Scallop shells - the symbol of the Camino

My arrival into Santiago de Compostela this past Saturday gave me such a feeling of completion. The place was teeming with people, which was overwhelming and disconcerting at first after the peace of the countryside, but we soon settled into this magnificent town with its narrow winding streets filled with colonnades, fountains and history.

The sight of the present day cathedral, begun in 1087, filled me with awe. The Romanesque building, tinged with Gothic elements and some Baroque features, is enormous and elaborately decorated inside. The stories it holds and the events it has witnessed seem to be captured in its very stonework.

The evening of our arrival we had our version of a last supper, but without the water-into-wine or the betrayal. As always, on the menu were mussels, squid, octopus, fish and razor clams, all liberally sprinkled with olive oil and pimentón (paprika). For the record, not a morsel of octopus passed my lips on this whole trip in spite of it being on offer everywhere. Yes, it is delicious, but I'm sure your dog or cat would be too, given how well you look after them. Octopuses are too intelligent to be eaten, and I worry that our intense consumption will add them to the list of species we are eating to extinction (a list which includes sharks, pangolins, eels, beluga sturgeon, gorillas and the Yangtze soft shell turtles which are down to four individuals).

As the group dispersed into the warm evening, four of us headed out to look for a Quemada, a Galician alcoholic drink made with aguardiente and infused with lemon, coffee beans, sugar and cinnamon. Traditionally, it is served in a pumpkin but ours came in a shallow, three-legged clay pot. Our young waitress began by reciting an incantation as she lit the brew on fire and then stirred it for a long time, raising the ladle and pouring the flaming blue liquid back into the pot, continuing to recite the spell to confer special powers to the Quemada which would then be transferred to those drinking it. 

We sipped the warm brew in tiny clay cups and retold stories of our time together. Around us, in the small slanted square (from the steep street rather than the aguardiente of the Quemada) people were also sharing and laughing in the surprisingly hot evening on this last day of September.

We ended our magical arrival day into Santiago de Compostela in the central plaza, with a just-past full moon rising over the towers and roofline of the cathedral. Behind us, in the colonnade of an old building, a folk group in full costume danced and played their old Galician instruments. Tuna music, as it is called, is a tradition dating back as far as the 13th century, and used to involve groups of needy university students singing, accompanied by traditional instruments, in order to earn money to pay for their studies.

I feel blessed, literally blessed, by the experience of the Camino and then the arrival into such a magnificent place.

I didn't have any major epiphanies on the Camino but found that the rhythm, routine and mixture of both solitary and social time gave me the opportunity to think through many of the realisations that I have had on this year-long untethered road. 

I noticed random dips in self-confidence, which I attributed to my inability to engage conversationally with other pilgrims along the way. Disinterest could be a better way of putting it, as this wasn't why I was doing the Camino. I likened the daily route to a cocktail party, where one never gets past the "I'm from wherever, and I do this, and have x-number of children". That's not to say that I didn't have some good chats with a few people, but these were rare, and anyway, I had five dynamic and interesting women to hang with when I wanted. The awkwardness diminished as I relaxed and realised I could just be me. I don't need to compare myself to others, my disinterest in mundane conversation is just who I am. It doesn't make me better or worse than those who can light up a room or engage a table of twenty in their stories. I am who I am. I've been called intense, but there are worse names in the book!

I was interviewed by a radio station the morning after our arrival into Santiago, while eating breakfast of all things. It was mostly about what we had ordered but touched a bit on my background, particularly why a Canadian spoke such fluent Spanish. I was eating Tarta de Santiago, a delicious cake made only of ground almonds, sugar and eggs, with my tea and juice. I don't usually have cake for breakfast, but when on holiday...

It was fascinating visiting the tomb of St. James before heading off to find breakfast (and get interviewed). This is the resting place of one of Jesus' disciples and the tomb was left undisturbed when the town was razed to the ground in 997 by Abū Amir al-Mansūr, military commander of the Moorish caliphate of Córdoba. The cathedral is one of only three churches built over the remains of disciples, the others being St. Thomas' in Chennai, India and, of course, St. Peter's in Rome. 

I feel like a million bucks now, full of energy and excitement. As if my hopes and ideas and anticipation for what comes next is a massive basket, about to overflow. I don't think I've ever felt this high on life before - which says a lot as these past few months I have had numerous moments of joy and contentment.

The question now is what to do with all this potential, where to direct it. The plan starts with a week here in London. I arrived yesterday afternoon into a teeming Gatwick airport to find grey skies, a non-functioning Victoria line and that polite British formality of crowded trains. My days will be mostly writing or walking or exploring cultural opportunities, and my evenings socialising. After that, a month in Switzerland, in a French-speaking area that I know nothing about but where I have three, even four, sets of nearby friends. Exploration on all levels, hanging on a structure of regular writing. What do I have in me? What stories would like to be told? And is it books, or screenplays, or short stories, or punchy anecdotes which don't fit a genre?

Time will tell, as it so often does.