The Camino:A Peaceful Unpredictability. Part 1. Leitrim to Bordeaux

Last May I took the plunge and started what had been on my bucket list for years which was to walk the Camino de Santiago or Way of St James in Spain. The Camino de Santiago is an 800km ancient pilgrimage route that runs along the top of northern Spain from near the Pyrenees in France to Galicia just above Portugal. The remains of St James are meant to have been found in 813AD in a place near Galicia at the Portuguese end of the camino. They were discovered by a Galician hermit who heard music and saw stars above a place known as “campo stella “– the field of stars. The stars overhead directed him to a place where he found 3 graves, the remains of one confirmed to be St James. Over the succeeding decades and centuries, a church and eventually several cathedrals were built in the campo stella  or  compostela which soon became the city of Santiago de Compostela. 

St James's Gate,Dublin

So it was that I arrived to Dublin on a rare as hen’s teeth balmy May Spring day to stay the night before flying out to France the next morning ready to start the camino. After settling into my bed and breakfast situated along the canal, I went for a long walk in order to seek where Irish pilgrims used to begin their pilgrimage to Santiago in the Middle Ages from Ireland.  The front gate of the St James’s Gate Brewery marks the boundary of the iconic Guinness brewery site. There has been a gate adjoining this site since the Middle Ages. St James’s Gate was traditionally a toll and customs duty collection point for people to enter the city of Dublin. The holy well of St James was located in this area and thus the medieval route to Santiago de Compostela originated here. It was a day for it with the sun beaming down and the cafes and pubs thronged with people and others jostling along like myself, taking a late afternoon stroll. My quest to find the St James’s Gate and thus officially begin my camino from Ireland took me past the Concern offices in Camden Street. Concern is an international non-government organisation with whom I worked as a volunteer many years ago in various countries in Africa. It was quite a jolt to see the offices and took me back 25 years or so. And so all in all it was a very reflective walk very much in keeping with starting my own camino.

Unfortunately I was not going to be able to do the whole camino and was aiming to complete about a third which would bring me out to the second province encountered on the camino – Rioja and the capital city of Logrono. Then my plan was to head north to Bilbao on the coast and spend a few days with my sister who was going to meet me from UK there.

One of the downsides of booking accommodation on line is that it can be difficult to work out where you are geographically. I flew into Bordeaux in France the next morning from Dublin to realise that the guesthouse where I was staying was in a rather uninspiring part of Eysines, a satellite area a chunk of a drive away from Bordeaux. The French camino to Santiago starts in a town at the foot of the Pyrenees called St Jean de Pied de Port. Again I had misjudged a bit when booking my flight. Bordeaux is a good distance away from St Jean de Pied de Port and there are nearer airports such as Biarritz. On the up side I was picked up by a lively, charming guy from the guesthouse. He explained that transport options around Bordeaux are non-existent and they await with bated breath the completion of a tramline similar to the Dublin Luas tramline which will improve things enormously. Meanwhile we drove out of the airport passing through a rather depressing industrialised zone and arterial roads with several lanes and corresponding lines of traffic. I was not seeing Bordeaux at its best.

The guesthouse was charming, quirky and tasteful. The mother of the guy who managed the guesthouse was an artist and this was definitely reflected in the house. The next morning I breakfasted on croissants and pain au chocolat with a watery sun seeping in and highlighting the paintings and African artefacts in the living room. There was an amazing array of homemade jams all the colours of the rainbow laid out on the table.  I had forgotten how in Europe tea is seen as a drink to promote health or to give someone if they are sick .It is not entrenched as deeply as it is in the English and Irish culture. So I was relieved when rifling through the many sachets of jasmine, camomile and green tea to find a solitary sachet of robust English breakfast tea.

 I wished I could have stayed longer in this guesthouse but I had to press on to the train station for my train to St Jean Pied de Port. I chatted to the guy managing the guesthouse. He talked about how his grandfather had Alzheimer’s disease and was in nursing home. We had got on to the subject because I told him that I was working in a nursing home. He said that his grandfather was in the Resistance movement and was captured by the Gestapo and went to Dachau concentration camp for two years. He has lost nearly all his memory and now cannot recognise his family. Yet he still remembers and recounts regularly that journey on the train to Dachau. Sometimes he jokes and says it was like being on a Club Mediterranean holiday.

The guy who managed the guesthouse dropped me into Bordeaux and I was so happy that I had got to see it and was not influenced by my depressing glimpse of it the day before. Bordeaux is a majestic town with a vast river running through it and is responsible for its dignified, maritime bearing.  I walked along the river to the station of Bordeaux de St Jean, passing battleships and cruisers lining the river port. I obtained my ticket in an easy enough fashion thank goodness and mounted my train to Bayonne, the first stage of my journey to St Jean de Pied de Port. As the train pulled out of the station, flame red poppies lined the banks. That is my memory of Bordeaux and the guesthouse – colourful, flamboyant, majestic and kindness itself. My train journey was leading on to an unpredictable time over the next two weeks to unknown places and people.  But I was sure that my memories of it would be more peaceful than those of an elderly man who had survived the concentration camp of Dachau, only to enter the prison of Alzheimer’s.