An Irish group - and the spirit of a long-dead pilgrim - recently set sail for Santiago de Compostela, in Spain. Group leader Eamonn McEneaneydescribes the journey
LAST MONTH we set sail from Waterford on the Jeanie Johnston, bound for northern Spain, to re-enact a pilgrimage made in 1483 by James Rice, the city's famous mayor.
Before we left Ireland a pageant on Rice's life was staged by his tomb, where scallop shells - the symbol carried by pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela since medieval times - and special passports were presented to the 14 hardy pilgrims by the mayor of Waterford, Mary O'Halloran. We cast off at midnight and sailed downriver, past the Hook lighthouse and out into the Atlantic. Our next sight of land would be the Tower of Hercules at the entrance to Corunna - A Coruña in Galician - built originally by the Romans.
For the next four days our minds and bodies adjusted to the shifting rhythm of the sea. The monotony was dramatically broken by a wave of excitement when a pod of dolphins provided an escort, vying with each other to get as close to the prow of the ship as possible while still outmanoeuvring it.
Four days at sea was four days of stories. Like characters from The Canterbury Tales, each pilgrim had a tale to tell.
One of the group of 14 was John Hayden from Co Laois. He was doing the pilgrimage for Hector, the nickname given to a skeleton discovered in the early 1940s during roadworks near his local village of Timahoe.
A scallop shell was found with the remains, which were brought to the local publican, who alerted gardaí. Prior to reburial, a proper wake was held for Hector, and the skull was placed between two whiskey bottles on the bar counter.
The scallop shell was kept as a memento of the long- deceased, though at the time nobody in the area understood its significance. Many years later Hayden's father saw a news feature about human remains found in the Midlands. Each of the skeletons had a scallop shell. The reporter said the shell signified that the deceased had been on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.
Hayden's father asked him to retrace Hector's journey to the tomb of St James if ever he had the opportunity. So when Hayden saw a notice in The Irish Times about the pilgrimage, he signed up.
He took the shell with him, in a leather pouch, and also took a crooked shepherd's staff that he had purchased some years earlier at the Auld Lammas Fair, in Ballycastle, Co Antrim.
Hayden began the first leg of his Camino at St James's Gate, in Dublin, the traditional assembly point for medieval pilgrims. He then walked to Waterford, the traditional port of embarkation for Irish pilgrims going to Santiago de Compostela.
We all felt Hector was with us in spirit on the journey, not least because he had his own pilgrim's passport.
When we got to Corunna our passports were stamped after Mass in the magnificent Romanesque church of Santiago, the traditional starting point in Spain for the English and Irish Camino.
The following day the walk began at Miño, through the Galician countryside to the ancient town of Betanzos. Atlantic rains make this a very lush green land, worked mainly by small farmers, reminiscent of Ireland 30 or 40 years ago.
The approach to Betanzos is across a beautiful bridge and through one of the medieval gates of this once-walled town. It sits on the confluence of the rivers Mendo and Mandeo and is endowed with two very fine 12th-century churches: Santa María do Azougue and Igrexa de San Francisco.
Opposite the latter is an indoor fish market, a reminder that Galicia's many inlets are the source of some of the best seafood in Europe. The small town abounds with seafood restaurants, with the more interesting to be found in the laneways off the main square.
Day two of the walk involved a seven-hour trek, during which we got our pilgrim passports stamped in hamlets along the way, very often in local bars. At the end of the day the passport read more like a pub crawl than a pilgrimage. The walk finished in Sigüerio with a well-earned chilled beer.
Day three saw us into Monte del Gozo, on the outskirts of Santiago de Compostela, where two enormous bronze sculptures of pilgrims dominate the hilltop, providing a panoramic view of the cathedral in the distance.
And finally to the cathedral in Santiago, with its famous facade. Scallop shells were to be seen everywhere: on the traders' stalls and attached to the backpacks of the pilgrims who had made their way on foot or bicycle to this most beautiful of Spanish cities.
Hector had made the journey - in spirit at least.
Eamonn McEneaney is director of Waterford Museum of Treasures