Camino One Man's Journal: A Walk, a Pilgrimage, a Goal, a Test, a Lesson, a Discovery, a Love Story

By Robert Pook

Come for a hike along the most famous of religious pilgrimages in this wide old world.
The Camino de Santiago beckons one man and his wife.

Fly from Australia to France, catch the trains from Paris to St. Jean Pied de Port on the southern French border, the foot of the Pyrenees. Cross the mountains into the heartlands of Spain. Hike 850 kilometers to Santiago Cathedral in the West.

Simple.

Climb the mountains, traverse the flat stone centre. Cross a millennium of religious and human history. Walk in the footsteps of Charlemagne, the Romans, the Moors, the Templars, the peasantry on The Way of Saint James.

Walk, eat, drink, be merry. Close your mind and listen to your soul.

Join one man on his Camino, courtesy of his journaling of fun times, hard times, long times. Join him as he manages to fall more deeply in love with his wife and finds a new pathway for his future.

Told by a common man in an honest and forthright manner, personal reminiscence found in no guide book or tourist brochure.

Undertake the Camino de Santiago.

Open your mind and listen to your soul as an accidental pilgrim finds his Way. And prepare for very sore feet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Oct 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781779411419

Robert Pook

Robert Pook was born and bred in the London borough of Havering, England, in February of 1967.Raised and educated in his local town, Robert pursued a career as a cricketer before emigrating to Australia in 1990. So far, 32 years of a marvelous marriage and the nurturing of 2 sons has done little to deter his love of everything active. As middle age arrived, Robert felt a need for new, greater challenges. The Camino de Santiago Compostela became his ultimate goal. Pilgrimage reignited his desire to write his first book. A stand-in hiking partner to his wife, he becomes a seasoned dedicated hiker. He enjoys simplicity in life again, and through reflection in churches and bars along the Way he charts a new path of life.

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How Did We Get Here? The Start Line?

Back in those long ago, heady, happy, pre-covid days of 2012 my wife Kay and her good friend Annette decided to hike the Kokoda trail here on the Gold Coast of sunny Queensland, Australia. The Kokoda Challenge is an annually staged, weekend long hiking challenge organised in memory of Australian servicemen stationed in Papua New Guinea in 1942, fighting and supplying along a 96km mountain track battling formidable tropical conditions. Facing formidable Japanese troops into the bargain. The ladies challenge here on the coast was to complete a 96km hinterland path along varied steep, bare and otherwise demanding trails, contending with whatever weather conditions occur within a 39-hour timeframe. The Kokoda is brutal and unforgiving of the underprepared. You have friends meet you at staging points to feed and water you, but you must get all members of your team to the finish line, nobody left behind. Kay and Annie smashed the course, the two men completing their group were dragged to the finish.

My darling wife enjoyed that trek and all it entailed. Loss of toenails, blisters, chafe, the cold and wet, also the sleep deprivation. Enjoyed it so much that a new hobby was born. Long, hot beach walks or hikes in the tropical Gold Coast Hinterland became the new normal. Oftentimes I would be the last man standing on a Sunday morning and would be duly volunteered for companionship.

Dearest Annette was the one to come up with the ultimate hiking challenge. The two of them should plan for and conquer the Camino de Santiago one day. Kay was onboard. As a goal setting, limits testing, driven young woman, this walk, this pilgrimage as it was named was undoubtably her cup of tea, Kay’s jumbo-super-grande, cup of extra strong tea.

Annette’s husband got sick, her life changed completely, she had to go back to full time work in order to pay for her new home. Annette could not find a way to incorporate the challenge of the Camino in her life. Her world had been turned on its head. The Camino was all but a dream 6 years later, yet Kay would still talk of that perfect walking holiday in a country so far removed from our home of thirty years. The dream never faded for my wife as she hiked Australia and New Zealand with other ladies. The idea was always there, lurking in the shadows waiting for the light to again shine upon her Camino.

I am generally a fit, very strong guy who loves the challenge of lifting weights in the gym. I played cricket for a living when I was young and had played for a few years since turning fifty to prove to myself that I still had it in me. At senior age, playing competitive sport really flicked the switch of my desire to succeed. It also damaged those dry brittle tendons that help you sprint. At age fifty-three my days of competing against the youth of today were done, what’s next? You must have a drive to survive.

Discussing our senior years at Friday night drinks, confident in our overall health and vitality, Mr and Mrs Pook were looking for goal aspiration. My twenty years of suffering type-one diabetes were beginning to define me. Kay was adrift among groups of friends who were busily building careers, lifestyles, diverse barriers to long term sports programs. If something great was to be achieved it would have to be achieved by the two of us, setting our path, our goal, and our future achievements. The Camino was just that opportunity and I knew it, I could now see it as a distant challenge to be undertaken and embraced, a retaliation against my advancing years.

That 2018 Friday evening, sitting at a bar by the beach in Burleigh Heads, I told my wife that I wanted to register for the Camino de Santiago de Compostela with her. Not just go as her second wheel, not as a coaxed companion, to go and affirm our partnership, as a couple.

Giving Kay a green light is like waving a red rag to a bull. The powers of the world wide web, the knowledge of friends who dreamed of Camino and the elbow grease of a 5-foot 2- inch ball of fire set the world ablaze. Before I could take a breath and get my head around the personal cost of commitment to time and effort ahead, my motivated partner had researched the best administrators for our trip, had nailed down the premium dates to walk and had cast her eye over flights and necessities. Kay had even sourced the Bible of the Camino for pre-planning, the all-knowing, all seeing, Brierley Book, A Pilgrim’s Guide to The Camino de Santiago. The ancient pilgrim path also known as The Way of St. James.

I had bought a pair of new hiking boots.

We paid a deposit on a seven-week adventure. A plan to fly into Paris, train trip down to the southern French start line, undertake around six weeks of pilgrimage across the Pyrenees into Spain. Through mountains, across the bare flat barren centre, traverse rural expanse, to a distant cathedral in the west. R&R for five days and fly home from Madrid.

Nothing could stop this pair of travellers on a mission.

Nothing that had ever been experienced could stand in our way.

Shame about that Chinese flu that was causing concerns around the globe.

Everybody has their recollection of the lockdowns, the masks, the jabs, the closures, the fear. Kay and I waited, we walked, we talked, we maintained enthusiasm for the task at hand as planned. Gym closed for a while as did the opportunity for long distance walking in those covid pandemic riddled forests, but having a knack for fitness got us as prepared as you could be for life post covid i.e., world’s end. The day would come when borders would open, when planes would dust themselves off and get back in the air.

Since ending my cricket endeavours in England in 1990 and migrating to Australia I had struggled tremendously to find big personally rewarding life goals. Marriage, children, and family plus work life are obviously an undertaking of immense proportion requiring a map to be followed, setting boundaries and developing plans for growth. These came organically, naturally though. A cricket career is off centre, the Camino was another off kilter, abstract effort.

The only times that I have been forced to set a real-time learning and development goal after leaving cricket and England; entirely out of my comfort zone, came in the year 2000, the new millennium. A brief separation caused by my depression and anxiety that year sent me tumbling toward rock bottom. Faith in good deeds and good actions, faith in opening my mind to improved belief structures and adherence to disciplined life were my saviour. Depression requires constant vigilance along with sometime psychological intervention. That same year, most probably because of ten years stressful and consuming work commitment, my body reacted adversely to that negative life, I developed type-one diabetes. A curse of a disease, most probably caused as my white blood cells attacked the insulin developing ‘T’ cells on my pancreas in a stressed, tired, broken-down, mistaken reaction to a virus. Type-one diabetes is a fatal flaw. To live long and healthy you must live a life of discipline, committed one hundred percent to a new lifestyle. Injections of insulin each mealtime and overnight must be taken to maintain the correct level of glucose in my blood. Too much insulin and I risk brain fade, fatigue, bad decisions and can lead to sleep and coma resulting from lack of glucose in my blood delivery systems. Possible dementia. Too little insulin will leave too much glucose in my blood, clogging blood vessels with a plaque of residual sugar which causes cell decay for extremities threatening loss of toes, leg or an arm, eyesight and the extreme result of heart disease and premature death. To aid my correct insulin delivery I live a life of calorie and carbohydrate counting as well as fat and protein targets. Meal planning and structure are a boring repetition of amounts that I am aware that I can medicate around. Exercise has become a life enhancing act rather than personal gratification and a lifestyle boost.

These two major life goals are not a chosen enhancement to an Australian life. They are a must-do or die-prematurely discipline. Not a chosen attainment. Pilgrimage was what I needed. A challenge alien to nuclear family life. Something to just go out and get.

Camino pilgrimage is an ideal way to enjoy new horizons whilst maintaining my health. Camino pilgrimage is a freely taken personal choice, made for the happiness of myself, my marriage, my contentment in life, for base health and a joyous, accomplished life ongoing. Camino will allow me to drop into a way of life so foreign to me both religiously and culturally, take time to observe and study the differences and through journalling, take away a fully formed memory of the good and the bad with ready reference to commitments that I make toward changing my way of life for the better.

Sitting in a pool bar in some exotic spot cannot be expected to bolden my spirit. It will not make me proud of an achievement during my time away, it will barely open my mind to the prospect of a life lived under differing cultural ideals. A beach holiday will help me sleep longer, crack out a tan and consume foreign food and beverages whilst observing the local culture as I day trip to some tourist cultural destination. For this man it was not enough to simply rest and selfie, I wanted to grow.

In the years that we waited upon the green light for our Camino our focus did not grow dim. A physical task for me is an ultimate challenge. I will plan, in my own way, prepare myself to a point where I have confidence in my physical self when matched against the contemplated demands ahead. The Camino is a straightforward challenge of more than 800km distance to be walked in any given number of days and can even be broken down into daily distances to be completed. A way to be your best.

The bodies’ reaction to the constant wear and tear encountered when walking over 800km are neither plain nor simple. More of a mystery to me was the possible effects on personal piece of mind, the mental focus required and the isolation within a wide-open foreign countryside. Social contact has never been a necessity in my life, small talk even a burden, but only having one person to discuss feelings, fears and plans with, could certainly test my fortitude, even though Kay is my wife, my best friend, my confidante.

Nobody can be guaranteed a Camino without physical breakdown. A blown knee coming down some steep descent, a broken wrist falling on slippery slate stairways or a disc in the back that was just waiting for one last jerk to bulge and herniate, shin splints, achilleas or knee or hip tendonitis, twisted ankles, bursitis in the foot, you cannot be completely sure of ultimate success no matter how many miles you’ve worked into your new boots. Blisters will happen, chafe perhaps and a gloom brought on by long distance fatigue can break the most determined of minds. I was willing to roll the dice even though I suffer such deep depression when I fail to attain a goal. Better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all. No blooming way I’d contemplate not making the distance, the power of positive thinking. My achilleas tendon had mended, my foot bursitis and neuroma now treated and suitably prepared, my diabetes in good order. I would be strong enough and trained for cardiovascular effort to push up those climbs and nimble enough to shuffle down the other side. I was determined to have a metabolism capable of calorific proficiency and a mind set of pushing ever onward.

And I was gonna love every second, even if it killed me!

Me and Kay, the Pooks, smashing goals.

Monday 5th September – Paris Arrival

The flights Australia to Paris? Pretty darned good I’d say. Just long, ever so long, and uncomfortable beyond belief for anybody over the age of 50 who has somehow paid a couple of thousand dollars to sit bolt upright on their bony old backside, collapsing every lumbar, thoracic and cervical disc of their sclerotic spine whilst bending old inflammatory knees at right angles in an act so unnatural for a human as to be called torture when forced on victims in every past era. Passengers of advanced age first begin to creek, then solidify, dry out and seize. As if your yummy inflight meal had been concrete custard. I am forever grateful for the sleeping pills that knocked me out for most of the Brisbane to Dubai leg.

Before take-off, instead of handing out warm towels there must come a day when cabin crew become dispensing chemists for long distance flights. Is a first-class cabin bed at $20,000 better value than $5.00 worth of Valium? Especially after you sit on the tarmac for 2 hours after an ‘owl strike’ in Brisbane that needed engineering clearance for us to be cleared to fly. An owl strike? A pilot strike yes, a cabin crew strike possibly, an air traffic controllers strike most definitely. But grounded due to an owl strike? Hardly.

Constant sleeping helped pass the hours as this old aged and diabetic, gym junky physique has become an expert in aching horribly. There is barely a moment of economy class flight to be enjoyed bar the act of landing, there is nothing as bad as kids on a plane, not even snakes on a plane? Then there is Kay, wife and master, whose water bottle exploded as she popped the sipper in the cabin pressure, couldn’t open any item, couldn’t sleep but slept more than me. Every time I shut my eyes a kid wailed, every time Kay dozed, silence. One day perhaps airlines will offer child free flight options. A journey of 1,500,000 steps starts with thirty to forty hours of sitting down interminably.

We hit the streets of Paris by 5pm on a warm night as only a pair of travel freaks could enthusiastically do, after thirty-four hours spent travelling 17,000kms. We took a stroll through Les Halles to Notre Dame and were shocked by the immigrant neighbourhoods and felt more unsafe than in Harlem due to the racially tense divide, the stares, looks and demeanour. As per usual a stroll went forever with side jaunts and French map disasters plus sites that caught the eye, disliked a lot of it, embraced the Seine and much of the architecture. I did not remember the Eiffel Tower being a million miles from Notre Dame but for us it was, aka, we hit/surpassed our 20,000 steps on this rest day, a day taken to ensure that our luggage or ourselves caught up after post covid personnel chaos in the airlines.

Everybody in transit, from the Paris Metro to Dubai Airport, from Australian traffic lights to the Champs Elysée is on Instagram or another cursed screen. A few conglomerates rule the world of communication and entertainment and regrettably rule the world of ‘learning’ through mobile phones. On any mode of transport, in any bar, on the streets at least half of the people are brain deep in Instagram/Facebook/TikTok/maps/TripAdvisor/text and talking hands free in public FFS!

My dark mood, due to sleep deprivation? Travel fatigue? Feet aches? Frustration at another Pook over-walk? My mood horrible, as we finally appreciated our ‘must see’ on every visit, Eiffel Tower. It was as much a cheapened-metal-whatever as I remember but was also still the romantic magnet for society. A tantrum was a fifty/fifty bet when, as we walked into view of the base, wham! Storm, rain, thunder, lightning and fleeing of all concerned, even the tacky vendors (still offering umbrellas). We secured photos with Kenny Koala and left. Café patrons laughed as two drowned rats sheltered under their awnings whilst trying to decipher the best return journey in French language.

Caught the metro home having never used it during my past three visits, cheap and easy, especially after a walking odyssey of Pook proportions ended only by a rainstorm. So surprised at the two of us making a wise, city travel decision. Kay wanted dry clothes from the room before we sought a meal at 9pm. More steps ensured.

Late dinner in our slum area that we’d sworn to avoid. It was rubbish food and service, but the alcohol went down a treat, and as for sitting in the shop front, at a little red check tablecloth corner table, hiding our valuables, watching the dregs of society pass by, it was great, and it was foreign. Bedtime, no idea, I died as I hit the pillow. Paris was dead to me. I disliked the city as much as I disliked what I saw of civilised societal decay.

Tuesday 6th September – Paris to Bayonne

A good, yet fitfully excited sleep. Awake at 7.30am and determined to find a happy Paris memory to take away with us.

Kay took us in the opposite direction on exit from the hotel into a blue-sky morning and life was ‘Parisienne’ lovely. Family groups pass on their way to school drop off. Workday commuters stride toward the office. Bread and milk errands. Great area, lovely espresso in a café street front seat, then over to Ten Belles, an Aussie inspired coffee shop that felt like a European blueprint for superior long black coffees and ham and cheese rolls of seeded sourdough. All at once, I couldn’t have been more content with life, 180 degrees about face from twelve hours previous.

Kenny Koala made his next appearance at our kerbside table of Paris perfection, waiting with us as we were contemptuously served, in Parisienne style, our espressos at Au Comptoir. Kenny is the family travel companion. A world traveller of such long standing and great companionship, he has visited more countries than I. Kenny has posted Facebook selfies from more foreign cities than yours truly. Long before the iPhone camera was a thing, Kenny had been captured on film as we crossed the oceans. What better way to engage your bored children in a place of great tourism beauty than to send them off to capture a picture of Kenny on his own personal vacation? For near on two decades now, Kenny initially accompanied our family on holidays, now as we have aged and begun to experience life separately, Kenny accompanies each of us. From family catamaran journeys off Waikiki beach to schoolboy Argentine rugby tours, from Washington lunch bars enabling a Pentagon visit invitation from strangers to Japanese cultural tours with grandparents, Kenny is always there. He even sat in the dressing sheds at a National Rugby League Grand Final back in 2015.

I strolled those nicer neighbourhood streets in the early morning taking some time attempting to promote quaint Paris memories before heading back to L’Est for a shower, Kay had the bags packed, we were quickly off to catch our train to Bayonne via Gare Montparnasse. Which we eventually discovered no thanks to the French communicational way. No help, no info at the station. Thousands of travellers looking befuddled.

A speeding bullet train of strange French efficiency has us speeding south across hundreds of miles of country to Bayonne. Arrival, four o’clock on the dot.

To leave Paris behind is encouraging yet worryingly there is more France to