It is very early on Sunday morning, the street lights are still on as the morning sun slowly emerges. I am on the 6.37 train from Milton Keynes and there are a surprising number of people. My friend Esther is traveling from Brighton, with an even earlier start, her train wafting with the smell of weed and still drunk revellers on their way home after a Saturday night out. My train is more sedate with early morning workers and travellers.
It is exciting to be on the train again for the last trip of my sabbatical. I am traveling to Spain to walk the last section of the famous pilgrim path, the ‘Camino de Santiago’. There are many routes on this ancient pilgrim route, some winding along the coast, others coming up from Portugal, but the most famous starts in France in the Pyrenees and they all end at the Cathedral in Santiago de Compestela. Many years ago my dear friend Emily walked the whole path over five weeks one summer. Her stories from that pilgrimage always stayed with me, and while I knew I could not manage the five weeks, either physically or practically (too long from the family) I knew it was something I wanted to do during this special gift of sabbatical time.
So here I am on the train meeting another dear friend, Esther, and we will walk for just seven days, over 100 km. A small taste of the longer pilgrimage, but our own pilgrimage in our own way. Our backpacks have been packed and repacked trying to make them as light as possible. I have the essentials…. English teabags (with me my whole summer of travel!), Kindle, limited change of clothes and numerous plasters and painkillers for sore feet and bad back!
We have two days of travel, it is not so easy to start the Camino with ‘green’ travel, but the train journeys themselves feel like the beginning of our pilgrimage. Tonight we will be in Barcelona, arriving at 9.30pm and leaving again at 8.30am. Once again I will have the chance to read, reflect and watch the world go by. I have downloaded Richard Rohrs wonderful book on spirituality in the second half of life to ‘chew’ on as I journey. I have a good range of novels also to while away the journey and one of my closest friends to chat with, I could not feel more blessed.
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