Nuala McCann: I’ll not follow the camino path this year – but I’m there in spirit

My friend is heading off on her second camino. We did the last one together.

This time, I’m waving her off.

“I’ll leave you to the pick-up point,” I tell her.

The camino is not for me this year, but I’ll be with her in spirit.

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She has climbed many mountains in her training. She sends me photographs from the hills of Jerretspass, and one with her climbing poles casting a tall shadow on a country road.

It’s what they call a Brocken Spectre – her shadow magnified on the path. A giant waiting to conquer the Pyrenees.

“We’ve done it before, you’ll be great,” I tell her.

She was great the last time. Her motto is “be prepared”.

She came with Epsom Salts for the bath every evening, Uddermint – the stuff that they put on the cows’ udders – that smelled like hell and caused not a few wrinkled-up noses at our communal breakfasts, and two walking poles which she kindly shared.

The poles were a must-have. It’s the downhill that makes your knees scream – the pole and a delicate zig-zag walk definitely help.

We also smeared our feet with Vaseline every morning and lay with our legs up the walls for half an hour each evening, laughing them off. Not a single blister or leg ache did we have.

Still, she’s nervous. “It’s that first day in the mountains, you’re talking at least twice Donard,” she says.

I’ve met a few other pilgrims turned friends heading in the same group and they are all dreading that first day. The Pyrenees are not for softies.

But they’re all in it together, through the muck, the rain and the sun. There’s a shared camaraderie. It’s the fellowship of the road that gets you through.

That and the way the Spanish waiters pour the gin. You’d think it was water.

We have a plastic measure from our boy’s old Calpol bottle at home. My other half informs me that that is the proper measure for gin too. I tell him he should tell that to the Spanish waiters – they poured it with the bottle held high over the glass and kept gluggling. Of course we had to glug too.

Last year, we thought we were Camino-ready, but we were fooling ourselves.

I never looked at a hill, even though one of my Derry cousins did warn me that we’d hit a few not unlike Fountain Hill in their native city. That is a hill that I would never drive down, even though Google Maps seems to consider it the fastest way to where you’re going. It gives unsuspecting visitors the chance to test just how good their brakes are.

This year, my friend is well prepped. We’ll meet the coach at a petrol station on the road to Dublin.

Am I a little wistful about not joining them?

Yes. When I look back on our camino, I think of leafy sunlit paths and the fresh light of early morning. In small villages you’d hear a cock crow and see hens scraping in the dust of a back yard.

Bunches of grapes were ripening on the vines back then, there were fields of sunflowers and my friend’s sweetcorn envy was a running joke.

She’s wedded to the soil – grows her own potatoes and onions, leeks and carrots.

“Why can’t my sweetcorn grow like that,” she’d sigh, as we passed field upon field of plants high as an elephant’ eye.

I’ll wish them buen camino and settle for twice round Cherryvale Park and a gin

“You don’t live in Spain,” I’d say.

I’ll wave her and her fellow pilgrims off and yes, there’s a tiny bit of envy that I won’t be there.

But I’ll wish them buen camino and settle for twice round Cherryvale Park and a gin... Spanish measures of course.