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[Walking through rural Portugal] |
I am walking. Just walking.
I did it yesterday; I hope to do it every day that God sends. Under a clear
blue sky, dressed in regular walking clothes, wearing regular walking shoes,
carrying a regular day-pack, I am simply putting one foot in front of the
other.
But every now and then I
hear a small clinking sound, almost a ringing. A scallop shell strapped to the
back of my pack intermittently knocks against a buckle. And it reminds me that
I’m on a pilgrimage. I am walking in the footsteps of thousands who have trodden
this same path over many centuries.
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[The pilgrim shell on my daypack] |
I know there’s more to
pilgrimage than a symbolic shell and a well-trodden path. The Macquarie
Dictionary, for instance, calls it
a journey, esp. a long one, made to some sacred
place as an act of devotion.
While that’s partly true
for Lynne and me, we have also chosen a pilgrimage as a way of marking a
significant birthday. And we’re hoping that a long, slow journey on foot might prove
an antidote to what writer Marilynne Robinson calls the ‘joyless urgency’ of our times. There are other reasons too, some
we know about, some we’ll discover.
Of the many pilgrimages available,
we’ve chosen to walk the Caminho
Portugues. It is one of a dozen different caminos* (“ways”) that converge
on Santiago de Compostela, a city that’s sacred to some because the relics of
St James the Apostle (Santiago in
Spanish) are said to rest in its cathedral. The best known camino, the Camino Frances, leaves from France and
travels across the Pyrenees into northern Spain. Our lesser-known pilgrimage travels
north from Lisbon in Portugal to Santiago in north-western Spain.
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[Typical waymarks on the pilgrimage: photo by Lynne Grant] |
Given the time we have
available, we’ve chosen to shorten our caminho by leaving from Porto. It is a
journey of around two weeks, divided roughly 50/50 between Portugal and Spain.
Our friends Tim and Merran, who have previously done an Italian pilgrimage, are
excited to be joining us on this journey.
We’ve each tried to prepare
physically and mentally for the walk. But as is so often the case, life has
intervened. In Lynne’s case, a dose of the ‘flu before our departure has cut
short her physical preparations. And Tim and Merran have had to squeeze too
much work into too little time just to be here for the pilgrimage.
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[Pilgrims outside Porto Cathedral]
The day
before we leave, we spend a few hours walking around Porto, noticing pilgrim
waymarks, visiting the cathedral, practising our walking ... and eating. As
preparations go, it’s not ideal. But as we’ll come to hear from many-a-pilgrim
over the coming weeks, it is what it is.
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[Porto on a busy Sunday] |
So, ready or not, on a blue-skied
morning in early October, the four of us are transported to the village of
Mosteiro on the outskirts of Porto. It’s a nondescript starting point for our
250km journey. The cobbled village square doubles as a car-park. It gives onto
a few private buildings, a public laundry (open) and a public toilet block
(closed). A few cars are parked there, and some elderly men chat together
around one of them, while two women outside the laundry carry on a loud
conversation. It sounds like they’re having a serious disagreement, ‘though we
will soon learn this is how many Portuguese conversations are carried on.
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[Leaving, ready or not.] |
If our farewell party is a
little preoccupied, at least we have each other. With smiles to counter our
apprehensions, we tighten our laces, shrug on our daypacks, exchange blessings, and start walking.
* In Portuguese,
the word is spelled caminho.
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