I’m lying face down in the bottom rung of a Spanish bunk bed at 2:30 in the afternoon, contemplating every decision that got me here. It’s hot and above, I can hear Teaghan tossing and turning to escape the thick beam of sunlight that has snaked its way through the heavy hostel curtains, you know, the ones that never quite seem to close all the way.
Next to me, a pilgrim couple is quietly unpacking their bags, tearing through a month’s worth of memories and miles walked in search of something I can only assume is as trivial as shower shoes or a sleeping bag liner. They dig through clothes and dirty socks, carefully piling them on the mattress beside me before diving back into the seemingly endless search, all the while trying not to disturb us. And even though I am still awake, I’m too tired to tell them otherwise. I just hope they find whatever it is that they’re looking for.
Because I’m not sure I did.
For 36 straight days, we’d woven our way across Northern Spain, stopping in at towns I never knew existed and sleeping in hostels that have somehow managed to subvert Google Maps. Most days, we walked with nothing but the sound of our boots grinding against gravel and the occasional ‘Buen Camino’ from another traveller on the track. Then we reached Sarria.
Suddenly, every coffee shop had a lineup for the bathroom and our once desolate trail had transformed into a heaving mass of movement. Fresh faces appeared by the hundreds in clean shirts and pristine boots, with un-blistered ankles and backpacks that still carried their swing tag. The late-stage pilgrims had arrived.
There was something infectious about it. These travellers were experiencing the Camino the way I had at the beginning, wide-eyed and full of wonder. They stopped for photos of things I’d long given up on noticing, ordered beers at lunch and treated each village like it was something to be discovered. At the breakfast table, you could hear them talking about their revelations and what their short time on the Camino had already revealed to them.
And part of me resented that.
This idea that in ten days, these painfully optimistic and audibly excited pilgrims could achieve what I had failed to do in 36. Even as we walked into Santiago on that final day, I kept holding faith that my life-changing lesson was coming. It didn’t.
Beautiful though it may be, the Cathedral is…just a cathedral. I was looking for something more than that. I wanted a revelation.
What the trail offered instead was something far less exciting; the daily challenge. Every morning, you choose to get up. Every day, you decide whether you’re willing to keep moving. Travel, I’ve come to realise, is much the same.
Lying here in this hostel bed, staring at the gap in the curtain that somehow seems to keep growing, I’m not quite sure what to feel about my whole Camino experience. It wasn’t always easy, it wasn’t always fun, but I wouldn’t change it. I’m not sure if I’d do it again, but I wouldn’t change it.
Beside me, my pilgrim friends are still rifling through their backpack. More shirts emerge, a few pairs of socks, a bum bag with a broken strap and then suddenly, the search ends. They’ve found it. I look over and see them staring at their pilgrim passport, cautiously examining every stamp, quietly reminiscing about the places they’d been and the people they’d met.
I can’t help but notice how empty my pilgrim passport is by comparison. To be fair, no one mentioned to us that the stamps are the only way of proving you actually did the Camino, so for the past five weeks we haven’t been overly concerned with getting them. There are a few here and there, but our passports have far more blank pages than the average pilgrim, almost as if our journey has not yet finished.
I pull myself upright from the bed, Teaghan is already awake and getting her things ready to head to the Pilgrim’s Office for our final bit of admin, and we make our way to the albergue reception, where our host is waiting for us, stamp in hand.
And as we wait for him to ready his ink, my eyes wander blankly across the wall behind him, littered with posters of bag transfer options and pilgrim meal deals, before resting on the one flyer that isn’t an advertisement. There in Comic Sans font and poorly Blu-Tacked to the wall, sits my revelation.
”Blessed is the pilgrim who understands that the journey begins when it ends.”
Funny, isn’t it? For 36 days and 786 kilometres, I’ve been asking for a sign and here, in the final albergue on the final night, it arrived. I just never expected it to be laminated.
This is an edition of The Camino Diaries, an ongoing series from MADE Journal founder and editor Nicholas Hall about his experience walking the Camino de Santiago. The weekly columns are matched with a daily social media series that sees him release one frame from the road, exploring the process of walking 800 kilometres from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in southern France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Each day, he shares honest reflections from the trail, the people he meets, the struggles of the journey, and the moments that slowly pull him back to himself.
