IT IS 7AM, and the dormitory bunk beds have begun to creak and groan as their occupants rouse themselves, pack their rucksacks and prepare for the day's walking. Outside the austere Benedictine convent, which is dark and cold, a blanket of frost is draped across the countryside, write Peter Murtaghand Natasha Murtagh
A quick breakfast of coffee and dry bread, made edible by jam, and we're off on our Camino. Thirty-two kilometres later we collapse in our next refugio, feet sore and lower limbs aching. We are now in a beautiful small town, the aptly named Hospital de Órbigo, and a little closer to our ultimate goal, Santiago de Compostela.
There are few enough ways for a late-middle-aged father to get, and hold, the attention of a 16-year-old daughter, a young woman with interests and vices typical of her contemporaries. Suggesting that the pair of us walk 310km along an ancient pilgrim route across northern Spain is perhaps not the most obvious, and yet she and I have just had two of the most enjoyable, uplifting and fulfilling two weeks of our lives.
The Camino de Santiago - the Way of St James, leading to the reputed tomb of the Apostle beneath the altar of the great cathedral of Santiago - starts in several places in Spain and France, including Vézelay and Le Puy-en-Velay in France, and Seville and La Coruña in Spain. The main route, across northern Spain, begins in France at St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, a point of convergence on the French side of the Pyrenees, then proceeds west over the mountains to Pamplona, Logroño, Burgos, León and Santiago.
Last year I did some of the route on a motorbike with a friend. I vowed to return and do it on foot. So I asked Natasha, my daughter, if we could turn it into a father-and-daughter trip. She leaped at the opportunity and turned it into a transition-year project, raising €2,000 for a school and hospital in Uganda. (We paid all the Camino costs ourselves.)
And so, having flown to Santander and caught a train to León, at the end of our first day's walking we were in a privately run pilgrims' hostel in Hospital de Órbigo, rustling up some well-earned pasta and wine.
Over the 13 days we averaged about 24km a day - sometimes as little as 16km but twice we did 32km. Even as we were walking it was clear to us that this was a special time. We talked, laughed and joked, we cut each other down to size with humour. We laid down memories that will last our lives.
At times the Camino is an urban footpath identified by a yellow arrow or scallop shell, the symbol of the Camino; at other times it is a path beside a busy road; at others still it is a gravel track through a field, a forest or maybe just the semi-wild part of a hillside.
The Camino is rich in history - churches great and small, monasteries and convents are two-a-penny - and rich too in nature, most strongly felt in the countryside. We heard countless cuckoos, small songbirds entertained us and we saw many minks. Banks were a blaze of primroses. The mountainsides were covered in nutty-smelling gorse, cream and yellow broom, purple heather, orchids, hellebore and many other wild flowers.
For me the rural parts of the walk were the most inspiring. It seems likely that countryside sections of the Camino have changed little since the pilgrimage was popularised after the claimed finding of St James's remains in the mid-ninth century (except during the time of the Moors, when the entire Camino moved north to the coast). And before the lure of St James, pagans flocked to Finisterre (from the Latin, meaning "the end of the world"), in western Galicia, to pay homage to the souls of the dead.
And so one walks in the footsteps of millions, understanding little the magnetic attraction of Santiago but fully aware of it. Others doing the same thing come from all over the world - friends we made during our walk came from Korea, Australia, Germany, France, England, Ireland, the US, Portugal and, of course, Spain.
The people you meet are, ultimately, what make the Camino such a pleasure: the shared experience of tough walking rewarded daily with a good meal at dusk, plenty of local wine and good conversation in a refugio.
The terrain varies: León to Astorga is quite flat. Thereafter the land rises steadily from just over 800m at Astorga to 1,500 at La Cruz de Ferro, a cross at the top of the mountains of León, before descending into Ponferrada and the delightful wine region of Bierzo.
It rises again in a steep gradient - 650m to 1,300m in just seven kilometres - to a place named O Cebreiro, perched on top of the Albela mountains. The trail goes across the top of the mountains for a full 12km, where we encountered two snow blizzards. Heads down, we pushed forward - Natasha's determination was inspiring; she never complained once.
With the mountains behind us we were into Galicia, a place of granite mountains, lush fields, pine and eucalyptus forests and rain. Lots of rain. The Camino then winds west, through the monastery town of Samos, through the great reservoir at Portomarín, where the original town lies deep below the lake, and on to Melide, the pulpo - boiled octopus - capital of Galicia, and on to Santiago.
We strode into the city - Natasha and I and our new companion, Sebastian from Germany - and reached the great cathedral just before 1pm as the daily pilgrims' Mass was ending.
The organ was blasting away and the botafumeiro, a huge, 50kg censer suspended from the roof, was hoisted aloft by the cathedral's eight red-robed tiraboleiros. Swinging like a giant pendulum, the botafumeiro flew through the air, trailing incense over the pilgrims.
And then it was over. The sense of achievement was enormous. Everyone hugged. Some cried. We showed our pilgrim passports and got our certificates - guaranteed shorter stay in purgatory, they say.
Then we had some beer.
PM
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Travelling out, we flew Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) from Dublin to Santander, for a total cost of €83.46. Train tickets from Santander to León (via Palencia) cost a total of €61. Coming back we
flew Aer Lingus (www.aerlingus.com) from Santiago to Dublin, for a total cost of €96. All plane tickets were bought in December 2007. Average daily living costs (bed and three meals, plus wine with dinner) were €20 each.