A Community of Strangers

On 14^th March I will start an 800km walk along the Camino de Santiago from the French border to Santiago in Galicia.  I will be accompanied by my eldest Tom. In this blog, I intend to outline our journey to Santiago, by describing the stunning Castilian hills of deep copper plate through which the Ebro winds its  bow shaped way ,  pretty Basques villages that cling to the side of verdant Pyrenean mountainside of the texture of the external roughly-hewn walls of a solitary Romanesque church beside a lovely wood

I am not very accomplished at descriptive writing and much of the above was inspired by the Lets Go Cottaging in Northern Spain brochure of circa 1999.  However, I believe that I do take decent pictures and my photographs will hopefully provide a better representation of the lonely Baroque Monastery that barely manages to grasp onto the steep side of an unpolished silver plated mountain.

So I will not be walking in the footsteps of Wordsworth, Hardy or Machado. For me these landscapes merely provide a backdrop to what I consider to be the more interesting aspects of the walk, which are the people I meet along the way, the relationship that I have with my son Tom and the impact the walk has on my physical and mental well being.

I’m sure that somewhere in the archive of diocese of Santiago there will be a document that shows that in 2007; approximately 3.67% of the 65,459 people who completed the Camino and were awarded a Compostella were single, Roman Catholic woman aged between 20 and 45, from Belgium who arrived in arrived in Santiago on foot.

And indeed there is

http://peregrinossantiago.es/eng/post-peregrinacion/estadisticas/?anio=2007&mes=5

That doesn’t really interest me too much.  I’m interested in the stories of individuals who we meet along the way, learning something about their background and their motivation for undertaking a long and sometimes difficult walk through the Spanish countryside.  On a previous Camino I estimated that I met somewhere in the region of 500 people.  Some of these encounters amounted to little more than requesting a light from someone who happened to be stood at the bus stop to falling in love with an intelligent, compassionate, beautiful school teacher from Wuppertal. 

My daughter, Holly is always amazed by my capacity to obtain a good story out of the young bank teller at the local branch of Barclays.  In my experience people love to tell stories.  My father Brian has often said “everyone has a story to tell and your story is as interesting as that Winston Churchill”.  I agree with him to an extent; however I doubt if the conductor on the tram to Mallin Bridge could produce 5 substantial volumes of what happened during the Second World War and where he was at centre of many of the things that were happening and be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In my experience, pilgrims do come from a range of social, cultural and economic backgrounds and are all walking to Santiago carrying everything they need on their backs and often sleeping in basic shared accommodation.  Furthermore you often a similar distance as other pilgrims and frequently stay in the same places and over a period of time a community of strangers develops.  This community is constantly changing as people move ahead of you or fall behind you.  Sometimes you spend a day walking with someone walking through the outskirts of Pamplona and not see them until 2 weeks later as you struggle to make the final steep ascent of O Ceberio.  It’s an interesting experience being a part of a community of strangers that exists for no longer than the time it takes to reach Santiago. 

I don’t have a particularly close relationship with my son Tom.  He has stated to me that he count the number of occasions we have spent good quality time together over the past ten years on the fingers of one hand.  We both acknowledge that there is a need to strengthen the bond between us and this walk will hopefully provide us with the opportunity to do that.

The other aspect of the walk that interests me is the impact walking has on my mental well being.  I have a mental health condition and according to the Beck Depression Inventory I often achieve a score that puts me in the category of being severely depressed.  I experience prolonged periods of sadness where I feel hopeless and helpless, I struggle to find the motivation to get up out of bed to get showered, never mind cook myself a wholesome meal.  I have little interest in doing anything that extends beyond staying at the bedroom wall for hours on end.  There are massive feelings of anxiety where sleep doesn’t come easily; I have had a total of 4 hours sleep in the past two days.  There are occasions when my thoughts become swamped with the consideration of suicide.  This has had an impact on my physical condition and on my relationships with both friends and family.

There are also times when I feel euphoric, my level of self esteem and self confidence knows no bounds, and I discover the motivation and energy to walk miles, to socially interact with everyone I meet along the way and write pages. 

I haven’t managed my condition very well and for far too long would be in denial, being more concerned with masking my feelings and thoughts, rather than openly talking about them to lovers, friends, work colleagues or medical professionals.  Drugs and alcohol were good friends and helped to degree in taking the sharp edges away from what were possibly no more than teenage angst and feelings of melancholy.  I don’t want pity or sympathy; I want people to gain some understanding of anxiety and depression.