403 Susan Jagannath ~ Adventures on the Camino Inglés

Transcript

Holly:  Hello adventurers and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 403. This is your host Holly Worton, and I am back with another fantastic guest.

I am excited to introduce, or reintroduce, this week’s guest, Susan Jagannath. She was recently a guest on episode 391 where we talked about her journey to the Valley of Flowers in India. This time we are talking about the Camino Inglés, which she has walked twice to research her book on the trail.

Now I originally planned to walk the Camino Inglés last year but of course travel restrictions got in the way. So now I am hoping to put in the calendar for next year, 2022. While the Camino is not yet open for international visitors this is a great time to plan a future adventure on the trail.

So what are you going to learn today? We talk about, What is the Camino Inglés and how it compares to other Caminos. Why you might want to choose this Camino over the Camino Francés. How to prepare for a long-distance walk like this. The best time of the year to go and how to budget for a Camino Inglés adventure. So I really, really, hope that you enjoy this episode. This is a trail that has been fascinating me for the last couple of years. I originally read Susan’s book, probably two years ago and she has updated it since then so I am really looking forward to reading the updates. Yes, without further ado, let’s head over the interview.

Holly: Hello Susan.

Susan: Hi Holly!

Holly: It is good to speak with you again.

Susan: I know, it’s good indeed.

Holly: And I am super-excited to talk with you about the Camino Inglés which is something which has been on my list to do and it was on my plans to do last year; and your book about the Camino Inglés was the first book that I read about it, so I am very excited to be circling back to the first way that I discovered you. So the Camino Inglés.

Susan: That’s lovely, thank you, I hope you enjoyed it. I love to meet people that have read my books. Sometimes I worry, ‘oh they know so much about me now!’.

Holly: It is weird because I write some similar books to you in terms of walking and I have had made people made comments to me like, ‘I know you always do this’, or ‘I know you like to do that’, and I am like: how do you know that about me? And it’s ‘oh you mention it in your book’.

Susan: When we are authors we kind of lay bare parts of our soul that we never show to anyone else. In a way I think that’s what keeps people reading rather than going onto other medium.

Holly: Yes. I read sooo many books about the Camino, more about the Camino Frances than the Camino Inglés, but I have read so many books about it, because I have wanted to do it for years and every book is so different because it is every walker’s personal journey. I am insatiable in terms of reading walking books.

Susan: I am the same and I get a bit tired of people saying, ‘oh but there are so many Camino books, there are too many’, but there aren’t too many people in the world and there aren’t too many readers in the world, so…

Holly: Every Camino book I have read is totally different from the other one, even if it is two people writing about the same trail, I mean everyone’s inner experience is so different. For anyone listening to this, if you are thinking about writing a walking book, or a book based on a trail, just do it, your story is valid, it is interesting and it is going to be different from anyone else’s journey.

Susan: Absolutely, there is nothing new under the sun, as our old friend Shakespeare said.

Holly: Yes. So Susan, what is the Camino Inglés and why is it called that?

Susan: Well this goes back to the Middle Ages, and I think the 100 years war, when English pilgrims could not get from England to Spain without going through France where they would probably be killed or something, you know, they were not very friendly to them. And so they started a different route going to another port in Spain, A Coruña, where they could actually disembark and then walk to Santiago de Compostela and it was 100 miles, or 100 km, and it was all in one single province of Spain and not touch France at all. It was also convenient in those days because we have to remember that the super highway of medieval times was the sea really. So you got people coming from not only England but the Irish came in large numbers, and they didn’t want to go to England or France, and also the Nordic peoples from Scandinavia sailed around to A Coruña directly and started walking, but the sheer number of people were the English that were walking, I guess. Maybe the Spaniards could not differentiate between English and Irish or Scots, so they just called it the Camino Inglés. It was quite famous in the Middle Ages and then of course we had the reformation and it just kind of stopped, but it still kept its name and they still kept their records because a few years ago, maybe two or three years ago, I saw a post in the Pilgrim’s Office and they said, this the first pilgrim from Durham in 500 years.

Holly: Wow!

Susan: They had the records and they had pictures and said, we used to get, originally, a lot of pilgrims from Durham and then came the reformation and apparently not a single person had come [from Durham] for 500 years, quite amazing when you think… and that is what I love about the Camino, the sheer depth of history, it is not just geography and walking but you have this huge amount of culture and heritage over there just waiting for you to walk on. It is just amazing.

Holly: And these are trails that people have been using as you said since the Middle Ages, it is so mind boggling I think that these people have been doing these routes for so many hundreds of years.

Susan: I think it is 1100 years, from about 900AD. And they have, of course, records from about the 11th century I think, when they started writing things down, and, I know, I was walking the Camino Inglés and I was thinking, yeah, I am walking on tracks that have been walked for a thousand years and that is something surreal.

Holly: So for anyone who might not know what we are talking about, what is the Camino, and what is the Santiago de Compostela and why is this important?

Susan: Santiago de Compostela is a pilgrimage site where it is the tomb of Saint James (in Spanish Santiago). St James was one of the actual apostles of Jesus who came to Spain to evangelise and then went back and was martyred in Jerusalem and his disciples brought the body back to Spain. Specifically, the ship [with the body] was blown onto the land at Galicia and – it is a mix of mythology and a mix of story – that is where they found the grave after so many years and ten one of the bishops built this massive cathedral. It was also the age when they were encouraging pilgrims to walk because also pilgrims could no longer walk to Jerusalem, because Jerusalem had fallen to Islam, so this was a different place to walk to. I think it was also a building of cultures and a bringing together of peoples, as well as women, I think the women who went on pilgrimage on any Camino they were generally the women who the villagers could not control, the wild women. So they said: to get your sins forgiven go and walk the Camino… hoping that they would never come back! There is one book written by Majorie Kemp or something, she is an English pilgrim, and she has written this book and it is quite amazing because I reckon that this Camino was the first taste of freedom for these people even though they were probably trudging along and sleeping rough and not enough food and dogged by illness all the way, but if you think about it in those days they were probably free. And I have to admit, that when I am on a Camino pilgrimage, I feel very free, there is no laundry, there is no cooking, there is no homework for the children.

Holly: You are just doing your thing for you and it is just you.

Susan: Absolutely, it is because it was a pilgrimage, trying to reconnect on a spiritual level and I have seen lots of people who are not religious, and say they are not doing it for spiritual reasons, but then I see them in the cathedral and say: okay what are you doing here? You may have not done it for religious reasons but the trail had other plans for you!

Holly: {laughing} So that was actually another question that I wrote down, do you have to be Catholic to do this?

Susan: Absolutely not. It was originally a Catholic pilgrimage, because, at that time, I think the whole of Europe was Catholic and it was not a big deal everyone was Catholic who was walking it, and that is why the infrastructure was there because it has been set up for pilgrims, they were hostels, they used to call them hospitals, places to look after pilgrims, because a lot of pilgrims used to die on the way and a real pilgrim actually walked in trust, they didn’t have nice backpacks and good shoes.  

Holly: We are so privileged today for the gear that we have.

Susan: Yes I know and sometimes also the Camino is not about the gear, it is about.. I think even today there are people who are walking in sheer trust that the Camino will provide.

Holly: That’s a saying that you will come across over and over, ‘the Camino provides’.

Susan: And it is true really in many ways now. I didn’t have any huge great adventures and dramas on the Camino but in many ways you think about the Camino Inglés and my first book that I have published (which was not a technical book or a computer software manual, which nobody reads!) was the Camino Inglés and the Camino actually provided me with a new career if you think about it and that is something which I always wanted to do from a child, I wanted to be an author, and you forget about that. In a way I was an author because I was always writing, but I was in technology and writing stuff but it is not the same, no child wakes up and says, ‘I want to be a technical writer!’.

Holly: {laughing} It is more of a strategic move that you make once you go to university when you are like, ‘well, there is money in this and people need it, so…’.

Susan: Exactly! So that’s what the Camino provided me, it provided me with a chance to reconnect with a dream that I had forgotten.

Holly: So when did you decide to walk the Camino Inglés and why did you decide to walk this Camino?

Susan: Oh, I’m sorry to say there was nothing deep and meaningful about that one, it was because I was getting fat! {laughing}

Holly: {laughing} That’s a good reason!

Susan: You hit menopause and suddenly all this weight starts creeping on and suddenly one day you look at yourself in the mirror and you think, ‘oh my god I am looking like my mother!’ {laughing}. And then I decided to walk for exercise because I don’t believe in donating and really if I were to join a gym I would donate to it because I would never go! I don’t like to do anything, I won’t do the gym, I won’t play violent sports, but I do like to walk and I like to stroll along (I am not a violent hiker, I don’t stomp along vigorously), I meander around and look at things and enjoy the forest and enjoy nature. Over here in Australia a lot of people have done the Kokoda trail, have you heard of that?

Holly: No I haven’t.

Susan: The Kokoda trail is a trail in WW2, the diggers, when they were protecting what was then the frontline where the Japanese had actually landed, that was the frontline for Australia, where they sent up the diggers there to fight and push the Japanese back. There was this terrible trail which they had to walk, just hacking their way through the forest, because it is tropical forest, these really steep slopes with no tracks and they dug themselves in bunkers and… So this Kokoda trail still exists today and people walk it and it is a very, very, tough trail. I heard about it, I had read about it, and thought: oh that would be nice to do but I looked at it and I thought: no, it is too much! That was when I started thinking about long walks and we had done some day walks just right here around in Australia and I had wanted to hike in India in the Himalayas. And then suddenly I heard about the Camino and people said, ‘did you see the movie, The Way?’, and I saw the movie but I saw it much after I had already thought that I should walk it. And that is one of the things, I don’t know how it comes into your mind but suddenly you start meeting people who have done it, or you start finding books about it and I was quite interested in that. I found a book and the lady is now quite a good friend of mine, she is in Brisbane, and we meet up at the Camino meetings, [her book] it is called Boots to Bliss, by Claude Tranchant, she is a French lady and lives in Australia. So I read that book, I found it in the library one day, and I was just flipping through it, because as a family we didn’t do late night shopping but our library was open on those days in Australia, I think it was a Wednesday in our area, and the library was open until 9 o’clock and so I used to come back from work and I used to take the kids there from when they were three or four years old, and we would have these wild late night parties in the library! It was all part of my plot to make them read and also for us and so I started reading about it and then I started thinking, okay, if I can walk for a few hours, why not walk for a few days? And I started training for it and of course once you start training the weight was coming off and you start feeling amazingly healthy when you walk every day for two or three hours. And everything else drops off. I was also getting a bit of arthritis because I remember I had all this pain and went to the doctor and the doctor did scans and I saw something dramatic and asked, ‘what’s all that white stuff on my bones, have I got some terrible disease?’, and he said, ‘no you have got arthritis on every joint’. I said, ‘I can’t I am too young’, and he said, ‘no you are not too young!’. {Both: laughing} It is actually hereditary, according to me I was too young for it, but that was also one of the things for me to start walking and also not to carry weight when you have arthritis [helps]… After walking I hardly have it and sometimes my toes are a bit creaky or my fingers are a bit achy, but everything went away with my long walks and training for the Camino.

Holly: Wow! So what is the Camino Inglés like and how does it compare to the other Caminos?

Susan: Well I haven’t done any other Camino and I did this Camino because I was still working at that time and we were planning to go in October, which was Autumn. I had read everything and they said that Autumn is the best season to go (don’t go in the summer it is terrible). So we thought, okay we will go in October and that October…at the beginning of the year you do your annual plan for the year and we had a major release coming out in November, the books had to be ready and I thought, they don’t have so many writers and I had two or three books to deliver and a website and all that. This was about the third year I had tried to go and we couldn’t go and I was really grumpy and I said, ‘I am going in 2016, I don’t care’. I was just thinking, okay, there were reasons why we couldn’t take six weeks in March, we probably didn’t have it. And then I started again just looking up stuff and there were people who said, ‘oh just go and do it from Sarria’, and I was looking at it and then suddenly this Camino Inglés popped up as a five/six day walk and it is a complete Camino and it qualifies you for the Compostela and, yeah, it is quite a coastal walk, a little bit of climbs through a green and beautiful part of Spain and I said ‘okay, that’s it’. And it wasn’t a flat coastal walk I might add! – there were uphills and downhills every day but nothing dramatic. But you have to be fit to walk it, you can’t walk for five/six hours a day without training really. And the Camino Inglés, unlike the Frances where you have places to stay every 5/10 km, there are so many hostels and Albergues that you can stay, you don’t have that in rural Galicia, you have to get A to B, you know? You have to get to various stages and some of those stages are long. So you have to train for it. {joking} On the other hand, once we went there and learnt Spain is not a third world country they have phones and you can phone a taxi! {Both laughing}

Holly: There are facilities!

Susan: So there are taxis who very kindly put up their phone numbers at every bridge.

Holly: Just in case!

Susan: Just in case.

Holly: So why do you think someone may want to try the Camino Inglés over the more well-known Camino Frances?

Susan: Well as I say in my book, the problem when people are doing anything which is a big project, even if it is like writing a book, it is not that they can’t do it, they don’t believe in themselves, that’s the… oh my goodness six weeks walking the Camino Frances, I just can’t do it, I can’t do it because I am not healthy enough, I don’t have, if I am working, I don’t have the vacation time, even if I am not working, I don’t have money for 40 days. In Spain how do I cope? Whereas this one presents itself as just five to six days and you don’t need a lot of money, you don’t need a huge amount of fitness, you need to be fit to enjoy it but I have seen in my first walk there was a lady who was completely blind walking it and she had left her white cane in Heathrow.

Holly: Oh wow!

Susan: For her I met her at the start of the Camino and then I met her at the end as well, she was starting one day later than us, but I met her at the end also and she said that she didn’t have any problem. She said she met pilgrims every time who walked with her and the Camino Inglés was an easy walk for her so. Nobody can give me any excuses, if a blind lady without a white cane can walk it, so can you.

Holly: I can’t even imagine, I can’t even imagine! Wow!

Susan: So brave, so trusting. There would be people there to tell her, follow the arrows.

Holly: Even so when you are walking on uneven terrain there are rocks you could trip, you could fall, the uphills, the downhills, oh my god I am so impressed.

Susan: She got a stick, you know the white cane kind of flags ‘help me’, but she doesn’t, I know this because I have a sister who is legally blind and do you think she takes her white cane everywhere? No!

Holly: No. {laughing}

Susan: She doesn’t want to, but now of course that she has grown older everyone yells at her, ‘take it, take it’. So she does. But she really needs it, basically so that people know that she is blind and cars stop or they give way and things like that.

Holly: It is more for other people than for her.

Susan: Yes, that is the white cane thing. She also has another walking stick which she uses once in a while but, I don’t know, what’s the psychology…

Holly: So how did you prepare for this walk? So you started out (you said) walking two or three hours a day, were you walking every day? Were you walking with your backpack on? What did the training look like for you?

Susan: So we are lucky, we have a lot of bush and forest around us where we live in suburbia, in Australia, so there was a forest and a mountain. Okay, I will call it a mountain…

Holly: A large hill. {laughing}

Susan: Actually it is a small hill, it is 400m. But so we have this hill and it is called Mount Gravatt. So Mount Gravatt was near us with undulating forested land around it. So we would go there and we could walk a 4km circuit or a 7km circuit or a 10km circuit. So what we did, we started with the 4km and then we built up (I didn’t rush because I didn’t want to injure myself either) and by the time we reached 7km (we were doing 7km in about two hours, okay, I am not a fast walker), that’s when we put on the backpacks. And we put on the backpacks, first it was 1 kilo and then 2 kilos, so it took us a couple of weeks to reach full weight. So just taking it easy and walking, so by the time we really reached Spain, I think I had 7 kilos and I reduced that to about a 6 kilogram pack, we didn’t feel it was much really but we had been training for months, but it didn’t feel like training. We would walk every single day, I would get up and I would walk before work, because I had to be back home by about seven, to get ready to go to work.

Holly: Oh wow!

Susan: So I would walk in the morning from about 5am and get up at about 4.30am/5am and walk for a couple of hours. On weekends we would try to do 10-15 km every weekend to do a good stretch. What’s important is to be ready to walk for long stretches. Not just 10 minutes at a time, you have got to walk for hours. And that’s why you need to have somewhere nice and pretty to walk.

Holly: Yes it is not just about the physical it is about having that experience of being in a beautiful place.

Susan: Yeah absolutely and that is another of my faults, apart from being really lazy and not liking exercise, I also get bored really easily so if I have been on the same trail for a couple of days, [I think]: oh I am sick of looking at that same tree, and that same bird is singing, I need to go to another trail! {laughing}

Holly: I think a lot of people have been struggling with that during lockdown because in many parts of the world we have had to stay quite close to home and so it is like the same trails over and over again.

Susan: I just totally get it, that’s why people have got so many mental health [issues]… sometimes I feel like I am going crazy. Walking is so important for our mental health and there have been a couple of books which I read about walking and they say our whole physique, our thinking, everything is at the pace of walking because that is what we were meant to do, we were meant to walk everywhere and once in a while burst into speed and go and catch a rabbit or deer or whatever but most of the time we were supposed to be walking, picking berries off the trees and eating it or digging for grubs (or something like that!). {Both: laughing}

Holly: So what was your day-to-day experience like on the trail, what did each day look like?

Susan: It was just eat, walk, sleep, repeat. But as you would know when you walk any trail it is different every day so we would get up in the morning and on my next Camino I am going to take a collapsible kettle because the one thing you cannot get is tea in the morning. You can’t get tea. So we would get up and drink water and start walking immediately. We would start walking quite immediately to get out, if we were in a town, get out quite fast and time ourselves so that we reached a small restaurant or something within half-an-hour or one-hour and had breakfast and coffee there and then sort of fill up your water bottle and keep walking. It is not as if you can just keep striding ahead, you have to stop and look for the arrows, because sometimes they get [missed] and it is really that the second time we walked it the signage was even better and they even have digital [information] – you could just scan it with your phone and it would give you the history and the place to go and everything, it was really good. But you still have to, the first day when you start, you are looking for the signs and so you are slower: you are looking and you are turning and you are thinking what to do. And by about the second day the signs are looking for you – they just sort of hit you, they are just there and you just start seeing them – I think your brain gets into it. The first day definitely you need to take it slow because you are looking for the signs.

Holly: And I think that is one of the interesting things about walking a long distance trail, especially if you are walking a trail that is signposted and you have to follow the signs, you do have to have a certain level of awareness and keeping your eyes open, you can’t completely zone out or you might miss a turn.

Susan: Yes absolutely right, and you can’t sign because the trail could be muddy or it could be stormy, or there could be a stream running over it, so you have to watch your step, you can’t… it is not as bad as a Himalayan walk where you have to be totally attentive every single time but certainly you have to watch your step. And on the Camino Inglés there is some road walking now, more than before, so you have to stay alert, especially if you are from the UK or Australia, and you are used to walking on the other side of the road.

Holly: Right everything is backwards.

Susan: Yes everything is backwards and you walk on left side of the road so you always have the oncoming traffic and can hop off it onto the shoulder, you can’t zone out. Why would you want to zone out? You really want to look around, everything is so beautiful and it is a part of Spain which is very green. So went in Spring the flowers were bursting out and the birds were singing, it was like something out of a fairy tale, it was so beautiful.

Holly: And what kinds of places were you staying in? Were you staying in the pilgrim refuges and hostels or were you staying in B&Bs?

Susan: Well we stayed mostly in the B&Bs, they are called hostels, they are like maybe a 2*, so with our own rooms. We did stay in two Albergues, just for the experience and they were quite good. You paid this huge sum of 8 euros (joking). The Albergues were not crowded when we went, there was nobody else in the first one we stayed in and the second time we in an albuergue, there was just one other couple there. So they were not crowded at that time of the year and it was quite comfortable but of course bed bugs in the bedding, but we had our own sleeping bags. I would imagine that you would… I hope that the Albergues have put some more distance between the beds!  

Holly: Yeah. So you had said that people said the best time of year to go is in the Autumn, but you walked it both times in the Spring and you loved it.

Susan: I totally loved it, it was beautiful. It was wet, be aware that the Camino Inglés is so green because Galicia is wet.

Holly: It rains!

Susan: People say it is like Ireland and their legends, there is a tower over there which they say is a Roman tower, the tower of Brigantium, and there are these Celtic myths that one of the leaders or gods, stood on top of that tower and from there he could see Ireland. I don’t think…

Holly: He might have had some special vision!

Susan: And from there that is where they sailed across. Actually the people of Galicia count themselves as Celtic.

Holly: Yeah, yeah, I remember that from the very first time I visited. So what month do you go? Did you go in March, April, May?

Susan: March. First time we went in April, early April. Second time we went in later March. We were there more or less at the same time, slightly different but it was wet! The first time we went it must have been the Camino shining on us we just had one or two days of rain. The second time we had one day of sunshine.

Holly: Ooh! Wow. So very British weather.

Susan: It didn’t  matter we came from Australia, the driest continent in the world, we are quite happy to have rain!

Holly: So why did you decide to walk the trail a second time?

Susan: Because of my book, Holly. Once you write a book and then they go and change the trail on you, what do you do?

Holly: Yeah. You just have to walk it.

Susan: You have to walk it again! I did make a couple of… the book which is out now is about the third, or maybe even fourth, edition, because readers and write to me and there were one or two who gave me very rude reviews saying, your book is out of date and totally wrong.

Holly: Oh!

Susan: But I actually had more readers and Camino walkers who were very sweet, they emailed me and said, ‘the trail has changed, it is now this way and it is now that way’. So that was the first I heard of it and so I started asking and there were people who were walking the Camino who were readers, or had picked up my book, and they actually wrote back to me and told me the changes in the trail and also, by this time, I had made friends in the community in Spain and they did some checks for me and gave me information, and then also everything is online now and so I went and I looked at maps. So I did update the book a couple of times, but I was still not very happy about it so that is why… meanwhile a thing happened, in 2018, when I was on holiday in India, I actually got made redundant and so I said, ‘ah I am not going to go back to work’ because first it is quite difficult to get back into IT when you are over 60. And so I said, ‘I will have some time and I will go and walk again’, so we were planning a full year of walking in 2019 and I did a lot of walking. And that’s when I said, okay we will do the Camino Ingles again and I will walk the stages that had changed and the rest of the place we would just catch taxis and things and then spent some days in Santiago because last time we had barely seen it. But, as it turned out, every time I found I ended up walking the whole thing and there were changes all along the way, and once you are there and you start looking at the maps you think, ‘what’s wrong?, it is totally different. Okay got to go and walk it!’.

Holly: So why had they changed it so much?

Susan: I think a lot of it is politics, they said certain villages wanted to come near them. I think a lot of it is that they changed it to make it closer to the road so it was more convenient maybe for the authorities. So they changed the route a bit in some places but in my book I give you the way to walk the older way as well which is, there are two stages which are more forested and more beautiful. The other thing which they did, I think they realised that all the Caminos are getting walked by an older demographic. So they took out… the third day was a very hard day, a very steep walk, and quite a long walk, but you had to do that long walk because there is no way to stay and I know on the first walk we did find that walk very hard, it was only 25km but…

Holly: When you are carrying a big pack 25km is not the same as…

Susan: The book which we were following at that time said that it was 20km and you know 5km extra at the end of the day is brutal. It is terrible. So that was a very hard day, but it was a beautiful day, Holly, the most beautiful part of the Camino Inglés, because I think you have walked up from the coast, you have walked up the ridge or whatever and you are finally at the top of that hill. You have beautiful views and rolling meadows and forests and it is absolutely beautiful but oh god it is tough. I think there is almost no food on the way, just one spot for food. So you have to carry food on that path and there is only one place for coffee, that used to be like that but this time it wasn’t so difficult. They had rerouted it so that it kind of goes around the hill. Thankfully it is still quite beautiful because you still go through a nice forested area and then you come out, yes, it is okay.

Holly: So it is hard to get to the start of this Camino? Because it is kind of in a part of Spain that most people haven’t been to, it is way up in the middle of nowhere almost on the coast, isn’t it?

Susan: Yeah it is. There are two starting points, one is A Coruña and that is the place which has got the airports, so you have to fly into A Coruña. This is also the historical port where most people used to land in medieval times. And Coruña was also a royal port so, if you were a king or a queen, you didn’t want to walk with the hoi polloi on the Frances, so they would come into the port at Coruña and walk from there with their retinue. So Coruña is a very beautiful town but the problem is that today it is only 75km to Santiago so it doesn’t qualify you for the Compostela which is the certificate you get at the end, it doesn’t qualify you for that which is another reason why people started walking from another port called Ferrol. So Ferrol is 120km and you can walk from there and it is also an old town, pilgrims used to walk from these spots, both of these spots. Ferrol is interesting because it is on a very deep estuary and historically for you in England this is the forth bridge from where the Spanish Armada was launched. It is still a huge naval base, a massive naval base. That’s the history of it. So if you want to do the 100km you need to walk from Ferrol and that gives you one day of very easy walking around the estuary, beautiful views all the way off the road and very nice. Or you can walk from A Coruña, we have done both, the second time from A Coruña as well and then backtracked and caught the bus and went to Ferrol and spent the night and started the next day, because we are gluttons for punishment, aren’t we? {laughing} But the Camino is never a punishment! If you have extra time walk both legs, they are beautiful.

Holly: Okay! So would you say this is a good trail for beginners who maybe haven’t done another long distance trail before?

Susan: Yes it is ideal for your first Camino because supposing you decide that you don’t like to walk much, in six days it is over and you can do it in five days really. Or you can do it in six days and you are only walking about a maximum of five hours a day, it is only one day that you have to walk for about seven hours. And yes, it is really easy, it is really beautiful and it is quiet. I think if you are not wanting the overly social aspect of meeting other people and having a rollicking time talking and meeting people, it is really nice, it is quiet, it gives you a lot of thinking time and yet, every evening, you do meet other pilgrims. And you have time to socialise a bit but it is not as packed and rollicking along as sometimes I hear the Frances is, on that’s not the experience here it is quite different.

Holly: I think that is what appeals to me about it because I have been wanting to do the Camino Frances for years and years and years, but one of the things that I like about walking long distance trails here in England is that they are very quiet. I don’t see a lot of people. I might pass a couple here, a couple there, but there are long stretches where I am alone and I really like that because it just gives me the sense of peace and quiet and peace of mind and it is just lovely.

Susan: You would get that on the Ingles really. We would pass pilgrims or we would see pilgrims, they would turn up at the Albergue and we would think, we haven’t seen anyone all day, where did these people come from? But there are 400/500 people along 100km trail is nothing. But there were pilgrims walking but we would not pass more than four or five pilgrims a day. Sometimes those five pilgrims, I think on the second time we walked, we passed a couple of groups of people, either Spanish or Portuguese, they were school trips. Because it was the second time that we walked the holidays had started for Easter, it had started early and we hadn’t realised that, so there were quite a few and we had to get into hostels for that reason because the Albergues were full of these groups walking from Portugal and Italy. But when they are in a group they all kind of walk off together…

Holly: Yeah and they stick together.

Susan: Yes they stick together and of course we all chat and laugh and talk, but they all move on and you can just wander on off on your own. It was good but on the second, talking about not meeting people, on the second Camino, when we were there in 2019, we had come out of a forest and we were crossing an overbridge over the freeway and suddenly from the middle of the forest I heard someone shouting: Susan, Susan! I am thinking: I am in the middle of Spain, I don’t think Susan is a very Spanish name!

Holly: It is, but it is pronounced differently, Susannah. {laughing}

Susan: So I said, oh my God someone has found me over here. And a guy came out and he was one of my readers and we had an idea that he would be there around the same time because we had been talking and he said, ‘yeah we are also planning for around that time’. So we caught up and it was really nice to meet a reader actually walking the trail with you.

Holly: I know exactly what you mean, the second time I walked the South Downs Way I was staying at this B&B with these two sisters from California and we had dinner together and the next morning, when they came down for breakfast, one of them said, ‘you are Holly Worton’, and I said, ‘yes’. {laughing} And she said, ‘we read your book before we did this!, and I said, ‘oh my God, what are the odds!’.

Susan: I know but it is such a wonderful feeling isn’t it?

Holly: Yes it is, I love it!

Susan: It is kind of a wonderful feeling because, I feel, you have changed someone’s life.

Holly: Yes, and you have encouraged them to do something that maybe they thought they couldn’t do.

Susan: Exactly, exactly right. Yes so that was good but Mick O’Reilly was really nice, he had read my other book on Kanchenjunga, and in that book I had said that I had read all these books but I couldn’t find this one book and he had actually found that book in a second hand bookshop in the UK and she actually brought it along and gave it to me as a present.  

Holly: Wow!

Susan: It was so wonderful.

Holly: So how expensive is the Camino Ingles, what is a good budget to plan for it?

Susan: I think, you know Holly, I don’t know today because I don’t know how many things are open but at the time when we walked I think it was 50 Euros a day for the two of us, it was really ridiculously cheap and this is staying in paid accommodation and not in the Albergues. So we were paying about 30 Euros a night, and of course the 30 Euros was for the accommodation, and then after that we couldn’t find, you have coffee and your dinner might be about 10 Euros but it is really cheap. So 50 to 60 Euros and if you are staying in the towns a little bit more because those are bigger cities, in a bigger city you want to go out and have a nice meal.

Holly: So did you have to book your accommodation in advance? Or did you show up and find places?

Susan: I booked it one night ahead, that is all I did. We booked Ferrol for when we landed, we booked that from Australia, but then after that every day we booked in advance. When we were on the trail from A Coruña to Bruma, there is only one Albergue on the way so we didn’t book that we just walked in, otherwise we booked every night for the next place. Sometimes we just asked, the second time I was a bit bolder and booked myself, but I think the first time we were asking the hotel to ring for us and they were kind enough to check for us.

Holly: Oh that’s good. So what is the current situation with Covid?

Susan: Oh Holly, it changes every day, but they are really scared of a fourth wave affecting them over Holy Week when people go out and meet people and all the Semana Santa Holy Week processions have been cancelled, everything is cancelled. I don’t know if services are cancelled I think churches are open still, but all the huge processions which they used to have are all cancelled. And suddenly you can’t walk the Frances at all, because the recent rule is to even enter Spain from France, you now have to have your Covid certificate, within 72 hours. But the point is that if you get onto the Frances you can’t walk because they have got these circles of containment and you can’t enter into certain areas if you are not a local. They are writing out (it is quite a lot) 300 euro fines. The other problem is that a lot of the hostels and Albergues are closed, so where do you stay? And in the bigger cities now they have a curfew as well in the night. The same thing as you have in Australia, and I presume in the UK, you can only have x number of people in a venue. So if there is only one or two café bars open and it is full, what do you do? Then what do you do for food? So everything is more difficult. The only Camino which you can walk is the Camino Ingles.

Holly: Oh!

Susan: But there is a catch, you have to live in Galicia!

Holly: {laughing} You have to be a local.

Susan: You have to be a local and I was following Lorenzo, I think he runs an agency or something, and he did the Camino Ingles but he was actually having to drive home, or to go home every night, because nothing was open, he said none of the accommodation was open – this was a couple of weeks ago. So he could get stuff to eat and it was quite quiet, there weren’t too many cases and even Santiago was open, it wasn’t locked down. We know that bars have to close by 8 o’clock and you have restrictions on how many people you can have inside the bar, so people are having a rough time… I don’t know if the hostel owners will come back because how could they manage?

Holly: I don’t know, the whole hospitality industry has really been hit hard with this, so we shall see. So the Camino Ingles, if you are listening to this, is something to think about either later this year or probably next year.

Susan: Yes, yes. This year is actually a Holy year when they expect a lot of people to come. I think a lot of the holier people are within Spain walking but I think even within Spain unless you are in Galica you can’t go. Yes, maybe next year, we are also hoping we can go next year. We thought we would go this year, I had thought we would do the Frances this year and we had planned the Portuguese last year and you know what happened.

Holly: I had the Portuguese and the English for last year and neither of them happened, so… hopefully next year.

Susan: Hopefully next year we can meet on the Portuguese.

Holly: Yes! So Susan tell us about your book. I know we have talked about it a little bit but just so listeners have an idea of what it is about.

Susan: So it is called The Camino Ingles: 6 days to Santiago and all my books are guidebooks, so I try and give you a lot of information in them, but it is also more of a conversation, I also tell you what I am thinking and I sneak in some personal stories here and there. So it is a step-by-step guide for every day: what you can expect to see every day; accommodation and where you can eat; where you can rest; where you can get water; and how you can plan for the next day. So it is guidebook in that sense. It also has a section in the beginning which tells you how to train, which is what we talked about; but I put it down there, it is just: walking and try and find undulating land; where good shoes; fit your backpack nicely so it doesn’t chafe you, all that kind of information. At the end of it I do have, in the Santiago part, I have the information on what time are the cathedral services; when you can expect the Botafumeiro to swing; where is the Pilgrim’s office; where you can find an English mass and also, an important thing for everyone who reads my books, my Camino Ingles book is obliged to go to the church of Santa Susana! {Both: laughing} So I have that story as well, of me wandering through the park and suddenly finding this church to Santa Susana and I don’t know, I am a Catholic, but I didn’t know that there was a Saint Susan, so I suddenly felt extremely holy. I felt I had to live up to something now!

Holly: Yes! {laughing}

Susan: And people who are walking the Camino might be Anglicans and the Santa Susana has actually been loaned to the Anglicans on Sundays for services, Anglican services. There was an Anglican chaplaincy, it is closed now because of the Camino, but there is an Anglican chaplaincy for Anglicans who might want to have a little service of their own in Santa Susana.

Holly: So Susan thank you so much for joining us today, I really love talking about the Camino with you. Where can people find you online and learn more about you and your adventures and your books?

Susan: Thanks Holly it has been great talking to you too. You can find me on Amazon, my name is Susan Jagannath and there isn’t any other Susan Jagannath on Amazon, so you will find me there, either the print book or the ebook, you can get either of those. If you are in the UK, the print book comes to you really fast, because they are printing them in the UK.

Holly: Yes they do.

Susan: So you get the book really fast and I do find that I get a lot of print book sales in the UK. I think people like to hold the book, it is a very small book.

Holly: I was just thinking, I think I have one of the earlier editions of the ebook and I was just thinking as were talking about this, I need the updated edition and I think I am going to get the paperback because it is nice to be able to underline it and take notes in the margins…

Susan: And in the book I just say, just read the book at home, don’t carry 100g extra but people who actually said, ‘no, no, I took the and loved it’, you know Holly anyone who has got my original ebook, you can go into your amazon account area and go into the ‘manage my devices’ area and you can get the update, because I have made the update available for free. You can go there and update your book. Amazon gives you a long list of things before you can update a book, you have to have made so many changes, but I just wrote to them and said, ‘look, the Camino has changed, and also it is Covid, and there is Covid information and..’, they said ‘ok’.

Holly: Perfect!

Susan: Sometimes they try and make your readers… I don’t like that, if someone has got your book once and they want the updated edition I think they should get it, that is only fair. I suppose I could say, ‘it is a completely new book buy it again’, but what’s the point? I would rather have a Camino friend rather than two dollars for the book.  

Holly: Yeah!

Susan: You can also find me at SusanJagannath.com and all my books are there and what else I do. It is not the world’s most up-to-date website, but it will do, you will find my books there.

Holly: That’s the most important thing.

Susan: It is not as good as your website Holly!

Holly: My website has been around for a while so it has got a ton of stuff on it.

Susan: It is beautiful, I love it.

Holly: Thank you, my designer did such a good job with it, I love her! Thank you again for joining us today and thank you for talking about the Camino and it was just fantastic to have you back on the show.

Susan: I loved being back and I love talking about the Camino and I cannot wait for it to be open again and all of us to be able to travel again. Stay safe Holly, you can’t get sick.

Holly: Yes you too. No, no, gotta stay safe so that I can do the Camino and do the other walks.

Susan: Absolutely.

Holly: Well thank you again.

Susan: Thank you. Bon Camino!

 

Holly: Thank you for listening, please drop me a line and let me know what you thought of this week’s episode, you can email at [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there.

Also, I really like talking to people about different trails, trails that I have walked before, trails that I haven’t walked before and trails I want to walk and maybe even flowers that I have never heard of like the Valley of Flowers. So if there is a trail that you would like to hear about let me know or if there is person who has written a book about a trail that you would like me to interview, let me know. Or if there is any topic or anything that you would like me to cover on this show and I haven’t please let me know. I really like hearing from listeners and hearing what it is that you want to hear on this show, so please let me know.

And that’s all for now. Thank you for listening and remember to visit: HollyWorton.com/403 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you.