Dermot Kiernan currently of the Sorbonne a great singer and musician, and friend – but a lazy git.
Dermot this is written as a permanent reminder of the article that you were going to write for me about your experiences on the Camino de Santiago and / or the feelings afterwards. You said back in April…only a few hundred words…after a BA(hons) 1st class and a MA and now on another MA one would think that a few hundred words would be put together in half an hour – come on share your experiences!
Part I
I left Ireland on the morning of the 29th of June, 2005 to walk the Camino de Santiago. I had been talking to two of my friends which I lived with at university earlier that year. They both had already walked the route, one had even walked it from Amsterdam! Around the kitchen table we chatted about it one afternoon, anything to avoid doing anything productive. Les and Dara spoke of what an amazing journey it was, enlightening and invigorating in every way. To be honest, at the beginning of the discussion the idea of traipsing across Northern Spain, living out of the contents of your rucksack for the best part of the month did not at all appeal. Let me be honest for one moment. I’m a man who loves his comforts. I love my clothes, my CDs and DVDs a, my food and my car so you can only imagine how this journey may have sounded to me at first. However, the more the guys spoke of their life-altering experience on the camino and how free they both felt, it wasn’t long until I was hooked on the idea.
At that time I wasn’t completely happy with my life. I wasn’t long out of a four year relationship. College was getting me down because I wasn’t completely sure if the Masters I was in the middle of was what I wanted to be doing. I wasn’t happy with work. I was teaching music for a living and to be honest, I’m not a huge fan of teaching. I felt trapped and I needed out of this life, even for a while. The camino seemed like the obvious solution.
Part II (day 1)
I did not travel the camino alone. I mentioned the prospect of walking across Spain to a very good friend of mine, Niall McGrath and to my surprise he was immediately up for it and so we planned it out and both headed off a few weeks later on the 29th. After flying into Paris where we spent the day we got a rather long and bumpy night SNCF to Bayonne and a connecting train to St Jean. I think it was around midday when we arrived, quite late in the day whilst on the Camino, especially to begin a trek up the Pyrenees. However after some advice from the pilgrim office we decided to attempt the first 8.5km upward journey to l’Orison, the only albergue between St Jean and Roncesvalles. This was without a doubt the most challenging section of the entire camino. I realise we were both tired as the train journey down from Paris wasn’t exactly first class. I was very unfit, over weight and hadn’t exposed myself to any physical exercise in a long while. During the 8.5km uphill climb I lost count of how many times I had to stop for a rest. Niall, clearly the fitter of the two of us, was slowly growing more impatient. I regretted my camino decision each time I stopped to catch my breath because the rest of the time I think I was probably too busy cursing Dara and Les, under my breath of course.