The Camino Portugues by Rob Penn

The Galicians have a lot of words for rain. A huge vocabulary, in fact, which covers every form of precipitation from specks on your sleeve to a thrashing Atlantic squall that will lift you and your hefty boots clean off the path you tread. Not even the Irish possess such a rich and expansive diction to describe the opening of the heavens, nor, I suspect do the Inuit have as many words for snow. The Galicians have really worked this one through, borrowing and inventing words and expressions over the centuries, to apply richly to that which falls earthwards from the sky and is wet, very wet - rain. But note - the Galicians only have one word for sunshine. Are you catching my drift here?

In Galicia it rains, a lot. In the twelve days it took me to walk 153 miles of the Camino Portugués, from Porto along the southern pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, it rained every day. I got whipped by ‘chubascos’ - short squalls of pelting rain. I was drenched by ‘vendavals’ - heavy tentacles of rain straight off the sea. And I ambled mournfully for hours in ‘orballos’ - light rain that goes on and on. In fact, my hiking jacket and khaki shorts were dampened with as many different types and styles of rain as these colourful Galicians have words for.

The walk was an insane venture from the outset. To undertake a pilgrimage in the wettest part of Europe in the wettest month of the year is foolhardy. But I was ignoring reason and experience in order to arrive before the tomb of St. James in Santiago at Easter, anno Domini 2000. By the time I reached Porto, the no nonsense city on the Douro River in northern Portugal, I had the bit between my teeth. And not “letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’”, I took my first step away from the carved wooden door of the 12th Century Romanesque cathedral as a light drizzle struck up.

At the right time of year, the Camino Portugués would be a great if not glorious walk. It remains a poor cousin of the celebrated pilgrim’s way across northern Spain, the Camino Francés, but if your time is tight and you like to walk alone, then it may suit. Though it officially starts in Porto, a much more sensible option would be to miss the long stretches on tarmac - sometimes you are thrust upon very heavy traffic - and pick up the trail in Ponte de Lima. The route is waymarked from here and there were whole afternoons when I did not see a car.

Guided by the yellow arrows and the sign of the ‘peregrino’ - a scallop shell - I gently climbed, through eucalyptus woods, out of the Lima valley on cobbled, vine-covered lanes over the Serra Arga to Tui, a fortified town on the Minho River. From the Spanish border, the route is flat, passing through the Galician littoral, touching the great ‘rias’ that define this rugged coast. The final leg to Santiago is through the green, benign hills that Galicians love.

There are some big towns to negotiate in Spain, but after the rough accommodation and stout food by the roadside in rural Portugal, a little urbanity did not go amiss. As Easter approached, the festivities and the feasting gathered pace. Each time I halted in a bar for a couple of ‘entremeses’, I unwittingly got involved in a grand feast. I ate excellent fish, hams, octopus, grilled meats all sent down with plenty of vino de la casa and what the Portuguese call ‘café con musica’ (an espresso with brandy) to stave off the chill - not slimming fare, but it was fair compensation for walking in the rain.

And walk in the rain, I did. Every day, until on the eve of the festival of Spirito Santo, as the fountains, stone crosses and waymarks of the Camino Portugués became more regular and I approached the holy city of Santiago, it stopped. The rain actually stopped. The sky, a shield of unbroken grey for twelve days, cracked open and as I strode happily down the Rua Vilar and up the steps of the Cathedral, I felt on my damp back, the warmth of that thing so unfamiliar to Galicia, the glorious sun.