El Camino

Our third week on the road began with a surprisingly low-key border crossing into Spain – no sign of police, PCR tests, or any sign of a global pandemic at all – and a short dash across the rugged and charming Basque country towards its largest city: Bilbao. As is customary for this trip, we had undertaken next to no research of our subsequent destination except for selecting a highly rated Park4Night camping spot that overlooked the city – an extremely wise choice. Despite the fact it was our first overnighter to charge a fee, a quite monstrous €15 per night, the spectacular cityscape panorama was well worth the expense. Our location certainly warranted using our ultralight fibreglass, collapsible, convertible, commendable neon camping chairs for the first time – which we paired with a cerveza whilst surveying the glittering lights of the metropolis far below.

This moment turned out to be the highlight of our visit to Bilbao as, upon a thorough exploration of its core the following day, we discovered the city is extremely difficult to navigate, surrounded on all sides by intimidating, dark concrete apartment blocks, and had an overall atmosphere gloomier than Guantanamo. The inimitable Guggenheim aside, it wasn’t a shadow on Bordeaux, or even Briton Ferry for that matter (the Working Men’s Club on Neath Road is quite the architectural marvel). We both agreed that our hilltop accommodation was a far more pleasant location from which to spend the evening and clammily returned to our cladded castle.

We concluded to cut short our Basque break in favour of another unknown city a little further along the coast: Gijón (possibly pronounced Geehon). Our parking app once again came up trumps as it placed us alongside a pocket-sized beach and palatable promenade just a fifteen-minute saunter to the centre. A far more inviting municipality greeted us as we made this stroll for the first time, a stroll punctuated with curious side streets and noteworthy churches on every corner – certainly a more pleasing experience than our previous pitstop. Countless surfers appeared from the rear of hipster vans, scuttling across the busy main road, boards in hand, before diving headlong into the frigid Atlantic.

We both thoroughly enjoyed the city, despite the fact our teaching rarely overlapped during our visit, forcing us to explore Gijón on a mainly solitary basis. It is worth mentioning here that even though our compact living space measures a modest 6m x 2m x 3m, we haven’t felt (or at least I haven’t) that we are living in a padded jail cell on top of each other, possibly as a result of the time we both spend out and about whilst the other teaches. Although, having written that, we are still in the embryonic stage of our grand voyage – ask Lowri in a couple of months.

It was upon leaving Gijón that we began tracking the renowned Camino trail all the way to its source: Santiago. We would not be hiking it, however, as I don’t think either of our iffy knees could cope with it – that was my excuse at least. We followed the distinctively stylised scallop signposts all the way to the University of Santiago de Compostela: where we decided to hunker down for a couple of days whilst visiting the UNESCO-worthy town. The reputed burial place of Saint James the Great, Apostle of Christ, the central cathedral is also where countless weary hikers end their arduous journeys – as could be witnessed by the tremendous relief on their fatigued faces. Having acquired sore feet and a blister from walking a mere kilometre from the van, I felt this was not the place to air my grievances.

As we queued to enter the grand Archcathedral Basilica, on the eve of Halloween no less, the heavens opened and gave us a taste of what the shivering hikers must have experienced over many weeks on the trail. And if they enjoy the extravagant use of gold leaf and cherish church organs with more pipes than a Jewson catalogue then they would be thrilled with their final destination. As were we. After moving over seven hundred kilometres in seven days, we were also rewarded with the cheapest beer we’d seen to date: a single euro a pint. Tomorrow’s journey to our next nation was going to require a hero’s effort.

J