Part Four: The Camino Under Covid-19: passport to roam

• by Miranda Gavin
• in camino Camino de Santiago Camino del Norte Coronavirus Covid-19 Creative global pandemic Miranda Gavin mother nature nomad photography pilgrimage The Way of Saint James travel walking
• posted August 15, 2020

My Camino began when I travelled from Bayonne to Hendaye in France by train, walked over the bridge to Irun in Spain, and then hopped on another train to San Sebastian. It was also the last point that Mr X and Dog had reached  just after lock down eased. This seemed fair as they wouldn’t have to redo their last walking section just for my sake. It also meant that I could buy my official pilgrim’s credential from the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd (Catedral del Buen Pastor de San Sebastián). This concertina-style booklet has spaces for stamps, dates, and, if you are really nerdy, a signature to verify that you are a bona fide pilgrim, or pellegrino.

San Sebastian is the main city in the Basque Country (Pais Vasco) and the cathedral, which was built in the 19th century and inaugurated in 1897, boasts the “highest spire in Donostia San Sebastian”. At just under 2000 metres square, it is the largest church in the city and is built with slate and ashlar sandstone from Mount Igeldo. Luckily, I had arrived just as mass was about to start. I found a blackclad, rather diminutive nun who led me to a small backroom, took my two euros, and stamped my booklet, wishing me ‘Buen Camino’. We were both wearing masks which only added to the realisation that a Covid-19 Camino is unlike any other in recent years. I also noted that Jesus doesn’t wear a face mask, nor the Virgin Mary, or any of the other saints dotted through the cathedral. I presume Covid-19 transcends saintliness although I couldn’t help imagining all the saints masked and what kind of masks they would be wearing. Functional? Absolutely. Designer ones? Absolutely not. I did consider an artistic intervention to this effect but knew that this would be deemed sacrilegious and even though it is not iconoclasm, my Camino would definitely be over before it had begun. Still, my imagination was running on overdrive.

Clutching my passport to Compostela de Santiago, I suddenly felt six years old. Now I could collect stamps from all the places–churches, tourist offices, albuergues, (hostels) hotels, bars and restaurants– I would pass through on my way to the holy shrine. Legend has it that the relics of Saint James are entombed in the crypt in Santiago having been carried by boat from Jerusalem to Compostela. I used to love the I-Spy books I was given as a child to record sightings of everything from butterflies to cars. These pocket-sized books allowed my brother and I to amuse ourselves while the adults of the 1960s and 70s tried to change the world, or at least the ones I grew up with.

They were part of the post WW2 generation­­­—the ‘never had it so good’, counter-culture, overland-to-India, NHS-available-to-all birth control pill and promises of greater freedom and equality. It was a liberation that seemed to serve, in my experience, more men than women. Abortion was made legal in Great Britain in 1967 under certain grounds, but was still frowned upon and prohibited in northern Ireland; many young pregnant women were shut away or locked in psychiatric hospitals and made to feel culpable. The visibility that pregnancy bestows on women’s bodies marks them out, while the men who have played an equal role in coitus are able to shimmy through life as usual. I’ve often wondered how much the world would change if a man, like a seahorse, got pregnant.

I’m convinced it would look very different and that, for one, giving birth horizontal would be dispensed with. It was King Louis XIV who introduced this procedure because he enjoyed watching his newborns emerge at eye level. With the mother lying on a table with her legs in stirrups, the Sun King (le Roi Soleil), who reigned from 1643-1715 and fathered dozens of children from his wife and mistresses, had an uninterrupted view. It’s another one of the archaic treatments of women’s bodies that persists to this day, although having never given birth I am probably not in the right position to comment. I’m sitting down.

If you look carefully at my passport, you can see that one of the key questions asked is how you intend to travel the Camino: on foot, by bicycle (increasingly popular), by horse (increasingly unpopular), or by boat (I have no idea). As I don’t have a bicycle and I can’t find, let alone ride a horse, my feet are my main form of transport. I am a ped, not a pod, as mentioned in one of my earlier posts, Walk it Like you Talk it: the Joy of Walking.

Now I had my first official stamp, I wandered around The Cathedral of the Good Shepherd in the late afternoon light. Designed by architect Manuel de Echave in a neo-Gothic style, the building took nine years to complete and was regarded as the most monumental of its day, thanks to its enormous central tower and rose windows. However, it didn’t attain cathedral status until 1953.

The inside is spectacular with a soaring central nave and huge windows designed by renowned Spanish architect, Juan Bautista Lázaro de Diego, who specialized in stained-glass windows. The figures represented, include Jesus, Mary and the 12 Apostles. As I ambled through the interior wearing a mask, it was illuminated by the most magical, colourful light.

It was entrancing. Pools of colour spilled onto the stone floor and the wooden pews. Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary became cloaked in Joseph’s Technicolour Dream coat and I entered a psychedelic, alternative universe. I even considered making a confession, but when I pulled back the curtain there was no one home.

Instead, I went to the altar and lit a candle. When I say lit, I mean I deposited one Euro into a slot and watched a candle come alight, not with a flame but electricity. I was disappointed and my vision of striking a match and watching a wax candle burn, drip and extinguish was replaced by an automated, amusement-arcade ritual. Having said this, I have a flair for setting fire to things so it’s probably for the best. So far I have set fire to my socks and my bed when I was a teenager. My mother is hawk-like and still checks to see if there are any hidden candles in any room where I sleep. She I-spied one earlier this year and dutifully removed a small candle from under the bedside table where I’d lodged it in a rock I found on the local beach.

Nevertheless, I stepped back and prayed, or rather, I recited the names of every person I could think of living and dead who has or had cancer, who had died of natural and unnatural causes, as well as those who are ill or infirm. I stood there, head bowed, eyes closed, lips moving for at least quarter of an hour until I realised that I could be there all evening­­. In remembrance of as many as I can, here they are: Mother, Fatima, Nina, Mandy, Christoble, Andre, Rob, Sheila, Lou, Sophie, Sally, Granny, Gramps, Carlos, Hugo, Matt, David, Michael (Malcolm), Karim, Jack, Gladys, Sue, Marcus, and the list goes on. I carry all of you in my heart.

The Mexican Dia de los Muertos, (Day of the Dead) is a tradition of remembrance and one in which death is viewed as a transition of life; a natural progression, not an ending. Author Victor Landa quotes an old legend: “In our tradition, people die three deaths. The first death is when our bodies cease to function, when our hearts no longer beat of their own accord, when our gaze no longer has depth or weight. The second death comes when our body is lowered into the ground, returned to mother earth, out of sight. The third death, the most definitive death, is when there is no one left alive to remember us.”

For me, this Camino adventure is a quest, not a race. A quest for what, I’m still unsure, however, I do know that the Camino called and I responded. Some of the biggest lessons have been learning to adapt to the weather, to unexpected situations and finding ways to work through various personal, physical and mental hardships. Unlike Saint James, I am not a martyr. Given Brexit and the looming December 2020 deadline, I am hoping that I can use this passport to enter other countries. However, I will need to test this when I reach my final destination

All photos copyright Miranda Gavin, 2020. Except the photo of the male seahorse giving birth from Roaring Earth website and I-spy book from Ebay.