More Tiramisu, Please

I share breakfast across from a woman named Ozzy. She's from Thurso in the far reaches of Scotland, a town so north that even the midges haven't fully discovered it (or so she tells me). She's walked the Camino every which way, the del Norte, the Francés, the Invierno - you name it.

'What do you think it means to be a pilgrim?' I ask, between mouthfuls of tortilla and cake. 'Personally, I think it's about walking with purpose,' she says. 'Not about walking for a destination.'

I'm skeptical, and visibly so. I think I share her philosophy about distance walking, but I've never considered myself a 'pilgrim' so to speak. That term seems to carry a heavier weight. 'Maybe it's the community,' she continues. 'People react to you differently, they shout Buen Camino! from across the street. Many albergues are run by volunteers, and in the evenings we share why we walk.'

This softens my understanding. Strangers used to react to me differently on my Europe walk, the scale of that mission made me feel like I had a story worth telling, that I was 'something', maybe that same something that pilgrims feel here. After six or seven more glasses of orange juice (as if I were trying to fend off scurvy), it becomes apparent that Ozzy is walking with lung cancer. She's been walking for over a month now, and in her condition she can't even buy travel insurance.

Breakfast feels quieter after her admissions, and after chatting a while longer, we wish each other well and head off on our separate paths.

I step out into the umbral black of dawn, my waymarker the nine-pronged scallop shell, its yellow glow blazoned on concrete pillars and plastered walls. It navigates me through sleeping streets and uninhabited alleyways onto a tarmac path where yellow flowers, filaments of them, breach the arid rock and juxtapose the scrub that lies in decay at its side.

After a while, my bones embrittle with ache as my feet strike the bitumen over and over again. The air tastes metallic with rain, rain which pats against my head and dulls my senses. My hands clam as raindrops roll down my forefinger and pool at the tip of my thumb.

Flecks of orange and green tremble in the wind, they are leaves variegated in shades of yellow and brown. It's not long now until they'll all have withered away. But the forest doesn't chase the leaves that fall, for it trusts in the seasons that lie ahead.

I stop for coffee in Cacabelos. The man sat at the table over swabs another cigarette into his ash tray, his brow furrows as he inspects newspaper after newspaper. I pull out a book of my own and watch the world as it passes. It's peaceful. But the church bells soon chime and nudge me on my way.

Ahead, clouds linger in distant valleys. I feel invited to look softer until I realise that I don't see what they conceal and I contemplate that maybe I was never meant to. When I look closer, moss grows where time lies dormant and sparse vineyards stipple earthy soil that falls away into Villafranca del Bierzo, my day's destination.

In the evening, I go for dinner with German midwife Susi, French humanitarian Stefane, and South Korean Chukyu. Hours pass as we titillate and cantanker, toasting our differences and trading our stories until the candles gutter and wine runs dry.

After some time, I ask that same question I asked from the morning, 'what do you think it means to be a pilgrim?' There's a pause, a quiet one, before they each answer in turn. A theme runs through their words: they all want to leave something behind in one way or another.

Chukyu, in particular, talks of 'finding himself'. Again, I can't help in my skepticism - clichés are a little much, even for me. Susi asks if he's found what he's looking for yet, and he says no. A part of me wants to say that I've existed in that headspace previously, that he's probably not going to find it, at least not out here. Eventually, Susi asks me back 'what does it mean to you?' and I realise I'm not even prepared to answer my own question, and maybe that's why I ask it.

But who cares about the inner journey when an outer one offers pilgrim menus - three courses for £15!? More tiramisu, please!Read more