Valiente: A 10 Year-Old's Adventure on the Camino De Santiago

By Adrián Cercadillo Silverthorne

Valiente is a ten-year-old boys account of his experiences walking the famous Camino de Santiago, also known as St. Jamess Way.

It is a story of perseverance, stamina, and determination as he traverses eight hundred kilometers of wet and misty mountainous terrain and blisteringly hot plains from Roncesvalles, on the border of France, to Santiago, in the northwest of Spain.

Since the Middle Ages, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world have hiked, cycled, or horse-back ridden to Compostela, the field of the star, and many books have been written about it, but rarely has such an experience been seen and told through the eyes of a child.

During five adventure-rich weeks, Adrin learns history, local traditions, self-reliance, and responsibility and meets people from all walks of life who share their stories and their culture. He tolerates heavy rain, sore feet, pulled muscles, heat rashes, and the weight of a backpack on his back cheerfully and with fortitude.

This inspirational book describes the adventure and accomplishment of a true valiente!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jul 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504946414

Adrián Cercadillo Silverthorne

Adrián enjoys hiking in nature, anything to do with motors and cars, and playing Minecraft on his computer. He has studied the violin since he was six years old and the guitar since he was nine, and his tastes in music varies from classical to dubstep and techno. He also enjoys reading, especially dystopian science fiction, and his main sport is speed skating, which he hopes to do semiprofessionally in the future. When he’s older, he wants to be a mechanical engineer.

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© 2015 Adrián Cercadillo Silverthorne. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/14/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4639-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4640-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4641-4 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

A little about me.

For my mum and dad.

Acknowledgements

I want to thank first my mum for the idea of taking me to do the Camino with her and her encouragement and confidence in me from the very beginning. And also for helping me put together this book.

Thanks to my dad for helping pay for the five weeks on the road and for driving all the way from Soria and Madrid to visit us along the way. Also for being there with me at the end in Santiago. And thanks for the knife papá!

I also want to thank Gramps and Lollie for their generous donation and encouragement towards my adventure and to Nanna for her continuous love and support in everything I do.

And last but not least, I want to thank all the amazing people I met on my journey for teaching me so many things about their culture and for being so generous and kind and especially for treating me as an equal. And also for letting me mention them in this book.

Without any of these people my adventure on the Camino de Santiago, and this book, would not have happened.

Foreword

Many books have been written about the Camino de Santiago, also known in English as the Way of Saint James. It is a route that has been travelled by Christian pilgrims since the Middle Ages and today thousands of people still undertake the hundreds of kilometres for many different reasons, whether it be a religious pilgrimage, a personal challenge or simply a desire to travel to new places. Books have been written about its history, culture, the routes, even the architecture. There are books on preparation for the Camino, practical guides and personal growth - a wealth of information available for those interested in finding out more.

But rarely do we see the experience of walking its length through the eyes of a child. We discovered it was not a common thing for children to walk the hundreds of kilometres to Santiago, traversing mountainous terrain and blisteringly hot plains for so many consecutive weeks and for so many kilometres a day. We encountered very few children on the walk. We did see two young Italian boys aged about 7 and 8 footing it with their father from Pamplona. I am not sure if they completed the journey or not as we lost touch with them on the way. There was also a 6 year-old girl who seemed to be coping very well but had a pushchair to jump into whenever she tired of walking. And then there was a family of Spanish teenagers who were just walking a part of the Camino.

It comes as no surprise then that so many people we met were so enthusiastic upon seeing Adri, loaded up with his backpack, cheerfully walking anything between 15 and 31km a day, sometimes even more when you take into account wandering around cities and towns and heading down the occassional wrong route.

From the very first day of our trek, Adri was called valiente and from then on it became a familiar call from cyclists as they whizzed past, from pilgrims we met everyday and locals wherever we stopped. The word doesn’t translate well into ‘brave’ because, for me, that suggests a courage in the context of fearlessness, whereas ‘valiente’ implies strength, stamina and perserverance - something which definitely defined Adri well during our five weeks on the road. Hence the title of this book.

Even though I was confident my young son would be able to accomplish something as challenging as this because he has always enjoyed walking in nature on our many hikes, I was a little apprehensive that he would have days when he didn’t feel like walking or missed his friends or video games or his father too much and that the whole thing would just be too overwhelming for him. But he constantly surprised and amazed me with his tenacity and enthusiasm. And not once did it cross his mind to quit and go home.

When I walked the Camino de Santiago in 2000, I had a conversation with a fellow pilgrim about what a great experience it would be to do this with your kids. We discussed the ideal age to attempt it and decided that 10 would probably be an age when they were strong enough to walk long distances without tiring too much, old enough to appreciate the people and places they were experiencing and mature enough to know what was expected of them when it came to being self-sufficient and responsible, and of course, entertaining enough to want to walk with them everyday!!

Fortunately Adri was all those things and more. I couldn’t have wished for a better walkmate - he was tireless, funny, told great stories, helpful and most of all, incredibly social. He made friends with literally everyone he met. He walked faster to catch up with someone ahead or slowed down so he could start a conversation with someone behind. He would open with, Hi, where are you from? If they looked Spanish, he would ask in Spanish and the rest he would ask in English. Most people he spoke to knew one of the two languages, but occasionally he’d get, je ne parle pas anglais ou espagnol.

He met people from all parts of Europe, South Korea, Indonesia, Hong Kong, USA, Canada, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Ireland, Scotland and England, Siberia, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Egypt and even an 81 year old man from China. And almost everyone had something interesting about their lives to share. He charmed everyone he met and became quite famous on the Camino with many people coming up to us and saying, You’re Adrian, I’ve heard all about you, as his reputation ran along the lines of pilgrims.

When I suggested to Adri that he write up a journal