Explore articles:
“We’d like you to write about yourself, John”, said the invitation from my friends in the ‘Australian Friends of the Camino’. “Let people get to know you. Let them see what makes you tick, what motivates you.”
Whilst I’d really rather not write about myself, in truth I could no longer avoid the challenge. In recent years I´ve realised that whilst we often talk about the ‘transformational’ nature of the Camino to Santiago we rarely describe, except in general terms, what the transformation was for us personally. What follows here is as honest as I can be.
70 years ago I was born into a very working class family in Glasgow, Scotland. My father was an unskilled labourer and my mother cleaned offices and worked in a shop to help make ends meet. I was their unexpected third child. My brother was 14 years older than me and my sister is 18 years my senior. My childhood was to all appearances happy and fulfilling. My parents did their best. I was sent to music lessons and joined the cubs and scouts. The music lessons led to me playing the church organ which is still a major part of my life. The cubs and scouts took me out of the housing estate where we lived and into the Scottish hills where I spent much time hiking. Was it a happy childhood? At one level yes. I did well at school eventually becoming the first member of my family to go to university. But it also had a dark and abusive element which I felt for a lot of my life left a stain. I’m old enough to realise I was certainly not alone in this experience. I now know that the strategy I developed to erase the stain was to overachieve – at everything I did. From university I became the youngest Chief Executive of a non-governmental organisation, the first step in a 30-year career which led to directing larger organisations, then working directly with the Roman Catholic Cardinal of Scotland and a few years later being Chief of Staff in the first Scottish Parliament.
I had married and we had two lovely girls, a big house, two cars and lots of friends. Was this enough? Was I happy? On the surface it appeared so but I was still striving. Still seeking. Still planning. Eventually I planned a major life change.
My plan was to retire to live in Seville in southern Spain. I had been going there during the summer for some years. Seville was everything I wanted. I played a little pipe organ in a local church and I looked forward to lazy days sipping chilled sherry under the orange trees. I had promised myself that when I had enough money to satisfy my needs, if not all of my wants, I’d change from doing the difficult executive jobs which had been my life for a long time to a quieter more sedate existence. Remember that ambition as this story develops!
My plan was to make the Big Change at the age of 50. The children were grown and I was secure. But there was just one last job to be done, one final challenge and so the Big Change was delayed. One evening I went to dinner with friends. “Come and see what Jenny has been up to,” said Graham as he pointed to a map on the wall. There were pictures of Jenny walking along a line across the top of Spain. They explained over dinner that Jenny had walked the Camino to Santiago in stages. Jenny told me about meeting other pilgrims, blisters, albergues, the towns through which she passed and her arrival in Santiago. I’d vaguely heard of Santiago de Compostela, and I knew a little about Saint James, but I had never heard of the Camino.
That conversation sparked off hours of research on the internet and more hours of daydreaming. But that final job was demanding and four years passed before the daydreaming became a reality. On 2 January 2007 I set off to walk the Via de la Plata to Santiago. I looked back at Seville. “I’ll return to live here,” I thought, “this Camino is the bridge to that future.”
That journey on foot was about the most powerful experience of my life. I met no other pilgrims for three weeks. I spoke little Spanish and communicated with a phrase book. My company along the way was a wave from a lone shepherd and an astonished welcome in some villages. I had packed far too much – including a flask, powdered hot drinks and a short-wave radio! Inevitably blisters appeared despite my preparations and I started disposing of unnecessary gear. I’m aware now that in those long solitary hours I started to also deal with some of my other baggage: the resentments, the bitter memories, the aftermath of divorce, a job that went badly, loves and friendships lost. I found myself praying, really praying, for the first time in years. Prayers for forgiveness and the ability to forgive.
On a dark morning as the sun came up over the horizon on the long Meseta I felt a joy and freedom like never before. I was proving to myself I could do this. Make this journey. I was venturing into a new land, coping with a language I didn’t know. I was almost self-sufficient. In that moment I knew that if all of my anxieties came to pass – if I lost those who loved me, my home, my money, then I could pack a rucksack and survive with very little. That feeling has never left me.
My arrival in Santiago was emotional. I waited in a long line to go up the stairs at the Pilgrims’ Office, full of anticipation, and although my treatment at the desk was cursory, I was overjoyed to receive my Compostela. I went off to the Cathedral for Mass and I was deeply moved that the pilgrims had made it their own. Rucksacks were piled against the walls. Pilgrims sat on the altar steps. The organ began and in the priests’ procession I saw boots and bare legs beneath some of the robes. The Botafumeiro was wonderful. At that Mass I realised deep in my heart that Santiago was where I wanted to be. I believe that this set off the chain of events which followed.
I knew I wanted to walk more and I decided on the Camino Inglés. The CSJ in London supplied some walking notes and asked if I would up-date them. That became the first guidebook. I had only ever written management reports in the past and this was an incredibly refreshing development. I’m secretly quite shy and so I adopted the pen name Johnniewalker. Well I’m Scottish and I like a dram! However my idea was that the CSJ could produce a series of low cost guidebooks written by pilgrims for pilgrims on a voluntary basis – anyone could be Johnniewalker. However the name stuck.
Soon more guidebook writing projects and Caminos followed and I eventually resigned from my full-time position. I started to spend more time in Santiago and became the first long term volunteer at the Pilgrims’ Office. 11 years ago I moved to Santiago to live for most of each year.
In total I volunteered in the Pilgrims’ Office for 7 years. I started the Amigos Welcome Service to improve the reception to the city for pilgrims. The volunteering programme is now part of the mainstream activities of the Pilgrims’ Office. I asked priests to come and say Mass in English and the Camino Chaplaincy was founded.
One day I got a message from a person named Janet Leitch from Australia. There was a new pilgrim association and they wanted approval for their own pilgrim passport. It was my privilege to pilot that through the Cathedral approval process.
I love living in Santiago. There is plenty to do. Life isn’t all writing, musicmaking and eating in the many excellent restaurants here. In the pilgrim season I have lots of visitors and there are always pilgrims needing help and assistance. That might be visiting an English-speaking pilgrim in hospital, helping find a stolen rucksack, taking a pilgrim to the dentist or even welcoming the four Irish pilgrims who rowed from Ireland! Each week brings something different.
Of course I’m still walking – the many Camino routes in Spain, the Way of Saint Francis from Florence to Rome, the 88 Temple Route in Japan. Why? Because as soon as a I step out on pilgrimage I become me I am simply John, the pilgrim with no need for striving apart from getting from one point on the journey to the next bed. The Camino did not erase the things of the past but it made me aware that the present is more important. It helped me realise that with forgiveness is freedom and of course it helped me to realise that in my rucksack is all I need!
