Sometime in the late 1970s, I was prowling around France's Massif Central, when I came across a remarkable place half-way up a hillside in a remote valley miles from anywhere. Little more than a village but with a large and very impressive church, and with obvious signs of ancient highways running through it.
I started asking around: why did such a small, remote, obscure place have such a large church? What ancient highway ran through it? Ah well, I eventually found out, it was on a medieval pilgrimage route to Santiago. Santiago? In Chile? No, no, in Galicia! Galicia? In Poland? No, no, in NW Spain!
That place was of course Conques. It was rather delapidated in those years - it's been spruced up considerably since then, and is now a destination for tour buses and other dubious inventions of the modern age; but it remains a remarkable place.
I started to try and find out more about it, and the pilgrimage to this Santiago place I'd never heard of. I was living in Munich at the time, and fortunately my local public library had a series of books on Romanesque churches in France and Spain by Helmut Domke*, which included much general information on the medieval pilgrimage, describing how pilgrims would set off from their home parish for distant Compostela. As this seemed to combine my interests in Romanesque architecture, medieval history, and long-distance walking, I was fired with enthusiasm to follow them. But at that time, though there were quite a few books on the history and culture of the Camino, it was very difficult to find out anything about more practical aspects. Was the route still walkable, or was it largely road? In France, a GR from Le Puy to the Pyrenees had recently been created, but at that time it was still not complete; there was a low-level long-distance path across Switzerland from Lake Constance to Geneva, but none connecting Geneva with Le Puy; and whilst there were large numbers of long-distance paths in SW Germany, none went the way I wanted to go. I discovered there were two guides to the Camino Francés, one Spanish, one French, but neither were at all easy to obtain. In addition, walking to Santiago would take at least 3 months, and I couldn't possibly take that amount of time off work, so would have to split the journey into several stages.
Still, I bought what guides I could find, and used maps to create my own route for the rest. I eventually set off in a series of weekend and daytrips from Munich, starting in January 1984, and eventually arriving at Lake Constance in April. Not the best time of year - my diary records knee-deep snow at one point. Two outings in April 1985 and May 1986 got me across Switzerland to Geneva.
At this point I moved back to England, and after settling in, resolved that I would set off again for Santiago from my new home in Chester. I decided that I would make a full journey of it, taking in Paris, Vézelay and Cluny as well as Le Puy, and visiting as many cathedrals, abbeys etc, en route as possible. A reasonably direct route from Chester to the Pyrenees would be shorter than from Munich, but this route was even longer, so again I had to split it into several stages.
Setting off in September 1988, my route in England took me S to Shrewsbury, then down the Severn via Worcester to Tewkesbury, across the downs to Winchester, then E along the Pilgrim's Way to Canterbury and Dover. In France, my route took me to Boulogne, Amiens and Beauvais. I skirted the E side of Paris, via Senlis and Meaux to Melun, then Sens, Auxerre and Autun, finishing in St Etienne. I was in Vézelay for Palm Sunday, had snow crossing the Morvan, but arrived in Cluny on a warm, bright Easter Sunday - I took one look at the crowds and moved on. My final stage in France followed the Loire to Le Puy and onwards. One morning the GR took a dive down to the left, and there I was in Conques again, many years after my original visit. My original plan was to cross the Pyrenees to Pamplona and end the stage there, but the weather, hot up till Condom, was damp and misty when I got to St Jean, so I stopped there. I saw hardly any walkers at all from Chester to the Pyrenees, and even fewer pilgrims - I think the grand total was 8; quite a contrast to the current situation on the GR65.
Stopping in St Jean, however, did me no good, for when I returned to continue, it was raining again (or possibly it had never stopped). So I had a murky crossing and a gloomy night in Roncesvalles. My overwhelming memory though is the contrast between the austere aridity of the Meseta, with its shades of yellow and brown, and the green luxuriance of Galicia: purgatory and paradise. Eventually, I arrived in Santiago, many, many years later than originally planned. The official statistics state that over 100 pilgrims claimed a compostela that month, but I don't know where they were - I hardly saw anyone.
Sometime after my return home, I discovered there was a Confraternity of St James, and joined them. Through them, I learnt of the Camino Inglés, which I walked in 1995, from A Coruña: a strange contrast of tedious urban sections in A Coruña and Santiago, and very rural Galicia with little changed in hundreds of years. In 1997, I used newly-created GRs in and around Paris to connect Senlis with St Denis and Notre Dame de Paris - and, of course, the Tours St Jacques. In 1999, I learnt that the Rhône-Alpes Amis and the FFRP had created a connecting link between Geneva and Le Puy, and immediately sped off to walk it, literally a week or two after it was waymarked. So that filled in the gap in my walk from Munich, started 15 years earlier.
I attended many of the Confraternity's Practical Pilgrim sessions, where experienced pilgrims pass on information and advice to greenhorns, and noticed that, through the huge changes in the Camino, my information was becoming increasingly out-of-date. So, also in 1999, I set off to walk the Francés again, this time in four stages of a week. I crossed the Pyrenees in glorious weather at the beginning of November with superb views all round, a complete contrast to my earlier crossing. March saw me continue on to the Meseta, but it was so hot I gave up in Frómista; I saw no other pilgrims on foot this week, only a couple of cyclists. Next November I walked on to Astorga, but this time it was woolly-hat-and-mittens weather throughout; there were even puddles on the camino; the TV news showed pilgrims wading through snow by the Cruz del Ferro. End March, when I got to the Cruz del Ferro, it was raining, and the ground was very wet from floods earlier. When I got to Santiago, I immediately left for the Portuguese border and walked the Camino Portugués; again, flood waters had only just receded. I enjoyed this route, but there was a disappointingly large amount of tarmac walking.
Since then, I have walked the E section of the GR51 from Menton, now the beginning of the Menton-Arles route. I have also walked the lowland route, largely along the canals, from Arles to Toulouse and Moissac, via Agde, Béziers, Narbonne, Carcassonne. And this year have walked several sections of the new GR655 Paris route. Time and health permitting, I hope to continue exploring the Roads to Santiago. Deo volente. Inshallah.
See separate page for my reflections on how the Camino is changing.