That sun-soaked morning I heard the world. Slowly we became a single flow, funnelled between a leafy stream and a railway embankment where graffitists for and against homosexuality, feminism and vegans had waged a war of words. Leaving the old riverside town of Pontevedra after breakfast, there was a Pied Piper vibe: dribbles of pilgrims – all toting backpacks hung with scallop shells – started converging from the medieval alleys and archways, from the covered market and the panaderías, from the Sanctuary of the Pilgrim Virgin (patron saint of the Camino Portugués). Human interaction became unavoidable on my last three days, when the coastal and inland ways merged. Some people put things off forever.” As she continued uphill, I realised I’d have happily chatted for far longer. Embarrassed, I told her of my own all-too-short journey. Counter to the norm, she’d started in Santiago and was spending six weeks walking to Fátima in central Portugal (the Virgin Mary allegedly appeared there in 1917). Later, down a quiet lane, I met an American peregrina coming towards me. My favourite was the tiny one-café cove of Praia Portiño, worth a pilgrimage in itself. I wondered how others coped: was there a polite knack for disentanglement? Or was I just a grump? I juggled this thought for the next several miles, as the Cíes Islands rose offshore and the beaches came thick and fabulous – some sweeping, some secretive.
![goodway flight planner v5 goodway flight planner v5](http://www.xpgoodway.com/images/icone-new-5.6-236.png)
I didn’t have the energy to decipher Runglish all day, but goodbyes are difficult on the Camino – we were clearly heading in the same direction. We parted ways after an hour or so, when she decided to go for a paddle in the sea. Marina said she chose the walk because she loves the sea and the variety: “If you walk a long way in Russia it stays the same but the Camino is always changing.” Together we strolled past a chapel attacked by Francis Drake, took a wrong turn along a bird-filled estuary and chatted work, life, Brexit and Putin. Walking from the handsome town of Baiona, where in unpilgrimlike fashion I stayed at the luxurious parador – a medieval fortress-cum-hotel on its own peninsula – I fell in step with a peregrina (pilgrim) from Vladivostok. Indeed, I saw few fellow walkers as I hiked out of Portugal, up to the border with Spain a few more as I traced the Galician coast. This means seaside days of relative solitude, then a home straight shared with many other pilgrims. Only recognised as an official route to Santiago in 2016, it hugs the Atlantic before joining the traditional inland Camino Portugués. I was tracing a small part of the Coastal Camino Portugués, which begins in Porto.
![goodway flight planner v5 goodway flight planner v5](https://cdn-blog.novoresume.com/articles/event-planner-resume/event-planner-resume-sample.png)
While most pilgrims follow the Camino Frances, which starts in the south of France, there are numerous “ways of St James”. It’s a journey as individual as the pilgrim who makes it.Īlso, it’s not one walk. But the Camino is so much more: a challenge, a ritual, an adventure, a calling a cleanse, a slog, a step closer to God. Not least because it’s barely a walk at all. The Camino de Santiago is a fascinating walk. When, a few hours in, a stranger gave me my first “Bom Caminho!” I realised: yes, I was already having a “good way”.
![goodway flight planner v5 goodway flight planner v5](http://www.xpgoodway.com/images/gw5_1024x264-960-1.jpg)
My only task was to put one foot before the other, like a moving meditation. But then I realised: actually, I’d come to just the right place.īecause as I left the Portuguese town of Viana do Castelo, passing the gulls and the terns, the windmills and the seaweed-pickers, my funk frittered out with every step lifted by the sea breeze, swallowed by the dunes. I beat myself up further this was wholly inappropriate for the “spiritual journey” that lay ahead. The sky was blue, the sun was blazing but, for piffling reasons, my brain felt as angry as the Atlantic by my side.
![goodway flight planner v5 goodway flight planner v5](https://www.x-plained.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Carenado-SR22-60.jpeg)
As I set off on my pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, I was in a tetchy mood.