It’s when you forego the train, leaving outside your hotel window, that you really do trust in Him, on this the longest Camino day.
It is my cross to bear to carry my full backpack the full 25kms (or 6 hours), for the last leg, from Padron to Santiago de Compostella.
And be there in time for 4.30pm to catch the only Sunday bus to Porto for my red-eye flight back to Edinburgh the next morning.
American dad and lad Jim and Jamie are ahead of me, as they have been all week, before sunset.
But I am waiting in the Hotel Rosalía lobby on Big Brother Ed… he ain’t heady he’s my brother.
Despite spending last night, leading the belated celebrations for Aussie Allan’s 77th birthday, with his travelling companion Peter.
At Pulperia Rial in the old centre, where I feast on the regional speciality pulpo, on a wooden plate obviously, and Rioja.
I carb up with Irish sisters Nuala and Maura but we bemoan the lack of Brennan’s bread.
The bread of life
We will meet again on the Way and because they’re Irish the talk comes round to food.
And they inform me that to tell the difference between Catholics and Protestants you ask where they keep their toasters.
Catholics leave theirs on the workplace while Protestants put theirs in the wardrobe.
Completely random but the kind of invaluable knowledge you take away from walking the Way with the world’s walkers.
All this talk of food has made me hungry.
The ways of the Way
We break bread again, obviously, with Aussies Allan and Peter who will probably end up in our excess luggage.
And learn too the ways of the Way when a local offers to buy half of Peter’s monster cheese and half baguette for €3.
Or at least we think that is what is happening because at this stage lifting the piano that is my backpack is making me hallucinate.
God though has shone on us and given us a gentle wind to blow us to Santiago de Compostella.
When it’s no racing cert
And most importantly with enough time to pick up our certificate.
For completing a 100km stretch of the Camino with Camino Ways.
Although after filling out a needless form on a computer we are faced with a snaking half a mile queue for our cert.
Instead we accept that if God knows that we walked his Way then that is enough.
The front doors of the cathedral aren’t accessible either and we are told too late that we needed to go through a side entrance.
But having embraced the Pilgrims Mass when I walked the last 100 of the Camino Frances.
And ducked out of the way of the Botafumeiro incense holder which is currently out of action I am not suffering FOMO.
Leaving behind the city of brotherly love
I will, alas, miss out on spending a night in Santiago and then Porto with Big Brother Ed.
As I have a bus to catch back to Porto this afternoon and then a flight the next morning to Edinburgh.
Now being brothers I’d never tell him this so you’re sworn to secrecy.
He has, in truth, set a way, a path, for me to follow from my earliest days, and still does.
Even if sometimes he leaves me behind, he is ultimately always there for me in the end.
MEET YOU ON THE ROAD