Love on the Way: A Camino Diary

By Steve Devereaux

This is not another guide to The Way of St. James. It's a day by day account of what it really feels like to hike the Camino de Santiago. It tells one man’s story while also including many typical pilgrim experiences along the way, but with little reference to religion or history and a lot more emphasis on the joy and pain of walking 500 miles through the north of Spain. If you are thinking of hiking the Camino, this diary will give you an honest and open impression of what you might find. And if you have already walked The Way of St. James, it will give you an opportunity to reminisce about a wonderful experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Devereaux
• Release date: Dec 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310182419

Steve Devereaux

I first started backpacking in 1986, and over the following two decades I made several trips totalling more than five years on the road, and including travels in the USA, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Pacific Islands, Australasia and South East Asia. Gringo Latino Books was born in 2005 with my first book, Half-Time, because I couldn’t find a publisher for my manuscript, so I decided to do it myself. However, the book came about as a result of a near-fatal accident, and it actually began as a ‘thank you’ letter to my father for his support during my recovery in hospital. The second, revised, edition of this book came out in 2014, along with Half-Time: The Movie. Since then I have been working on a short story about The Way of St. James – a 500-mile walk through northern Spain – and, finally, I have published under the title of Love on the Way - A Camino Diary. For more information, please visit the Gringo Latino Books Facebook page.

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Love on the Way

A Camino Diary

by

Steve Devereaux

Published by Gringo Latino Books 2015

Copyright Steve Devereaux 2015

All rights reserved

This is not a love story.

It’s about two lives running parallel for a while

with common aspirations and similar dreams.

The Motorcycle Diaries, Che Guevara, 1952

Preface

The first time I walked The Way of St. James was at the end of the summer of 2012. It was a fantastic experience that I simply couldn’t forget and as a result, two years later, I decided to do it again. However, even though it started out in the same way as before, with a wild weekend at the Notting Hill Carnival in London followed by a flight to the south of France, the Camino I found the second time around was very different.

‘You don’t choose a life, Dad. You live one.’

Emilio Estevez in The Way

Day Zero: Tuesday 26th August

London – San Jean Pied de Port

I woke up very late, so I rapidly got dressed, downed a cup of coffee in a single gulp, grabbed a slice of hot toast and said farewell to my hosts, Simon and Jess. Then I raced off to catch a train to Stansted Airport, where I passed through the security check without any of the problems I’d had there in the past. Before starting my first Camino, one of their officers had confiscated my hair conditioner, my mosquito repellent, a bottle of sunscreen and my underarm deodorant.

Upon touch down in Biarritz, I met a young lady from London called Natasha who was taking a week’s holiday to walk the first part of The Way before starting a new career as a personal trainer. On the bus ride into town, we were joined by another British pilgrim, named Andy, and he was also at a changing point in life because he’d just given up his job to go back to university. Consequently, on reaching the town centre, we all went to the train station together and bought tickets for a train to a village in the mountains called San Jean Pied de Port.

We spent the next two hours sitting at a table in the sun outside a café near the station, drinking beer and chatting while we waited for our train. A German lad called Joe soon came over to sit with us, and he was a student who was planning to walk the Camino before continuing with his studies. Like many Germans of his generation, he spoke English much better than most Americans do, so we all had an interesting chat about the challenging hike we were about to undertake. Then we boarded a train packed with an international mix of pilgrims and travelled through the French Pyrenees to the start of The Way of St. James.

On reaching the Basque town of San Jean, we didn’t need to join the other passengers on the ‘race’ to the pilgrim office to get a Credencial del Peregrino (a pilgrim passport) because all four of us had already managed to get them before leaving home. Instead, we started looking for somewhere to spend the night and, following two or three failed attempts, we found a hostel with four empty beds at seventeen euros a head – pretty expensive for the Camino but typical of prices in this tourist town.

After checking in and getting our pilgrim passports stamped, we dumped our backpacks in a disorganized dormitory and went to take a wander through the streets of this medieval village. At the end of a pleasant stroll, we had dinner at the same place I had dined at two years earlier, where the food was just as good as I’d remembered it to be. On finishing our evening meal, we eventually made our way back to the albergue and I had a quick shower before climbing into bed. Then the lights in our dorm went out at exactly ten o’clock, leaving me to finish writing my travel diary by torchlight.

Day 1: Wednesday 27th August

San Jean Pied de Port – Roncesvalles

(26 km, 6 hours)

Early the next morning, the keenest pilgrims started leaving long before the sun had risen, but we all stayed in bed until just before eight: the usual ‘kicking-out’ time at most of the albergues on The Way. We quickly got dressed, packed our things and had some breakfast in the hostel kitchen. Then we began the five-hundred-mile hike along a well-walked path that led to the ancient city of Santiago de Compostela.

There were two possible routes for this particular stage. On my first Camino, a recent knee injury had forced me to take the less demanding one through the valley, but this time we chose the more challenging mountain-top trail and, without a doubt, it was the toughest stage of the entire pilgrimage. It started with a gruelling two-hour climb to a crowded café, where we stopped for a snack and a well-deserved rest. Then we continued on our ascent along an uneven and stony path filled with an endless procession of pilgrims, although Andy was starting to struggle so we also took plenty of breaks.

On reaching the peak, we sat down for a picnic lunch and were joined by an old Irish fella who claimed to know all about The Way of St. James because he had walked it once before. However, it soon became clear that he’d only hiked from the town of Sarria, which is the minimum distance you need to cover in order to claim a Compostela (a certificate of completion) and also no more than the final seventy miles. Even so, he eagerly gave us plenty of advice on footwear, a subject frequently discussed by many Camino hikers, and due to his wisdom I ‘christened’ him Two Socks, reviving my old habit of giving a nickname to some of the pilgrims I met along the way.

This trail was very busy, unlike the one through the valley, where I had seen less than a dozen other walkers during my whole day’s hike. Nevertheless, I was still very happy I’d chosen the ‘real’ Camino this time, although I had no idea of the pain and suffering this decision would cause me over the days and weeks to come.

Once we had begun the descent, I went ahead at a faster pace and found the final hour to be extremely hard going. It was an incredibly steep path