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14/09/2017: Corunna

‘Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame fresh and gory;

We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,

But left him alone with his glory.’

If anything comes to a Briton's mind about Corunna, it is likely to be the death in action of Lieutenant-General Sir John Moore in January 1809, who held on to the town for long enough to enable most of his army to be rescued and catch their boats home - a sort of early-day Dunkirk, a heroic failure that we love to celebrate for the heroism rather than the failure. The good Sir John was one of the country's best and most innovative generals, and so highly respected was he that when Marshal Soult overran the city shortly afterwards he ordered a monument to be built over his grave. Sadly we never got to see it, for reasons apparent below.

Englishmen of earlier generations would have associated the city with something quite different - the start of the Camino Inglés to Santiago de Compostela, for they did not trek along the more famous route across northern Spain but took boats to here, as did the Flemings. With this in mind, and with Santiago as our first major stop en route, Francis and I arrived here last night - not by boat as they do not call here any more from the UK, but by plane. Alas my ruc-sac didn't, so a large part of the day was spent shopping rather than sightseeing. I am learning Spanish very fast as a result. And Francis? - well, he is learning Spanish habits and took a siesta.

We did, though, manage to get to see the Tower of Hercules, the world's oldest lighthouse still in use (it dates from the first century), and a Mapa Mundi of 1085 shows only two working lighthouses: this one and one in Alexandria. If the photograph makes it look rather like an eighteenth-century building, well the outside is, but the inside is definitely Roman.

Stay tuned for an update from Santiago on the 18th!

From left to right: The garden of the Museum of Archaeology and History, the Tower of Hercules, and the Square of Maria Pita. The gallery windows on the next-to-top floor of the square are distinctively local and rather fetching.

15/09/2017: Corunna – Hospital de Bruma

We're off! – still minus my ruc-sac and thus only with a next-to-useless guide that I picked up from the Tourist Office yesterday. The outskirts and suburbs of Corunna are not exciting, and I would recommend that anyone who arrives by air and does not particularly want to see the city should start from the airport, which goes very close to the Camino. You won't miss much.

We did not see any Camino signs in Corunna at all, so we simply used the tourist map that we had to get to O Burgo, the former Templar port a few miles outside the city. Nevertheless there were one or two vignettes. It seems pretty clear that Galicia's sympathies were on the nationalist side during the civil war – though we did not find any statues to Franco, we did spy an Avenida General Primo de Rivera and an Avenida General Sanjurjo. (Primo de Rivera was dictator of Spain from 1923 to 1930, and Sanjurjo the leader of the coup in 1936. He died three days later in a plane crash, having overruled a warning from his pilot that the plane was overloaded with all the paraphernalia that he had put on board to impress the Spaniards with what he thought their new caudillo should show off. The pilot survived.)

Once you get outside the city boundary the signage begins: either a blue plaque with a yellow scallop shell, or a yellow arrow that might be painted on a lamppost, a fencepost, the back of a roadsign, a tree, or the road itself, You sometimes have to look for them, and needless to say there are occasional arrows painted by pranksters that send you off in the wrong direction (one of these, just to be warned, goes off from the main road to the left in Cruce).

To Hospital de Bruma is a long day - 21 miles - but rewarding as you go out of Corunna, through the suburbs which are undeniably smart, and into farming country interspersed with woodland. We could not quite follow the state of farming in the area: there seem (from looking at the terrain) to be a lot of small farms with smart new farm buildings – one detects the EU at work here, I think.

16-17/09/2017: Hospital de Bruma – Santiago

A couple of pleasant days walking through the Galician countryside - woods, green fields and villages, some on minor roads and some on forest tracks - at least until we got to the outskirts of Santiago, which are nothing like as nice as the city centre. My ruc-sac arrived yesterday morning, delivered to our hotel (the hostel was full - one of the occupational hazards of this journey as by and large one cannot book them: they are delighted to refer you to neighbouring establishments but usually at much greater expense), and with it John Brierley's guide which I can thoroughly recommend. It's called A Camino Pilgrim's Guide: Sarria - Santiago - Finisterre including Muxia Circuit and Camino Inglés. There were the usual vague yellow arrows, some of rather dubious provenance (the almost invisible yellow arrow pointing down a farm track to the left not long after you pass through A Rua is genuine, though - look out for it).

Appearances can be deceptive. We had lunch today at a place that I can only describe as looking like - and describing itself as - a transport café, but the steak, pork sausages, chips and green salad were both plentiful and delicious. It seems to be accepted by all but the smartest places that they offer a two-course menu for €10, which certainly helps the economics of the venture.

18/09/2017: Santiago de Compostela

Welcome to Santiago - and it's wet. In Britain we all have the impression that Spain is a country where the sun shines all day and it never rains. This may be true of Alicante (average annual rainfall 12 inches), but it most definitely is not of Santiago (average 75 inches - nearly twice as much as you get in Glasgow, or the centre of the Lake District).

Still, it's worth it. Much has been written about Santiago, so I shall confine myself to a brief survey. The origin of the shrine is shrouded in mystery, and the story of a boat waiting to take the body of St James ('Sant Iago') all the way from Jerusalem to the far end of Spain strikes me as most improbable. The second part - that a hermit had a vision and found a tomb (AD 815) seems to have more to it. Whether or not it contains St James's body, one knows that this is a holy place by the number of pilgrms that come here now and have done in the past. I have read one essay where the author reckoned that in the high Middle Ages (twelfth and thirteenth centuries) about a tenth of Europe was involved in Santiago pilgrimages in some way (either as pilgrims or providing services to them), and that at that time there were 36 pilgrim hostels in Burgos alone. It was clearly a big, serious and highly organised business, and well supported by the Kings of Galicia, who were also Kings of Castille from 1230 on.

The old city behind the cathedral is well worth a stroll around.

The Rua do Vilar was clearly built with the local weather in mind

The Praza de Obradorio is one of the most magnificent city squares in Europe, with only one building around each side (well, two if you count the cathedral and the archbishop's palace as separate buildings). They are, going clockwise:

The Cathedral (not my photograph as it is covered in scaffolding at the moment). The building is actually Romanesque, but has this Baroque facade that does not really fit its character but is magnificent anyway.

The College of St Jerome, which now houses the rectorate of the University of Santiago

The Pazo (Palace) de Raxoi, seat of Galicia's regional parliament

The Hostal de los Reyes Católicos, formerly the main pilgrim hostel, now a hotel in the Parador chain, is a sublime mix of the simple and the ornate.

A close-up of the main entrance to the Hostal de los Reyes Católicos

Inside the Cathedral there are many treasures, and I am glad to say that one of the more famous ones, the Botifumeiro - probably the world's largest thurible - is in regular use once more. It swings on a rope as it is far too heavy for a thurifer to carry.

19/09/2017: Santiago Onwards

Left Santiago this morning after one last visit to the Cathedral (Francis having returned home on the morning flight). It is worth seeing at 9 a.m. as it is virtually empty, whereas later in the day it is heaving with people and difficult to get to see even the major sights. They do seem to be pretty clear that the relics that one can pray in front of are those of St James, so perhaps there is something in that. I'm still not clear why anyone would want to take them such a long distance when he died in Jerusalem.

A dry day today as I started down the Camino Portugués to Padron, just short of which town I am staying now. I had wondered how easy it would be finding the way when all the signs were going in the wrong direction, but in fact there was very little problem and I only took one wrong turning. There are blue arrows for those going away from Santiago, as opposed to yellow ones for those going there, and where they were missing it was rarely long before a group of backpackers emerged from round the corner to indicate the route. Going against the crowd seems to be unusual but not unique: three people asked me whether I was going to Fátima, so the idea is clearly beginning to catch on.

It was quite a hot day too and the sight of a café every three or four miles was very welcome. I particularly recommend La Calabaza del Peregrino at Faramello: order a zumo de naranja fresco and watch the barmaid slice your oranges and put them in the presser, before serving you the freshest orange juice you'll have had for a long time.

21/09/2017: To Caldas de Reis

After a day of enforced idleness because of blisters in both feet (it's surprising how little you can do when neither foot is functioning properly), I arrived at Caldas de Reis this evening after a 13-mile walk. Caldas is a hot spa town, where unfortunately one is not allowed to bathe one's feet in the spa.

The highlight, however, was the town of Padrón, which I passed this morning. The St James plot gets thicker and thicker, as it seems to be here, or so they say, that the apostle arrived to preach to the heathen natives, and the stone on which he moored his boat is now under the high altar in the parish church (evidently either the stone or the river has been moved):

The route was less well marked in this section, with such arrows as there are being now green and not blue. Once again one could normally rely on backpackers appearing from one of the roads to tell you which to go down, but these do tend to get less numerous after about 4.00 and are particularly thin on the ground after 6.

Evidently the backpackers do not have the same sense of time as the local Galicians. Today is the autumnal equinox and sunrise and sunset will coincide at 8.25 am and pm respectively next Tuesday. We are however in the same time zone as Warsaw, where the sun will rise and set on that day at 6.27, almost two hours earlier. This means that the locals lead almost a student lifestyle: nothing other than cafes open until 10.00, and then of course there's a three-hour siesta still, so final closing time for your local chemist or newsagent is not until 8.30. Don't attempt ordering lunch before 1.00 because they won't be ready for you. Go to dinner at 9 and the place will be empty: diners will begin arriving a little before 10. Even the local cafe is likely to serve food until 11 or 12. I'm told that Madrid is the only place in Europe where one regularly gets into a traffic jam at 2 in the morning, and I can see why. Nor is this attitude confined to local business dealings - you find it too even in the internationally-minded Catholic Church, at least if you want to go to daily Mass here in Caldas de Reis where it is at 8 p.m. or at Padrón at 8.30.

22/09/2017

Today I arrived at Pontevedra, a city with a very charming old centre on the bank of the River Lerez. So far the sights have all been to do with Santiago, and most of them still are. This is however the first place on the route with a Fátima connection, as Sr Lucia was a postulant here in 1925 and 1926 at a convent of Dorothean nuns, and had a couple of visions in which she was urged to promote the first five Saturdays devotion. (The devotion itself was not new, but the promises that accompanied it were.) One can visit the convent in the Rua Sor Lucia, and there is exposition from 7 to 8.30 p.m every day.

On the journey here the blue arrows seem to have returned (sometimes), and in two cases they were accompanied by the word 'Fátima'. so that is reassuring.

The Galicians take safety at level crossings very seriously

23/09/2017: Pontevedra – Redondela

Left Pontevedra to-day for the rather smaller town of Redondela. Both places have lovely medieval centres but there seems to be little idea round here how to make the more modern areas on the outskirts look nice.

Left: The high altar and vaulted roof of the chancel of Pontevedra Cathedral; Right: The Santuario da Pellegrino at Pontevedra, a scallop-shaped chapel for pilgrims to pray in.