After I finished walking the Camino Frances, I had a few days in Santiago, which was just as well as I came down with a doosey of a cold: a legacy of constant communal sleeping, no doubt, and messages from brain to body that the daily walking was over. This time, plus travelling to Santander to make my way back to the UK, has given me some space think about my camino walk. At this stage of my reflection, I’m summing the experience up as empowering, humbling and surreal. This is the longest distance that I have walked, which required working through a few feet grumbles and determining the optimal daily distance: I have nudged up both my confidence and perseverance dials and have a better understanding of my body. Humbling? When you are doing any activity, Camino or life more generally, there are always  others doing it tougher than you. Plus, the services and volunteering that underpin the Camino Frances experience, mostly unseen, could be a story in themselves. Now I have left the Camino, the experience seems surreal: it is a protected world for those that walk providing easy access to all your basic needs and a chance to live a simplified life. You are separated from the realities of our busy, consumer-driven and oftentimes inhumane world and the international family that walks with you are polite, friendly, generous, stimulating and encouraging. Of course, these pleasant aspects of human-ness are found elsewhere but they seem to be more concentrated on the Camino Frances and you exist in a bubble of friendliness for five weeks with almost no intrusion of negativity or bad news. The camino attracts almost myth-like proportions of potential impacts. People have asked me “did you cry?” No, there was nothing so profound that caused the tears to flow: though some reflection on regrets, loss and weaknesses brought me close. People have also asked me whether I have changed. Apart from those aspects mentioned above, I think there will be some subtle changes that will reveal themselves over time: tolerance, understanding of self and making do with less are obvious candidates. On the tolerance side, I may even be more tolerant of the snorers of the world: afterall, they know not what noise they make and, for most nightime orchestral manouevres, there’s nothing that a couple of ear plugs can’t solve. However, there’s no doubt that my Camino experience is one that I will not forget.
Photo: indulging in a seafood paella on my last night in Santiago de Compostella.