2024 was the anniversary of my first camino. It was twenty years since I first set out on the road to Santiago and I planned to walk the path again. I’d had a milestone birthday a few months before I did the first camino, and I’d celebrated another milestone shortly before I was due to undertake this one. I was planning to mirror the route I first walked as a novice pilgrim back in 2004. The bags were packed, the flights were booked, and then things took a turn that meant I had to cancel. Camino 6, the third Frances, was not to be. Not this year anyway. Or at least not in full.
And if I was to be truly honest, I wasn’t really that put out. A slight strain following from a recent operation prompted my doctor to advise against the camino this year. And why was I doing it this time? Because 20 years had passed since the first? Because I had recently turned 50? Did I really want to go this year, or did I just feel compelled? It really felt like the latter. I’m a big fan of numbers, dates, anniversaries, so when all the numbers aligned I thought it was my duty to put on my boots and hike my way across Spain once again. But something felt off. I didn’t sense the call of the camino like I had in previous times. I wasn’t going for the right reasons. So when medical necessity required me to withdraw, I felt a certain relief. Doing something because you have to is not the same as doing something because you want to or need to, and the camino was far too special and experience to be reduced to an act of compulsion. But I’d paid for the flights, so I’d go to Spain in any case.
20 years ago I had little idea of how the camino would change my life. It helped me form habits of fitness and healthy living that ensured the ageing process wouldn’t be too challenging, it brought me to many beautiful places across the Iberian peninsula that I would never have otherwise seen, it brought me back from some very dark places inside myself, and most importantly it introduced me to a wide array of wonderful people, some of whom became my family on the camino, and others who became like my family in real life. Each camino was a unique and life defining experience. The bad days on the way were often the most rewarding. When energy levels were low, or the rains arrived in biblical proportions, or the dark nights of the soul overshadowed the beauty of the surroundings, those were the days I had to dig deep to find the strength and tenacity to carry on. And I always managed to find that resilience. And the Universe provided me with things I needed whenever I needed them.
So 2024 was not to be the 20th anniversary camino as I’d planned, but Spain is always an inviting country, with good weather, tonnes of history, a multitude of culture, nice people and decent food. After a short stay in Barcelona, a city I’d called home for a few months in 2000, I headed to Burgos, one of the big cities on the Camino Frances. My main reason for visiting here was to go and see the reconstructed Sad Hill Cemetery, the setting for the epic shootout in the classic western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Getting to that spot was a camino in itself. Not having a car, the only way to reach it was to take a 7AM bus to a tiny little village called Barbadillo del Mercado, and then walk 10 KM from there to the main site, and back. For a lifelong movie buff like myself it was a transcendent experience, an astonishing adventure and an item to tick off the bucket list. But that’s a story for another day.
Back at the hostel in Burgos later that evening, all the talk among the other guests was of the camino. New friendships are easily forged within the circle of pilgrims and chatting becomes effortless. Conversations often revolve around energy and fitness levels, injuries, blisters, the weather, before segueing into more profound topics like the purpose of ones journey and the state of one’s life. Though I wasn’t on the camino that day the others in my dorm quickly invited me into their circle, and my prior history on the way afforded me a similar level of respect as they had for each other. I enjoyed hearing their tales of where they’d been, what they’d endured, and their hopes for the rest of their journey and beyond. In a very short space of time, I’d been reabsorbed into the camino orbit, and it felt absolutely great to be back.
The next day was a free day in Burgos. The camino was right outside my door. What choice did I have but say hello to such a dear old friend. I remembered from my two previous instances of the Frances that the walk from Burgos brought you out through suburbia, into a charming little village and then onto the edge of the Meseta, the flat open plan that covers much of central Spain. From my memory it was just a short walk out of the city, and the village I recalled was just a brief stroll beyond that. I headed out at 8:30, and planned to walk until around 10:30 after which I’d walk back. I wanted to catch one more view of the sweeping vistas of the Meseta, with its furrowed fields, terracotta earth, towering windmills and beautiful emptiness.
Setting out from Burgos that morning brought back the flood of memories and feelings I’d encountered when starting all those other days on the camino; early morning breakfasts when it was still dark, words of encouragement with your fellow travellers, rustling of bags as people packed up their belonging, checking the weather forecast in the hope that the Gods would be kind, and preparing for the alternative in case they wouldn’t, then putting on all your equipment and heading out into the unknown. It was a little different for me that day. I wasn’t carrying a backpack. I had no walking poles. I would be returning to the same place that evening. Today was unlike any other day for me on the camino. There would be no full pilgrimage in 2024, just this brief cameo.
Back in 2004 the Camino was still a relatively undiscovered jewel, though word of mouth was starting to grow. Martin Sheen’s film was still more than half a decade away, as were other books and documentaries which popularised the route with people all over the world. Albergues were frequent and comfortable, local restaurants served up good food, and the pathway was well marked to prevent people from getting lost. By the next time I walked it, in 2013, the forces of commercialisation had upgraded the facilities somewhat. There were more places to stay, to eat, more services to transport your bags, and the path seemed a bit better maintained and serviced. But the spirit of the camino still remained, along with the beauty of the Spanish landscape and the charm of its people. And the pilgrims remained the same. They were the same assortment of varied, interesting, diverse characters, all with their own unique wisdom and reasons for walking that way.
As I headed out of Burgos I got the sense that the road was a bit different from what I recalled. Here and there I saw a sight that looked familiar, but the exit from the city was a lot longer that I thought. The further I progressed the more I didn’t recognise. It’s funny how memories play tricks on us. We seem to think we have a seamless record of how things transpired, but we don’t always appreciate that our subconscious is tacitly editing our perceptions into a tidy narrative. I always thought there was a prison on the outskirts of the city, but I could see no sign of it. I even thought I recalled its red roof and yellow walls. The village that I sought was a little further on than I expected, and it wasn’t the way I thought it was in 2004 or 2013. I recalled that a nun had given me a miraculous medal when I passed through the first time. The Meseta didn’t begin just beyond either. Getting to its edge was the plan for the day, but it looked like I’d have to go a bit further than I’d intended.
The Meseta was a stretch of the Camino that ran from the cities of Burgos to just beyond Leon, about 200 KM in total. It was a portion that many derided as flat, uninspiring and boring, and some even advised me to take a bus and skip it altogether. That would have been a serious mistake. I was inspired by the Meseta, where crimson sunrises greet the pilgrim over flat plains carved up by canals, fields of sunflowers smile at you as you wander past, friendly dogs greet you as you amble through sleepy adobe villages, and the vast expansive sky above is so close you could reach up tear off a piece of cloud. Little villages like Hontanas, Boadillo, Carrion de los Condes, Ledigos, Terradillo de los Templarios and Calzadilla de los Hermanillos were tiny jewels where I spent some of my best times with my newfound friends in 2004 and 2013. The Mesata was where I managed to find the centre of the universe in the middle of nowhere. I needed to see it again, if only for a short while.
The road twisted and turned, then brought me through another village that didn’t seem to stir any memories from 2004 or 2013. I was so confounded I wasn’t even quite sure what lay up the road now. I thought I recalled a tree standing alone in a field, I remembered windmills, and I thought there was a part where the road dipped sharply. Were they up ahead on this stretch? Or were they other incongruous images from different stages that my tricky subconscious had stitched together into my internal film of this stretch? Sure enough, the further I progressed the more I started to recognise. As I walked along a meandering pathway that cut between vast, expansive fields of sunflowers that stretched out in all directions to the horizon, this was gradually becoming the Meseta I remembered.
I encountered several fellow travellers that day, though none of us would share more than a few moments together. Back on the previous ones, the people I met went from being strangers to lifelong friends as quickly as it takes to have dinner. Some of those friendships lasted a lifetime, while others drifted a little or faded with the years, although social media allowed many of us to stay on each others radar decades after our paths diverged. It is said that on the camino you meet the people you’re supposed to meet, and I never think of my time on the camino without recalling all the wonderful people I encountered, and how we connected so intensely over an experience so memorable and transcendent. The people I saw that day were all having exactly the same experiences then. The drama of human life was being played out right there on the rolling plains of Castilla y Leon.
And then my tree appeared. It stood proud, strong and solitary in the middle of harvested field. It was still there after eleven years, and it remained as majestic and stately as only trees can be. Millions of sunflowers nearby had come and gone in that time, but this tree was a monument to permanence, a towering totem of the power of nature to endure. I looked towards it and paid some silent respects. My memory may have been a little inconsistent on other parts of this route, but the was proof that some of the things I remembered were in fact the way they were. A little bit further up ahead came the dramatic dip in the road. I stopped to take a few photos, and gazed at the path that drifted off into the distance and into a land of promise and adventure. It begged me to follow it. Not today, but soon.
I spoke with an American lady named Margie at that point. She asked how my camino was going. I said I had reached the end for this brief cameo, but not the end of my journey. As I headed back I encountered a Taiwanese lady called Samantha, who I had spoken to at the albergue earlier that morning. I wished her well for the rest of her camino, and she said she would see me back here again next year. I told her she could bet on that. 2024 wasn’t the year to return to the walk of life time, but 2025 certainly held out that promise. As I wandered back to Burgos in the warm afternoon sun, I savoured the beauty and simplicity of the pilgrim’s way of life, a life that I had set out on twenty years before in search of adventure, but which enriched me, and continues to enrich me, in ways that I never could have imagined at that early point. And on that return leg I passed the prison which I’d missed that morning. It looked exactly the way I remembered it. Maybe my memory was working after all. This brief reencounter rekindled my love for this path, and for those few fleeting hours back on the Frances I felt like I was home.