Letter from Santiago de Compostela: For those who believe that suffering is the fastest way to heaven, there can be no better master key to the golden gates than the blissful agonies of the long road to the Galician city of Santiago de Compostela.
As the summer of this holy year draws to an end, tens of thousands have walked, cycled or even ridden here, the ultimate destination of the Camino de Santiago, or Way of Saint James. Many have trod merely the final 100km, all that is needed to obtain the certificate proclaiming completion of the pilgrimage - and the forgiveness of all sins. They're the ones you see limping about the city streets, feet encased in plasters and bandages: 100km is not enough to harden the feet and steel the muscles; the early days are generally the hardest.
Those with the alarmingly well-defined calf muscles and stark tan-lines at sock level will have come a little farther. Made of sterner stuff, many have trekked the 730 kilometres from Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees, the starting point of the Camino's Spanish section. Others, even leaner still, come from further afield: many started walking or cycling from their homes in places as far afield as France, Germany, Austria or the Netherlands. Their blisters, bockety knees or spasming back muscles disappeared or were forcefully subdued weeks or even months ago.
The Camino, once the third most popular pilgrimage in Christendom after Jerusalem and Rome, has made a comeback in recent years. Any local along the route will tell you each year now brings more peregrinos, as the pilgrims are known here. Predominantly Italian, French and Spanish, these 21st-century pilgrims vary wildly in age, walk of life and fitness level. Reasons for undertaking this ridiculously lengthy and often torturous promenade are equally diverse, and often utterly obscure.
Between Roncevalles and Pamplona, a portly German man with one red-painted thumbnail struggled with the intense heat and evidently unfamiliar exertion. He left his wife and family, motorbiked to the beautiful town of St. Jean Pied a Port on the French side of the Pyrenees and set off for Santiago. He is not due home until August of next year.
In the magnificent La Rioja village of Torrés del Rio, a 30-something car salesman from near Marseilles told how he decided to embark upon the Camino just one week before leaving. He did not elaborate, although another pilgrim mentioned something vague about illness.
Near Burgos in Castille y Léon, a young Finnish woman showed that, although it really does help, modern hiking gear is not entirely necessary. Accompanied by her dog, she was (and probably still is) heading west in a pair of jeans and flip-flops, and pulling a two-wheeled trolley, of the kind favoured by older ladies.
English-speakers are a rarity on the Camino, and you'll be hard pushed to find many Irish or Americans. Most anglophones are English, though almost all would qualify for the Irish soccer squad. Children and grandchildren of men and women from Donegal, Tipperary, Mayo and Cork, their presence offers an interesting insight into the Irish contribution to English Catholicism.
All the time, cycling pilgrims whizz by at depressing speeds, the stock greeting of "Buen Camino!" dopplering up and down the scale as they pass in a shocking rainbow of garish lycra and unpleasantly well-defined body parts.
Approaching Santo Domingo de la Calzada, a town famed for a miracle involving a lengthy hanging, a cockerel and a hen, I heard a bicycle approaching from behind. Politely moving to the right side of the path, I was inexplicably overtaken by a jogging man. Toned and tanned, he was quickly followed by an equally fit female cyclist. Pilgrims in the know revealed the demoralising truth that evening: this fellow was actually running the Camino - 50km per day - while his girlfriend cycled alongside. Enough to completely slacken the sails of any walker proud of a measly daily ration of 25km.
Although inspiring such evidently demented devotion for over a millennium, the Camino is founded on not the most verifiable of stories. After his execution in Palestine in the early AD 40s, it is said that St James's body was taken to Spain in a stone boat (propelled by angels and the wind). In the early 9th century, a hermit in north-western Spain was led to a tomb by a miraculous ring of stars. The shrewd local bishop, not entirely unaware of the potential benefits of such a move for such a backwater, quickly confirmed the remains in the tomb as those of St James himself. A church was erected over the site, and the pilgrimage bandwagon quickly achieved the momentum that brought millions of people to Santiago over the following centuries. Dozens of villages, towns and cities across northern Spain owe their very existence to the Camino.
Santiago's magnificent cathedral now stands on the spot of the original discovery - still the pilgrimage's final destination. But, believing in the tale, or even in God, is no longer a prerequisite for setting out on the Camino. Unlike any other pilgrimage, this is not all about being, or getting, somewhere. The beauty of the Way of St James lies in the journey itself, a personal experience that gives truth to the saying that there is one Camino for each pilgrim upon its many paths.