5/30/15: Dublin to St. Jean Pied de Porte
Georgia and I were traveling to Spain separately. She was flying directly to Santiago via Aer Lingus while I was flying to Biarritz on cheapskate Ryan Air. Everything on Ryan Air costs extra. He wanted to charge people for bathroom privileges but the FAA wouldn’t let him. If he could have found a way, he would have charged us for the oxygen we were breathing! As it was, we needed a shoehorn to get into our extremely ungenerous seats. I was wedged in between a trim lady-pilgrim from Dublin and a hap-hazardly shaved French Basque. The Basque informed me that both the Spanish Basques and the French Basques think of themselves primarily as Basques, but doubted there would ever be a united homeland. The French Basques have no realistic path to secession, and the Spanish Basques are little different from those other regions of Spain chasing the illusive dream of independence. Like a dog chasing a car, you have to wonder what they would do with it if they ever caught it.
The fellow-pilgrim introduced herself as Anne, and said that she was traveling to Spain to walk the Camino with her friend “Phil,” (short for Philomena) who was also on the plane. They were both probably in their early 60s. I offered to trade places with her friend so they could sit together. “No thanks,” she said smiling, “Phil and I will be seeing plenty of each other over the next couple of weeks.” It was going to be a two-week Camino for them—Anne was getting a hip replacement and wanted to walk some now, in case the operation didn’t go so well. “What did your doctor say about that plan?” I asked. “He said I should carry a lot of pain meds with me,” she laughed.
She was the first pilgrim I met. I would eventually meet hundreds of them, but she was, in some ways, typical. We instantly formed a bond. I would come to find that when you walk 20 kilometers a day, 12 to 14 miles, day after day, and spend the rest of your time eating and talking with a constantly shifting constellation of fellow pilgrims you have lots of time to share the things that are on your mind—especially the important things, like why in the world you are out there walking hour after hour!
Most of the pilgrims I met were at some juncture in their life, some crossroads. Just finishing high-school and preparing to enter college, or just finishing college and preparing to enter the work-force. Or perhaps contemplating getting married, or getting divorced, or grieving the death of a loved one, or trying to get over a failed relationship. Some turning point in life. The end of one chapter and the anticipation of another. Me, if I live to be 100, then I would turn 66 and 8 months on Camino—exactly 2/3 of my life. I wanted the opportunity to look back, and look ahead in my life to see if a “course correction” was needed. In addition to this, I planned to pursue my deacon’s vocation on Camino, and make myself useful to the other pilgrims. That was my intention—to help those I met. It didn’t work out that way, and Anne was the first person who showed me what my pilgrimage was really going to be like.
“How are you going to get from Biarritz to St. Jean Pied du Porte?” she asked. I had to tell her that I had no clue: “I think there is supposed to be a train or a bus or something,” I ventured. I was planning to ask when I got to Biarritz. I’m a “wing-it” sort of traveler. She snorted. “We’ve made a reservation for a taxi to carry us. Perhaps it’s not full yet and you could join us.” I quickly accepted. Anne was the personal assistant to a high-pressure businessman and politician in Ireland. She was a take-charge person.
Bryon, Rita, Philomena, and Anne in St Jean
In the tiny airport I met Philomena, and Anne’s other friends: Bobby and Rosheen, Rita, and Bryan. All were from Ireland. Rita sent a text to the taxi driver saying they needed one more space. She got no reply. And when the taxi arrived Rita asked the driver if they had room for one more. The driver said “No.” So Anne took me by the arm and started frog-marching me to the place where I would catch the bus that would take me to the train that would take me to St Jean. Before we could get there, however, Rita came running up to say that there had been a mix-up. The driver had gotten her text, so when we’d asked at the terminal if there was room for another passenger the driver thought she needed two additional seats. She only had one, so I was in!
What a fun ride. Bobby and Rosheen were a young couple. Rosheen always took a retreat in June, and this year she decided to walk part of the Camino. She persuaded Bobby to come along. He was dubious but it was also obvious that he was completely smitten and would have walked across the sands of Hell if Rosheen had asked him. They were lovely together.
Philomena was also charming. She and Anne had been friends for years and often traveled together. She was a teacher in Northern Ireland and her face bore the lingering sadness of all that she had seen during the “troubles.”
Bryan was also a teacher—a teacher of 14-year olds in Dublin. Perfect. Portly, red-haired, and with a friendly open face. The perfect personality for teaching middle-school kids. Funny, and completely un-inhibited in his speech, but rock solid in his love for kids and his belief in the value of what he was doing—helping them become the people they were meant to be.
I expected to go off by myself when we arrived in St Jean, but the Camino always supplies us with what we need. I was caught up in this gaggle of Irishmen and swept along a very steep street to my first Albergue: Beilari. Joxeim (“Joseph” in Basque) welcomed us, took our names, and told us to come back after we had picked up our passports from the tourist office, which was just across the narrow street. It, of course, was closed since it was after 2pm and siesta had begun. We used the time to take a little tour of the village, to the castle at the top of the street, to the church at the bottom of the street, and to the bridge over that lovely babbling brook prominent in every single picture of St Jean. Someone had chalked footprints on the bridge overlooking the water, with the words: “Tenez-vous ici, Profitez de la vue.” (Stand here, enjoy the view!) Someone had put a line through “Vue,” and changed it to “Vie,” life.
The tourist office was bright and clean, with a collection of scallop shells in baskets and on the wall opposite the door. Down the center of the room from the door to the back wall there was a low counter with 6 or 7 people sitting in chairs facing the open part of the room. A friendly-looking 70- or 80-year old man motioned for me to sit. He asked me if I spoke English. I admitted that I did. He apologized for his English but said that his name was Paul and that he would register me. And the rudimentary questions began. “What is your name?” “What country are you from?” “Your address?” “Your passport number?” “Are you traveling on foot, on bicycle, or on horseback?” And then one that wasn’t quite so simple. “Why are you making this pilgrimage?” Indeed. Even before I’d begun: the big question: “Why?”
Anne had said on the plane that she had been intrigued by the Camino for years and had recently met a Spanish waiter who said “Everyone starts the Camino as a tourist, and finishes as a pilgrim.” She, too, was evidently at some crossroads and wanted some time away from her everyday world. She needed to slip into something like Shakespeare’s “green world,” for some time apart. She said it wasn’t a “religious” pilgrimage for her, but it was “spiritual.”
I certainly didn’t feel like a tourist, and “spiritual” felt too “Shirley-Maclaine” for me. I’m not her. I’m very Catholic, and the Camino is a very Catholic walk through very Catholic parts of Spain, visiting hundreds of ancient Catholic churches and Catholic cathedrals. So I told Paul that mine was a “religious” pilgrimage. He smiled. He started to tell me about how to call ahead to make reservations or call for a taxi. I told him I didn’t have a phone and wasn’t planning on using anything but my feet to get to Santiago. If I took a motor vehicle, it would be an ambulance. He smiled again.
He took out photocopies of tomorrow’s walk to Roncesvalles, up and over the Pyrenees and into Spain. It had little photos of landmarks I should look for. He emphasized that it was a difficult walk, especially if I was not in shape (he glanced at my doughnut-shaped middle) and that there are some dangerous parts—especially if a fog comes up. It was easy to miss the signs, and that would be dangerous. If I had any doubts I should turn back and double-check. But he was also reassuring: thousands of pilgrims just like me had started out from here, and made it all the way to Santiago—800 kilometers away. He said that even if I walked slowly, I should get to Roncesvalles in 8 hours. I thanked him, and asked him to autograph my shell. He smiled, and using a mechanical pencil, printed “Paul” in a very small and precise hand on the inside of my shell. We shook hands. “Buen Camino,” he said. I found there was something wrong with my voice. I couldn’t speak.
We all met again outside and went to register at the Albergue Beilari. That would become the norm. First thing to do when you arrive somewhere is to “find a bed.” Since I hadn’t been walking and wasn’t yet sweaty, I skipped over step number two “taking a shower and changing your clothes.” We moved directly to step three, “Finding somewhere to get a little ‘smackeral.’
Some of our number didn’t feel like they yet had enough stuff to carry and wanted to go do some shopping. I just wandered, taking some photographs. Then shopping over, we all gathered around a long outdoor pub table sampling the local beer-on-tap: Cervaza! It flowed freely, and life-histories were freely exchanged as well. I learned that in Ireland, America is called “Punckony,” and I learned that you can tell what part of Ireland someone comes from by how they toast each other: “Slainte,” Cheers! It could be “Sloynte” or “Slansha” or “Slawnta.” I laughed and laughed at the stories from the trenches of the Irish education system. A perfect start. It was Camino time. Which means no time passed at all until we were supposed to be back at the albergue for supper.
We sat around the dinner table and played silly games to break the ice with the other pilgrims. There were probably 18-20 of us.. We threw imaginary balls from one to another. When you caught the ball you needed to introduce yourself and tell everyone something about yourself, then throw the ball to someone else. There was Anne and Phil from Ireland, Kevin and Cerys, from Wales but now living in the south of Spain. Kevin was short and intense, and Cerys tall and mellow. There was Steven, their tall and slender friend with the comic face and sky-blue eyes, who’d come because they had praised the Camino so highly. There was Lars and Gitte, another Mutt and Jeff couple from Denmark, and several others. The world was well-represented at our little table. Throwing the imaginary ball some more, we needed to tell why we were on Camino. Seemed like there was no getting away from that question. Joxeim, told us that we were forming our first Camino-family that night, and we needed to prepare ourselves, both physically and spiritually for what was ahead. The Camino was not just a physical journey; the more difficult journey would be the interior one. We needed to start that one tonight.
Max, from Brazil, arrived late. He’d taken a train from Madrid to Pamplona, then had a hard time getting from Pamploma to St Jean. He arrived just as supper was beginning. He said that he was 47, approaching the halfway point in his life, and “between jobs.” He needed some time away to discern what lay ahead. I told the group that was my situation too with 2/3 of my life gone.
Supper itself was vegetarian. We started with a clear broth made with leeks and onions. an ensalada mixta, the first of many that I would have, though Joxiem provided some shredded ham for those dedicated carnivores among us. And we had brown rice with beans. Large white beans, cooked until they were very soft. And a tomato sauce that made everything taste good. Delicious crusty bread, of course. And wine, of course! How could one have a meal without wine?
My first bunk bed
After supper we helped clear the table and do the dishes. I decided to take a shower after all, and hit the sack. There was a co-ed room for the showers with 3 or 4 curtained cubicles. It was sort of hard to keep your clothes from getting wet but there was a little shelf in the shower-cubby where you could put things while you washed and dried. I used my handy-dandy microfiber towel for the first time. It worked! About the size of a large postage stamp it nevertheless soaked up most of the water on my body—leaving me just a little bit damp. Just enough for my tee-shirt to stick to my back as I tried to put it on. I put on clean undies and my Walmart-special “exercise silks.” I was planning to use three sets of clothes. One for lounging around in the evenings and sleeping in, and two for walking—alternating each night.
Joxiem, taking pity on my poor elderly feet, had assigned me a bottom bunk. There were 8 of us in the small room: four bunk beds. I think there were 3 or 4 other rooms. I thought I’d have a hard time falling asleep, but with my earplugs and facemask I was sound asleep before anyone even had a chance to snore.
(to be continued)
Georgia and I were traveling to Spain separately. She was flying directly to Santiago via Aer Lingus while I was flying to Biarritz on cheapskate Ryan Air. Everything on Ryan Air costs extra. He wanted to charge people for bathroom privileges but the FAA wouldn’t let him. If he could have found a way, he would have charged us for the oxygen we were breathing! As it was, we needed a shoehorn to get into our extremely ungenerous seats. I was wedged in between a trim lady-pilgrim from Dublin and a hap-hazardly shaved French Basque. The Basque informed me that both the Spanish Basques and the French Basques think of themselves primarily as Basques, but doubted there would ever be a united homeland. The French Basques have no realistic path to secession, and the Spanish Basques are little different from those other regions of Spain chasing the illusive dream of independence. Like a dog chasing a car, you have to wonder what they would do with it if they ever caught it.
The fellow-pilgrim introduced herself as Anne, and said that she was traveling to Spain to walk the Camino with her friend “Phil,” (short for Philomena) who was also on the plane. They were both probably in their early 60s. I offered to trade places with her friend so they could sit together. “No thanks,” she said smiling, “Phil and I will be seeing plenty of each other over the next couple of weeks.” It was going to be a two-week Camino for them—Anne was getting a hip replacement and wanted to walk some now, in case the operation didn’t go so well. “What did your doctor say about that plan?” I asked. “He said I should carry a lot of pain meds with me,” she laughed.
She was the first pilgrim I met. I would eventually meet hundreds of them, but she was, in some ways, typical. We instantly formed a bond. I would come to find that when you walk 20 kilometers a day, 12 to 14 miles, day after day, and spend the rest of your time eating and talking with a constantly shifting constellation of fellow pilgrims you have lots of time to share the things that are on your mind—especially the important things, like why in the world you are out there walking hour after hour!
Most of the pilgrims I met were at some juncture in their life, some crossroads. Just finishing high-school and preparing to enter college, or just finishing college and preparing to enter the work-force. Or perhaps contemplating getting married, or getting divorced, or grieving the death of a loved one, or trying to get over a failed relationship. Some turning point in life. The end of one chapter and the anticipation of another. Me, if I live to be 100, then I would turn 66 and 8 months on Camino—exactly 2/3 of my life. I wanted the opportunity to look back, and look ahead in my life to see if a “course correction” was needed. In addition to this, I planned to pursue my deacon’s vocation on Camino, and make myself useful to the other pilgrims. That was my intention—to help those I met. It didn’t work out that way, and Anne was the first person who showed me what my pilgrimage was really going to be like.
“How are you going to get from Biarritz to St. Jean Pied du Porte?” she asked. I had to tell her that I had no clue: “I think there is supposed to be a train or a bus or something,” I ventured. I was planning to ask when I got to Biarritz. I’m a “wing-it” sort of traveler. She snorted. “We’ve made a reservation for a taxi to carry us. Perhaps it’s not full yet and you could join us.” I quickly accepted. Anne was the personal assistant to a high-pressure businessman and politician in Ireland. She was a take-charge person.
Bryon, Rita, Philomena, and Anne in St Jean
In the tiny airport I met Philomena, and Anne’s other friends: Bobby and Rosheen, Rita, and Bryan. All were from Ireland. Rita sent a text to the taxi driver saying they needed one more space. She got no reply. And when the taxi arrived Rita asked the driver if they had room for one more. The driver said “No.” So Anne took me by the arm and started frog-marching me to the place where I would catch the bus that would take me to the train that would take me to St Jean. Before we could get there, however, Rita came running up to say that there had been a mix-up. The driver had gotten her text, so when we’d asked at the terminal if there was room for another passenger the driver thought she needed two additional seats. She only had one, so I was in!
What a fun ride. Bobby and Rosheen were a young couple. Rosheen always took a retreat in June, and this year she decided to walk part of the Camino. She persuaded Bobby to come along. He was dubious but it was also obvious that he was completely smitten and would have walked across the sands of Hell if Rosheen had asked him. They were lovely together.
Philomena was also charming. She and Anne had been friends for years and often traveled together. She was a teacher in Northern Ireland and her face bore the lingering sadness of all that she had seen during the “troubles.”
Bryan was also a teacher—a teacher of 14-year olds in Dublin. Perfect. Portly, red-haired, and with a friendly open face. The perfect personality for teaching middle-school kids. Funny, and completely un-inhibited in his speech, but rock solid in his love for kids and his belief in the value of what he was doing—helping them become the people they were meant to be.
I expected to go off by myself when we arrived in St Jean, but the Camino always supplies us with what we need. I was caught up in this gaggle of Irishmen and swept along a very steep street to my first Albergue: Beilari. Joxeim (“Joseph” in Basque) welcomed us, took our names, and told us to come back after we had picked up our passports from the tourist office, which was just across the narrow street. It, of course, was closed since it was after 2pm and siesta had begun. We used the time to take a little tour of the village, to the castle at the top of the street, to the church at the bottom of the street, and to the bridge over that lovely babbling brook prominent in every single picture of St Jean. Someone had chalked footprints on the bridge overlooking the water, with the words: “Tenez-vous ici, Profitez de la vue.” (Stand here, enjoy the view!) Someone had put a line through “Vue,” and changed it to “Vie,” life.
The tourist office was bright and clean, with a collection of scallop shells in baskets and on the wall opposite the door. Down the center of the room from the door to the back wall there was a low counter with 6 or 7 people sitting in chairs facing the open part of the room. A friendly-looking 70- or 80-year old man motioned for me to sit. He asked me if I spoke English. I admitted that I did. He apologized for his English but said that his name was Paul and that he would register me. And the rudimentary questions began. “What is your name?” “What country are you from?” “Your address?” “Your passport number?” “Are you traveling on foot, on bicycle, or on horseback?” And then one that wasn’t quite so simple. “Why are you making this pilgrimage?” Indeed. Even before I’d begun: the big question: “Why?”
Anne had said on the plane that she had been intrigued by the Camino for years and had recently met a Spanish waiter who said “Everyone starts the Camino as a tourist, and finishes as a pilgrim.” She, too, was evidently at some crossroads and wanted some time away from her everyday world. She needed to slip into something like Shakespeare’s “green world,” for some time apart. She said it wasn’t a “religious” pilgrimage for her, but it was “spiritual.”
I certainly didn’t feel like a tourist, and “spiritual” felt too “Shirley-Maclaine” for me. I’m not her. I’m very Catholic, and the Camino is a very Catholic walk through very Catholic parts of Spain, visiting hundreds of ancient Catholic churches and Catholic cathedrals. So I told Paul that mine was a “religious” pilgrimage. He smiled. He started to tell me about how to call ahead to make reservations or call for a taxi. I told him I didn’t have a phone and wasn’t planning on using anything but my feet to get to Santiago. If I took a motor vehicle, it would be an ambulance. He smiled again.
He took out photocopies of tomorrow’s walk to Roncesvalles, up and over the Pyrenees and into Spain. It had little photos of landmarks I should look for. He emphasized that it was a difficult walk, especially if I was not in shape (he glanced at my doughnut-shaped middle) and that there are some dangerous parts—especially if a fog comes up. It was easy to miss the signs, and that would be dangerous. If I had any doubts I should turn back and double-check. But he was also reassuring: thousands of pilgrims just like me had started out from here, and made it all the way to Santiago—800 kilometers away. He said that even if I walked slowly, I should get to Roncesvalles in 8 hours. I thanked him, and asked him to autograph my shell. He smiled, and using a mechanical pencil, printed “Paul” in a very small and precise hand on the inside of my shell. We shook hands. “Buen Camino,” he said. I found there was something wrong with my voice. I couldn’t speak.
We all met again outside and went to register at the Albergue Beilari. That would become the norm. First thing to do when you arrive somewhere is to “find a bed.” Since I hadn’t been walking and wasn’t yet sweaty, I skipped over step number two “taking a shower and changing your clothes.” We moved directly to step three, “Finding somewhere to get a little ‘smackeral.’
Some of our number didn’t feel like they yet had enough stuff to carry and wanted to go do some shopping. I just wandered, taking some photographs. Then shopping over, we all gathered around a long outdoor pub table sampling the local beer-on-tap: Cervaza! It flowed freely, and life-histories were freely exchanged as well. I learned that in Ireland, America is called “Punckony,” and I learned that you can tell what part of Ireland someone comes from by how they toast each other: “Slainte,” Cheers! It could be “Sloynte” or “Slansha” or “Slawnta.” I laughed and laughed at the stories from the trenches of the Irish education system. A perfect start. It was Camino time. Which means no time passed at all until we were supposed to be back at the albergue for supper.
We sat around the dinner table and played silly games to break the ice with the other pilgrims. There were probably 18-20 of us.. We threw imaginary balls from one to another. When you caught the ball you needed to introduce yourself and tell everyone something about yourself, then throw the ball to someone else. There was Anne and Phil from Ireland, Kevin and Cerys, from Wales but now living in the south of Spain. Kevin was short and intense, and Cerys tall and mellow. There was Steven, their tall and slender friend with the comic face and sky-blue eyes, who’d come because they had praised the Camino so highly. There was Lars and Gitte, another Mutt and Jeff couple from Denmark, and several others. The world was well-represented at our little table. Throwing the imaginary ball some more, we needed to tell why we were on Camino. Seemed like there was no getting away from that question. Joxeim, told us that we were forming our first Camino-family that night, and we needed to prepare ourselves, both physically and spiritually for what was ahead. The Camino was not just a physical journey; the more difficult journey would be the interior one. We needed to start that one tonight.
Max, from Brazil, arrived late. He’d taken a train from Madrid to Pamplona, then had a hard time getting from Pamploma to St Jean. He arrived just as supper was beginning. He said that he was 47, approaching the halfway point in his life, and “between jobs.” He needed some time away to discern what lay ahead. I told the group that was my situation too with 2/3 of my life gone.
Supper itself was vegetarian. We started with a clear broth made with leeks and onions. an ensalada mixta, the first of many that I would have, though Joxiem provided some shredded ham for those dedicated carnivores among us. And we had brown rice with beans. Large white beans, cooked until they were very soft. And a tomato sauce that made everything taste good. Delicious crusty bread, of course. And wine, of course! How could one have a meal without wine?
My first bunk bed
After supper we helped clear the table and do the dishes. I decided to take a shower after all, and hit the sack. There was a co-ed room for the showers with 3 or 4 curtained cubicles. It was sort of hard to keep your clothes from getting wet but there was a little shelf in the shower-cubby where you could put things while you washed and dried. I used my handy-dandy microfiber towel for the first time. It worked! About the size of a large postage stamp it nevertheless soaked up most of the water on my body—leaving me just a little bit damp. Just enough for my tee-shirt to stick to my back as I tried to put it on. I put on clean undies and my Walmart-special “exercise silks.” I was planning to use three sets of clothes. One for lounging around in the evenings and sleeping in, and two for walking—alternating each night.
Joxiem, taking pity on my poor elderly feet, had assigned me a bottom bunk. There were 8 of us in the small room: four bunk beds. I think there were 3 or 4 other rooms. I thought I’d have a hard time falling asleep, but with my earplugs and facemask I was sound asleep before anyone even had a chance to snore.
(to be continued)