Brent and Claire Ruru have been travelling the globe for the last five years. Here, Brent continues his travel diary, highlighting the couple’s experience on the Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage Walk in Spain.
Peddling across Spain on the Camino, we had many ’wow’ moments. The Monastery of Irache was one. It had a wine fountain so pilgrims could fill up their water bottle with red wine but we stuck to water to maintain bike balance and gear-changing priorities. The monastery was also the location of the first hospital for pilgrims in the 11th century. As we progressed, we met a chap from the US (Mike), who was 50 and running the Camino. He was running a daily distance equal to what someone would normally walk over two days. Mike had run across the US from one side to the other, placing a yellow flag in the ground at 2 km points for every US soldier who had lost their life in the Afghanistan war.
When you’re travelling like us, you see all sorts of unexpected things – like the time overnight rain brought out snails by the hundreds. We did our best to dodge them but it made us a little uneasy – here were these snails with their lives on their backs (like us carrying our lives on our bikes), having travelled so far onto the road, only to have their life snuffed out by a bit of rubber. And with most of the day in drizzle, dodging snails lost out to us dodging the trucks on the road. As we cycled, we often noticed how a dull grey sky seemed to bring out the crisp colour in everything – the fields of wheat crops and green forests; poppies of red and pink; the walkers with yellow, blue and white poncho raincoats; the shiny, black road seal; the orange and brown snail shells.
When we got to the end of our cycling journey, it was strange saying goodbye to the fellow cyclists we had ridden with for large parts of the journey across Spain. They had been a tower of inspiration, a multinational bunch of folk just doing it like us. As we stood by the Santiago Cathedral in Compostela, we felt like someone up there was looking down and nodding, congratulating us on a job well done. “We did it” – it was a truly euphoric feeling giving us appreciation for the religious, spiritual and cultural aspects of the journey. But only we knew that we were halfway through the adventure. A couple of days later, we were back on the Camino walking it in reverse, from Compestela to Pamplona. Before that however, we took a bus to the far western edge of Spain, to a place called Fisterra. Tradition is that you go here to burn your pilgrim travelling clothes and we followed tradition, bike pants and gloves went up in flames.
Footnote: Brent is a professional speaker, mentor and funeral celebrant (www.brentruru.com) and can be contacted at [email protected] or 027 511 0249).
Brent and Claire arriving at Santiago.
Puente la Reina Bridge.
Brent and Claire celebrating the end of the ride.
Molinaseca bridge.