The boardwalk over the dunes at Praia de Labruge, 20km north of Porto, overlooks a frontline. Here, the relentless Atlantic swell breaks over the rocky foreshore, flinging spume into the midday heat to the steady rhythm of the swash. I stand there, taking it all in until it is time to get back on the trail.
I have racked up thousands of miles along Europe’s ancient pilgrim routes. I have walked three Caminos, both solo and with my wife on honeymoon, and hiked the 2,000km Via Francigena from Canterbury to Rome. This time, I have joined a group on the Camino Portugués, one of the main routes converging on the shrine of the Apostle St James in Santiago de Compostela, north-west Spain. It starts over the border in Portugal.
The Camino is part of New Scientist Discovery Tours’ nine-day Science of Pilgrimage tour, which starts with a couple of days in Porto, before we start the roughly 100km walk to Santiago. Along with hiking, the trip incorporates nature, talks, meditation, yoga, stargazing and even singing, exploring the science that draws people back to these ancient trails.
These old ways have brought me profound solace – even transformation. But until now I have never really understood why. “Our attention has never been more fragmented,” says Dr Mark Westmoquette – astrophysicist, ordained Zen Buddhist monk and our group expert. The antidote, he suggests, is awe, and all we need do is look and listen as we walk. “Curiosity is the way into wonder,” he says. “And then wonder turns into awe.”
Our group of nine fledging pilgrims – aged between their forties and pushing 80 – came mainly from the UK and as far away as California. Just as I have experienced before on these trails, we are from all walks of life, mainly travelling alone or as a couple of friends or partners.
The following day, we hike above the Ría de Vigo estuary in Galicia, Spain along a forest trail with views towards misty valleys and cobalt water dotted with bateas (mussel rafts). Our light chatter gives way to the rhythm of the path, and as the sun breaks through the canopy, tired faces come alive.
In the evening, we sail out towards the Cíes Islands for sunset and stargazing. The sky is a watercolour of crimson and gold set against the serrated silhouettes of the islands. As dark descends, the group falls into a peaceful silence, and I begin to see what Mark means.
On the winding route to Pontevedra, I notice our body language loosen and our guards drop as we become more relaxed in each other’s company. We cross Ponte Sampaio, a medieval bridge, where I find myself wondering how many pilgrims have crossed it before, feeling the pull of deep time. My thoughts turn inward, to the grief of recently losing a friend. I smile as I recall his characteristic sarcasm at anything vaguely “spiritual”.
This frame of mind while on the road is what Mark calls “liminal space” – somewhere between what has been and what comes next, where you start to feel part of a much bigger, interconnected world. “That takes us to what you might call spirituality,” he says.
In the city of Pontevedra, despite our trepidation, the group gathers for a singing lesson: Spanish opera and Galician folk songs. Holding the melody together is joyous, the group carrying the faltering notes of the few, and a dozen strangers become a single voice.
The landscape opens up into pasture and vineyard, backed by rolling hills that dwarf our little line of walkers. Val, 79, and I delight in pinching some sweet, juicy grapes from the vines. In a scented pine forest, cones dropping around us, I get chatting to Sumit and his husband, James.
Conversations deepen quickly and James tells me that while the average holiday brings only superficial encounters, he has found something different here. The Camino has allowed him to shed some daily stresses and “just concentrate on being mindful”, he says.
Sumit observes that the strong human connections on the trip are a stark contrast to the divided society portrayed in media reports. “Nobody writes about the 99.9 per cent” of people who are good, he says.
During his evening talk, Mark tells us about research which suggests that walking slowly in community alters our biochemistry. It triggers endorphins and reminds us that we have evolved together, in small groups, since our hunter-gatherer days.
Led by our group leader, two consecutive mornings of meditation and then yoga before we set out walking, slows and synchronises our pace and breath.
Feeling less hurried on our final day, we are carried forward by the gently undulating route towards Santiago’s cathedral-crowned skyline. Upon arrival, we are serenaded by the reedy, keening notes of the bagpipe-like gaita, played by a Galician piper, and I link arms with Val for the last few steps down into the grand main square, Praza do Obradoiro: kilometre zero.
“This has blown away the cobwebs”, she reflects. Val has wanted to walk the Camino for decades, partly to channel her father’s march across Poland as a British prisoner of war in 1945, and she has felt his presence along the way. “He’s done his long walk – now I’ve done mine,” she says.
The cathedral’s baroque façade is an awe-inspiring sight, a sculpted cliff of granite. But amid its carved saints and filigree, I am drawn to a small figure at the very top: Santiago – St James – himself, in simple pilgrim dress. “He’s one of us,” I tell Val.
Delighting in the little detail, I recall Mark’s talk on awe. It can reputedly ease stress and encourage empathy and pro-social behaviour, but it needn’t come from grand landscapes or monuments – it can emerge from our connection to others.
And after thousands of miles on these ancient trails, I finally understand what keeps drawing me back. As Mark puts it, pilgrimage takes us “from I to we”.
How to do it
The writer was a guest of New Scientist Discovery Tours, which offers science-inspired tours and cruises in the UK and internationally, including the nine-day Science of Pilgrimage tour, departing 20 May 2028, £4,195pp, newscientist.com/tours/pilgrimage-camino.