It was time for Camino Part
III and I was excited to be getting back on the trail once more! Ever since I had
got back from walking the last section in March I had been planning my next
trip. I realised I had a relatively small window of opportunity in October
taking into account my remaining annual leave from work. In addition, my
daughter was starting university in Dublin in early September and then my wife
was visiting her family in England for a week in late September. I realised that if I was walking the Camino
again in 2015 it had to be early October before it became too late in the year
for benign autumn weather.
For the trip this time, I had
invited my friend Matthew Watson. The plan was for us to walk the Camino
together and use the experience as a retreat time to, pray, be spiritually refreshed
and take time out to seek God. Matthew is an all-round nice guy in his mid twenties with a strong faith who is a social introvert like myself. Given that
we also share similar reflective personalities, I was confident that although
he had never been on the Camino before, we would enjoy walking it together and
be comfortable with times of silence and with not always feeling the need to
talk. I have found such periods of silence and reflection more and more
important as I have continued walking the Camino. Matthew also enjoys the
outdoors, walking and has a particular interest in birds of prey, so I was
hopeful his knowledge could be added to my interest in history and wildlife for
this trip.
However the plan to just walk
with Matthew soon evolved! Another friend Rawle Maicoo; an Emergency Medicine
Doctor from Trinidad, was keen to join us, and then Matt McCullagh, who accompanied
me on my trip last in September 2014 and David King, who I had walked with in
March were also keen to join us for the next leg. Finally, my friend Ben Jonas,
who had originally planned to come on the Camino with myself and Matt last year
decided he wanted to walk the Camino too in order to help process some changes
in his life.
The logistics of the trip also
became complicated. Matthew, David and I decided we could only manage to walk
for five days from Belorado – Frómista. We had hoped we could fit six days of
walking in, but we found that because of flight times from Dublin, we couldn’t
get back to Belorado from Dublin in one day and would have to stay overnight in
Burgos. Ben decided he would start a month before us in St Jean Pied De Port
and meet us in Belorado on 04/10/15 and Matt decided he would start a week
before us in Estella and walk the section he had missed, also meeting us in
Belorado. Ben and Matt planned to meet up somewhere along the way, maybe near
Belorado. Eventually however, Ben walked St Jean – Najera and thoroughly
enjoyed the experience, but then decided to head off to Brazil for a few weeks
before he started his new job. He did meet up briefly with Matt at Logroño and
then Matt walked on, still planning to meet up with the three of us. Rawle, in
the end, was very disappointed to not be able to join us as he had issues with
his Irish visa and was not able to travel to other EU countries at the time.
And so after all that
planning, it was some relief and great excitement that myself, Matthew and
David met up at my house in Co. Cork in the late afternoon on 02/10/15 and
drove up to Dublin together in my car to the Premier Inn at Swords. We enjoyed
drinks before bed. I have recently been on a course of steroids for an auto
immune disorder which means no alcohol, but I was relieved to have been taken
off them before the Camino as the thought of Pintxos and no Rioja would have
been to terrible to contemplate!
The next morning after
breakfast, we took the shuttle bus to Dublin Airport and checked in for our Aer
Lingus flight. This time we decided to fly to Bilbao rather than Biarritz as it
was felt that as we were travelling back to Belorado, Biarritz was getting to
be a bit far away.
As we sat at coffee a bar near
our boarding gate we remarked on the American style double mini conveyor belt
that ran around the bar counter with muffins, soft drinks and mini bottles of
champagne passing back and forth in an endless tempting parade. In County Cork
a popular saying would be “Tis far from….[insert a subject] …that you were
reared” to emphasise how life in Ireland has changed in the last few decades. I
joked with David that it was far from muffin conveyor belts he was reared in
Tralee. And indeed when Matthew and I later made the mistake of buying a
sandwich and a bottle of water in Dublin airport and were charged €12.00; I
realised that it was far from those prices I was reared too!!
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| David & Matthew at Dublin Airport |
The flight to Bilbao was
delayed for over an hour but was otherwise uneventful and we arrived in Bilbao
airport with it’s curious 1970’s gull winged construction about 16.30 and took
the Bizkai shuttle bus to Bilbao bus station. The Bizkai bus runs every half to
Bilbao city centre and bus station at 0.25 and 0.55 mins. The journey took about
half an hour and was interesting as it allowed us to see the extraordinary
architecture of the Guggenheim Art Museum and also have a quick tour through
the city centre. The city looked interesting and full of life and I would
certainly like to return and see it properly some time.
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| David starting on the Spanish wine in Bilbao |
Arriving at the bus station,
we found we had about 45 minutes before the ALSA bus left for Burgos, so we
nipped across the road into a bar to enable Matthew to enjoy his first taste of
Pintxos and Rioja. Unfortunately I was in such raptures at getting back to both
that I left my plastic wallet behind when we left with passport and flight
tickets; luckily the very kind lady behind the bar ran after me in the street
and returned them, but don’t tell my wife as she might stop me going on the
Camino if she thinks I can’t be trusted to keep my wits about me!
 |
| Matthew stuffing his face! |
The ALSA bus took two and a
half hours to get to Burgos. Initially the journey was interesting and the bus
climbed up into the mountains through jagged valleys, however it soon became
dark and a film about the rivalry between 1970’s Formula One racing drivers,
James Hunt and Niki Lauda started on a screen in front of us.
As part of our plans to use
walking on the Camino as spiritual retreat and an opportunity for reflection
and Christian Meditative prayer, I had suggested to Matthew that we use Common Prayer – A Liturgy for Ordinary
Radicals by Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove & Enuma Okoro.
The book contains a modern liturgy for Morning, Midday and Evening Prayer and
has accompanying Old and New Testament Bible readings. I felt that it would
give myself and Matthew a rhythm and focus as we sought God together on the
Camino. Matthew and I decided to do Evening Prayer together quietly on the bus
using my Kindle, however we found the film which was rather hard to miss in the
darkness of the bus, quite distracting, especially the semi-pornographic
sections where James Hunt, who had a very racy lifestyle to say the least, was
having it off with various women in various locations! Thankfully there was no
sound! But such are the distractions of life sometimes when you try to pray!
Arriving in Burgos about
21.15, we walked across the city centre to the hostel we had booked into near
the modern municipal library. We detoured into the plaza beside the Cathedral
and were pleasantly surprised to see that on this Saturday night there was an
open air market with stalls selling a colourful selections of cheeses, salamis,
olives, chocolates and cakes.
The hostel was very modern and
clean and even featured a mini gym, but the smell of cigarettes was nearly
overpowering in our room and by the time we left the following morning we felt
we had absorbed a large amount of nicotine into our bodies!
We headed out into city centre
for a pre-bedtime drink and also to buy a few snacks and provisions for the
next day. Near our hostel was the Arco San Juan – the old city gate through the
medieval walls through pilgrims passed from the east into the old city. We too
passed through it and although it was nearly 10.30, we found the narrow streets
still pleasantly alive with people chatting, having a drink and generally a
good time. The temperature was mild and warm enough to sit outside with our
jackets on, so we found a table near the Arco and David and I ordered beers and
Matthew had a hot chocolate.
Suddenly we heard drums and
trumpets in the distance and saw flickering lights coming towards us down the
street. We were amazed to see a procession of literally hundreds of people;
adults and children dressed in medieval outfits holding flaming torches; kings,
queens, knights on horseback, Knights Templar, Saracens, archers, Mongol
warriors and even medieval servants filed past us, in a seemingly endless
procession, before turning at the Arco San Juan and heading back into the city
centre. We had accidentally stumbled upon the Festival of El Cid!
Back in my blog entry for
21/03/15 I mentioned that El Cid is buried beneath the lantern tower of Burgos
Cathedral. As I briefly explained El Cid was a complex character. His real name
was Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar and he was nicknamed sayyid or “Lord” in Arabic by the Muslims of the time. Irish writer
Michael Barry in his book Homage to
El-Andalus, says that:
“There are various views of this remarkable man:
mercenary and opportunist, or towering military genius, fighter in the cause of
Christian Spain against the Muslims. As is usual in these cases, there is no
simple answer. He did have extraordinary success, reputedly never losing a
battle. However he did switch sides on occasion, fighting on the Muslim as well
as the Christian side”.
When El Cid fell out of favour
with Alfonso VI, king of Castille, he went into exile in 1081 and fought for
the Muslim ruler of Zaragoza and then later captured Valencia and set up his
own semi-independent fiefdom there.
This festival showed that El
Cid’s heroic exploits one thousand years ago still resonate with modern
Spaniards, and maybe even more so as Europe faces the threat of Islamic
extremism.
If we hadn’t gone for a drink and
stumbled on it by accident we would have missed the whole thing; but the Camino
is full of these serendipitous discoveries and we retired to bed happy,
thinking how you could never have a similar procession with such a lovely
family atmosphere at 10.30 on a Saturday night in Cork without alcohol spoiling
it!
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