Despite a relatively sleepless final night in an albergue, we set off on the last morning in high spirits. We spent the first half of the morning pounding our way through the densely fragrant eucalyptus forests, singing songs from our childhood, and amusing ourselves by narrating the pilgrimage in the manner of David Attenborough.

This was great. It was quiet, it was peaceful, it was warm. The damp forest of pine and eucalyptus smelled incredible.

A forest trail of pine and eucalyptus trees

Not for long. As we came around a bend on the outskirts of O Pedrouzo, we were joined by a pack of a few dozen teenagers, laughing and talking loudly, and playing party tunes on a loudspeaker, which I guess was intended to add to their sense of merriment. Normally, I’d be glad to hear the Cranberries’ ‘Zombie’ blaring just about anywhere, but unfortunately, the merriment to which the schoolchildren were adding at this point was only their own, and annoyingly, they were walking at a very similar pace to Ben and I. ‘Slow down or speed up?’ we whispered. We shot past them, walking the next kilometre in well under 11 minutes.

Teenage kicks

We paused for lunch at a café in Vilamaior – the last opportunity for a break in a relatively rural setting before the final approach to Santiago. Ben was expecting an important call, so after munching down on my final bocadillo of the trip, I bid him farewell, and continued to meander slowly on my own so that he could catch up.

I got as far as the Monte do Gozo, the first point from which the centre of Santiago and its cathedral, the end point of the Camino, could be seen. I felt elated climbing up to the viewpoint, and completely giddy at the view – I had made it! Just another hour or so, and I’d be in front of that same cathedral.

View from the Monte do Gozo. The cathedral spires can just be made out to the right.

In The Santiago Pilgrimage, Jean-Christophe Rufin describes the arrival in Santiago as ‘not a journey back in time but one that takes the pilgrim back to the present, brutally and irrefutably’. I had held the vision Rufin creates of a ‘modern metropolis, with its unsightly monuments, superstores and motorways’ in my mind all along the Way, and was somewhat dreading this final approach, which I imagined would be every bit as horrible as he describes it.

Approaching Santiago de Compostela.

I’m not gonna lie – this was far from the most splendid part of the walk. But nothing could distract me from the butterflies in my stomach, or from the impending sense of achievement.

I remembered the request Paolo and Maria had made that I say a prayer for them when I reach Santiago. I didn’t like to tell them I wasn’t a believer, so would not be saying prayers for anyone, but I had promised myself that I would remember them. And so, I distracted myself from the advertisement boards and old buildings on the final approach by calling to mind everyone I had met along the Way…

• There was the first aubergiste in Saint-Jean, the first of innumerable people to wish me a ‘Buen Camino’, and who (much to Pete’s horror) suggested he should tie his walking boots differently.
• Next, the two Israeli girls and Andy and Michelle, whom Pete and I kept passing in turns on that first day.
• The Taiwanese girl and the Mexican guy with whom we shared the first meal, and who loudly shot past us the next day on the trail, never to be seen again.
• The Australian in Zubiri who enthused that the food in the Café del Camino was the best she had had the entire time she did the her Camino, and the other Australians whose bags had gone missing.
• The Mexican couple who greeted me warmly in Puente de la Reina, but thought the detour to the church in Eunate had been a ‘waste of time’.
• Elizabeth, an Italian girl who was suffering unbearably at the end of the fourth day, and who wasn’t sure she’d be able to continue. I was delighted to see her again in Sarria four weeks later!
• The three Australian girls, Clare, Lily, and Reyna, whom I’d met that same night, and went on to share many fun evenings with. I also met the US marine Nate that evening – he had since long finished his Camino – and the two German girls I’d go on to see a few times along the way.
• The two Korean girls who wore matching outfits, and thundered along listening to music, but who didn’t seem to be having a good time…
• Peggy and Tom, a Canadian couple, who were in constant high spirits, but who had disappeared from the trail a few weeks ago.
• The Korean man who sometimes walked with them, and who was the first person to tell me he was impressed by my walking pace!
• The Japanese man I saw nearly every day in the first three weeks, but who didn’t seem to speak any English, and who I never saw speaking to anyone. He carried a little notebook with a cartoon llama on it, which endeared me to him greatly.
• Susan #1. One of the most inspiring people I met on the Camino, who I first judged as a posh woman who didn’t know what she was getting herself into. This proved to be only part of the story, and I enjoyed spending many an evening and several cups of tea with this wonderfully kind lady.
• Stefan, who was looked after by Susan #1. A kind German chap, who was waiting to hear back on a job interview.
• Two Danish girls – of one of whom I saw far too much of by the side of a road one day, and decided they weren’t for me.
• Bjoern. At first, just another face in an albergue, but one with whom I went on to spend several fun days walking. Always smiling, always cheeky, always entertaining.
• The Australian girl with whom I had a wonderful lunch filled with feminist discussion, and who I was sorry not to see again.
• Kristina, from Germany, with whom I shared a moment of sheer joy when we were brought a plate of vegetables for dinner.
• Mijin, who was terrified of walking alone, and who I enjoyed walking with for half a day, whilst worrying that she would not let me go. Despite my fears, I never saw her again.
• Brigitte, a French mother of two, who was doing the Camino in the hopes of figuring out who she is.
• The maternity wear designer from Denmark, to whom I still owe a beer, and her friend, who was unable to walk on their first day due to a crippling migraine.
• Heather who had brought her mother, who didn’t speak a word of English, to do the Camino as a 59th birthday present. She cooked Korean dumplings and a sauce made up of foraged ingredients for a large group at the albergue in Santo Domingo de la Calzada.
• The German couple, travelling with an Australian and a Canadian who had met on the train to Saint-Jean, who included me in a big festive meal, to which I was sad not to be able to contribute.
• Lesmes. A taxi driver from Brussels with whom I had wonderful and illuminating conversations about the Chanson de Roland, the existence of God, life, the universe and everything.
• An unpleasant South-African, who had strong opinions on my duties to bear children, and spoke rudely to waiters. One of only two people whom I met and took a strong dislike to on the Camino.
• Cheryl and Phil, a couple from Shrewsbury, whom I cannot now remember meeting for the first time, but who cropped up time and time again, constantly drawing together a group of pilgrims for shared meals.
• Two Dutch women, P––– and Tina. I didn’t spend nearly as much time as I would have liked with the former; I want to be like Tina when I grow up.
• Stefano, a friendly Italian, who had very little English or Spanish, but with whom I still managed to share a few fun evenings.
• Emily, an American who shared an Airbnb with me in Burgos, who had been sleeping badly, and was terribly anxious about her onward journey. Another person with whom I’d have liked to spend more time.
• Jim, a friendly Canadian, whom I first met through Bjoern, and who I was certain would not finish his pilgrimage, he was in so much pain. He arrived in Santiago two days before I did.
• Anna, the only person I met who admitted to doing the Camino for religious purposes. We had a funny conversation about analysing dreams, and she explained to me what my father’s medal meant – this is a medal he had on his deathbed, and that I had carried with me.
• Olaf. A gentle German giant, who called me Sunshine.
• Another Italian Stefano, also with little English, who became infamous on the Camino for his snoring.
• Sharon and Walter, a Canadian couple. Walter always seemed to be a kilometre or two ahead of his wife, who would catch up, exhausted, only for him to immediately walk on again.
• Solène and François, a delightful French couple whom I was sure to see again, but never did.
• Susan #2. A knitting designer and recent widow, with whom I spent a memorable day and a half, sharing our experiences of grief, knitting, and walking. Another tremendous woman with whom I hope to keep in touch.
• Dave, Martin, and Lindsay, who I met very briefly on the side of a hill after meeting Susan #2, and dismissed almost immediately – anxious to get back to my conversation with the famous knitting designer! Little did I know that a week later, Martin would see me sitting outside a church, invite me to a picnic (that I would miss), or that I’d end up spending seven wonderful days walking with the two lads after Lindsay walked on. They would prove to be some of the best friends I’d make on the Camino.
• Susie and Nancy, who we thought would bore us to death with tales of their grandchildren over dinner in Calzadilla de los Hermanillos, but who proved to be great company.
• A couple from the North of England who were travelling with their daughter Eleanor. It was just the four of us in a room in Astorga, and I felt left out when the three of them exchanged goodnight kisses. I also envied Eleanor’s stylish and comfy jammies, and therefore hated her.
• Sheila and Dory, who was forced to dance with the crazy waiter at the inappropriately-named Las Delicias in Mansilla de las Mulas, and who were both later joined by another Anna.
• Pamela, a friend of Dave and Martin’s, with whom we had dinner in Foncebadón.
• Maria, who we found in tears at the Cruz de Ferro, having failed to set a picture of her late husband alight at the landmark.
• A girl who I shall simply name ‘Miss America’, who did not impress.
• The Canadian woman who was walking with an assistant dog to help detect her epilepsy fits.

Then came the few more people I met whilst walking with my brother: the German girl who had been ill on the final stretch the first time she walked the Camino, so had come back to repeat the final part of the Way; Tom, a teacher from the UK, who fancied doing a long walk over the Easter break, and booked his trip immediately after watching ‘Pilgrimage: The Road to Santiago‘; the Swiss man whose name I can’t remember, but who insisted on taking Ben and I out for dinner, telling us it was his birthday; the Irish trio who gave us €10 when we were hunting for lunch and/or a cash machine, then later refused to let us repay them.

The distraction worked: it took several kilometres for me to call all these characters to mind, and to remember their stories. Next thing I knew, I had crossed into Santiago, and was – I estimated – only 1.5km from the cathedral square. Ben had not caught me up, so I texted him to ask if he minded my finishing alone. ‘Nope go for it!’, he replied. And so I did.

Final approach!

As you get closer to the centre of town, the signposts that have guided you all along the Camino start to disappear. Pilgrims rush up to each other on the final approach and ask, desperately, in English: ‘which waaaaay is it!?’. This is a somewhat frustratingly confusing ending, but by this point, you have to follow your nose – or, rather, your ears. I followed the winding medieval streets up to a junction. Which way is it: left, or right? Without a scallop shell or yellow arrow to guide me, I decided to go right. A fingerpost: ‘Cathedral 330m’. At the far end of the street, I could hear a bagpipe playing. Its gallic tune grew louder as I made my way down a wide, sun-drenched street. Suddenly, I was surrounded by tall ecclesiastic structures, and I realised the building on my left was the side of the cathedral. The piper was now playing just a little way ahead of me, down several stairs, underneath a long archway – I recognised this as the final tunnel that would lead me into the cathedral square.

Passing through the final archway, into the Praza do Obradoiro.

I stopped to savour the moment and to take a few photos, and noticed that I was shaking. My Camino was coming to an end. Nearly 800km walked – to say I had come a long way seems futile, but I don’t just mean this physically. I have learned so much, met so many people, made so many wonderful memories. I was almost too terrified to walk the final few meters, wanting to hold on, to not let the experience end.

But I had to keep going. I walked through the tunnel, past the piper, into the cathedral square. I knew Dave, Kat, Andy, and Michelle were waiting for me, but I didn’t look for them – not yet. I walked to the centre of the square, to the point where all the Camino routes converge. I paused here, took off my bag, crouched down beside it, and looked up at the cathedral towers. How many pilgrims had made this same journey, stopped at this same spot, and looked up, overcome with emotion, just as I was? For how many had this been this a crowning achievement, a difficult task, one they had not been sure they would be able to complete? How many had left with new friendships formed, promises to keep in touch, and how many of them had really done so? How many resolutions were formed on these journeys? How did they change people? I had hoped the Camino would help me find answers to a few questions, but as I reached the end, I found only more questions. This isn’t a bad thing, not at all! The Camino opens you up: it puts you in unfamiliar places, confronts you with new people, which inevitably leads to new perspectives, and new questions… The Camino is not about the journey, nor is it about the destination, it’s about the people you meet along the way. Nowhere else will you meet so many likeminded people, who are so open to new friendships, or whom you can get to know so intensely in such a short space of time.

Before getting up and looking for my friends, I smiled, looked up at the cathedral towers, and whispered, to no one in particular, ‘thank you’.

Fin.