Pilgrim's progress in Spain

With a string of Spanish phrases and a pocketful of euros, I stepped out one mid-summer morning into the fresh mountain crispness of the Pyrenees. It was the beginning of a long journey, a famous one, made by millions of pilgrims over the last millennia and perhaps millions more in recent years equipped with all the paraphernalia of hi-tech hiking gear.
I don't think I was in the hi-tech category though, as I doubt a vintage four-wheeled pram with spring suspension pulled using a rubber bicycle tube would qualify. I'd found it in a ditch on my second day out and thought to myself that "The Camino by pram" could be a first. This was not quite the way I had envisioned my adventurous pilgrimage across the north of Spain to be, but the pram did have some great advantages. It was easy to pull, and it transported all my gear with a lot less effort than carrying it on my back.
The 'Camino to Santiago' (Pilgrims' Way) was created after the discovery of the tomb of St James the Apostle in Santiago de Compostela in 813 AD. Bishop Godescalo was the first to make the pilgrimage in 950 AD with a group of French pilgrims and I can guarantee they weren't pulling prams loaded with their belongings behind them.
By the 11th century, streams of pilgrims were descending on Santiago, and priories and hospitals were founded along the 750km route to offer hospitality. Today, the tradition continues with free or budget accommodation in the many refugios and priories spaced conveniently along the way.
From France, the Camino employs walking trails, farm tracks and roads to cross northern Spain, weaving through the provinces of Navarra with its sweeping plains of wheat, La Rioja, a land of vineyards, Castilla with its ancient castles and, finally, to the verdant green hills of Galicia, still lost in magic and myth.
From Roncesvalles, near the French border, I made my way down off the Pyrenees through woodland glades and small villages and into the 2000-year-old city of Pamplona. It was mid-afternoon and the city presented me with a labyrinth of medieval cobbled streets, empty of life except for some exhausted pigeons and two pilgrims loaded down with backpacks and bearing wooden staffs.
By design, I'd missed the famous "running of the bulls" by a week, but even so, rooms were hard to come by. Pension owners shook their heads lamentably at my enquiries while casting startled looks over my shoulder at my 'wheels', or didn't even bother to answer their doorstep intercoms. Surely I didn't look that strange? It was 3.30pm and most of Spain was dozing away the hours of siesta.
One could easily spend a week in Pamplona, sipping coffee in the ample plazas or feeding pigeons and watching lovers. But I had a long way to go and no intention of lingering. Leaving the city behind, I stepped once more into the baking gold Navarra countryside, washed in sunlight, like a half-finished Van Gogh canvas, brushed with fields of sunflowers and slashed by ribbons of vineyard greens.
After crossing the famous medieval pilgrim's bridge of Puenta de la Reina - a masterpiece of graceful arches reflected in dulcet pools below - it was back into the wheat fields where the hedgerows rang with birdsong, and on the horizon fortified villages sat poised on every strategic hilltop.
My days of careless wandering were becoming structured by the time I crossed into the province of La Rioja. Wake and eat, walk and rest, and camp. On the ever-hot pathways winding through the vineyards, the sound of my boots treading the gravel and the squeak of the pram's wheels was hypnotic. Each footfall seemed to be saying "now, now, live in the now..." The Camino was doing strange things to my head.
In Santo Domingo, after 190km of camping wild each night, I decided to make use of the refugios. Until now, I had not been able to use the camino's refugios as I had not been aware that you needed to obtain a pilgrim's passport in the Cathedral in Roncesvalles at the start of the walk to do so.  
In the Casa de la CofradÌa del Santo, I managed to obtain a pilgrim's passport and began to experience a new world of the Camino refugio, where life is truly international. Walkers from all over the globe ebb and flow, sprawling over dorm beds tending road-worn feet, mixing in social groups around the mess tables, queuing for showers and scrubbing socks in sinks. All share the common ground of the Camino and great friendships are easily made.
"Why do you make the pilgrimage?" I asked Andre Voz who had come all the way from Brazil. His answer was one echoed by many over the coming weeks; of life's crossroads being reached and decisions needing to be made, of looking for answers and dealing with ghosts.
Leaving La Rioja behind and entering Castilla y Leon on the wild highland plains, I came across the restored hospital of Sambol; now a tiny refugio run by an eccentric German by the name of Udo. I wondered about his solitary life in such a lonely place for it seemed exemplary of so many of the 'hospitaleros' who run the refugios along the Camino. His explanation was simple: "I've travelled the world, now the world can come to me."
After 350km, my life had been reduced to the basic necessities of walking my preordained path; seeking food, water and refuge come the night, and taking care of my body that was beginning to protest the daily punishment of the miles.
Blisters, joints and tendons strained under repetitious abuse. Every refugio was by now full of pilgrims tending their ailments. How many tubes of muscle relevant arnica gel had been rubbed into the service of my progress? I had lost count. The heat and the flat plains of Castilla y Leon were taking their toll.
On one hot afternoon, I noticed a fellow pilgrim well ahead on the trail. His gait seemed strange from that distance and I was alarmed to see him begin to zig-zag and even more alarmed when he toppled sideways and rolled into a ditch! When I helped him pull off his boots, I was horrified to see that the soles of his feet were raw with blisters, his socks soaked in blood. For him, this was truly a pilgrimage where personal comfort was forsaken.
From Ponferada, the Camino climbed steeply up into the hills, through the historic town of Villafranca del Bierzo, over the border into Galicia and on to the village of O Cebreiro. As I we arrived, a cold damp mist wrapped around the 'pallozas' (thatched stone houses) so typical of the region.
From the doorway of the ancient 12th century Church of Santa Maria la Real, I gazed out over a new world of valleys and hills, so different from the hot plains I'd crossed, and on towards Santiago. The end was almost in sight and the realisation brought a sense of both excitement and sadness.
The Camino has a way that entrances the walker and, by this stage of the journey, the spiritual nature had taken a hold. How could it not, staying in centuries-old churches, talking to people from all walks of life who had come for some sort of meaning to their lives?
Walking through rural Galicia, one could be traversing any century since medieval times. To say that time seems to have stopped somewhere in the 1700s is to state the obvious.

Fact File
Need to Know: From Madrid and Barcelona, there are buses and trains to Pamplona where local buses go to Roncasvalles. Take well-worn walking boots, a sleeping bag and a sleeping mat. Allow at least one month to complete the walk, walking an average of 25km a day.
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