Boxing Day, 2019. I'm lounging on the carpeted floor of my brother-in-law's cold Bury flat, leaning against my partner's legs as they doze on the sofa, fucked on painkillers. Five weeks ago, they underwent the last of a series of surgeries to hopefully sort a massively mobility-impacting injury they've had almost the entire year. My father-in-law is telling me how many people die climbing Mount Everest: less than half who attempt to climb the highest mountain in the world ever make it to the summit, and it's much too dangerous to retrieve the bodies of the ones who die along the way. There are hundreds of them, their frozen corpses left in situ to serve as landmarks for their successors.
It's just me and him, the other family members faffing and muttering about the temperamental oven in the open-plan kitchen. And somewhere among this morbidly philosophical description is a reflection on the psyche of extreme adventurers: the perverse pull of wild and treacherous terrain, our desire as humans to push ourselves up to and beyond our limits as we explore places we've never been. For some reason, this reminds me of a conversation with a friend a decade earlier, detailing her anecdotes when she came back from a holiday walking across Spain. I remember none of the details, only how transformative she said it had been. When the Boxing Day buffet is ready, I sneak out my phone. 'Walking route Spain', I type in, and bookmark the search results. That night, I'm down the rabbit hole, piecing together details from my research and old memories of that chat with my mate all that time ago to identify that the route she did was the Camino Frances, a pilgrimage route across France and Spain whose history goes back centuries. The thought of it burrows down somewhere deep inside me, a little ember I can't explain. I keep thinking about it. Keep reading about it. And before even really realising what I'm doing, I'm jotting down notes in a Google doc, a makeshift list of bullet points that slowly becomes an itinerary.
Maybe this is something I can do next year, I think, the possibility bizarre but tantalising after a year of not even being able to leave the house without considering everything Z might possibly need while I was out and making sure all the necessities were in easy reach. 2019 turns into 2020. A global pandemic hits, and travel becomes a distant dream. But the idea remains. By the time lockdown restrictions lift enough that international travel is a possibility again, everything – and everyone – is different. In 2022, I'm grateful to be able to go abroad several times, but the camino is still calling.
The classic French camino route is almost five hundred miles long, and takes most people somewhere between four and six weeks to walk. I can't afford that long away from work, or from my family caregiving responsibilities. But I can do a week, maybe a bit more. I put it in the calendar, book flights to and from Bilbao. By now, I've gone on about the idea so much that my partner wants to come too. I plan our path walking from Pamplona to Burgos, and soon the day has come: we're in the airport with the tiniest backpacks we could wangle, only one change of clothes each, a tiny notebook, tablets, a few toiletries. We are both incredibly anxious travelers, even with our sunflower lanyards, earplugs and last week's Succession downloaded for the journey. But we make it to Bilbao and then to our car-share to Pamplona. I explain what we're doing in stumbling Spanish and the other passenger with us gives a mile-wide grin, launches into a passionate monologue about people he's known who've done the same thing. "Everyone who does the camino comes back so happy,” he says. We whizz down the motorway, past dazzlingly beautiful scenery: forests, mountains, fields of vivid yellow flowers. Later, we're in our hotel for the night, the city strangely quiet as we wash our socks and knickers in the sink, ready for our first day's walking the next day. Before bed, I stand on the cold balcony, thinking about how old European architecture always reminds me of Only Lovers Left Alive. And I'm struck by how surreal and beautiful it is that we can take our strangest and most inexplicable fascinations and follow them to unexpected places.
I'll write more about our hundred-mile trek across Spain next time.
'Til then,
Jane
DEAR NEIGHBOUR COUNTDOWN 👀📖
Less than five weeks until my novel is out! If you're in or near Manchester, I'd love to see you at the launch event on 15th June! Or if you're in London, you can catch me as part of Hachette's annual Pride in Writing celebration on 6th June. I'm hoping to have more details of other upcoming events to share with you soon, but in the meantime please consider pre-ordering the book from your fave retailer – pre-orders are a massive help!
LOVE LIST
💖 World Goth Day is approaching (22nd May), so there could be no better time to gush about Cathi Unsworth's latest book, Season of the Witch: The Book of Goth. I love Cathi's atmospheric novels in part because of the intricate way she weaves social history and culture into her plots, and as a former music journo, Unsworth truly knows her shit about this topic, which is a loving exploration of the romance, politics and legacy of goth counter-culture. Cake on some black kohl and have at it.
💖 While we're at it: what makes goth so gay, and why are so many gays into gothic horror? Why Are People Into That? with Tina Horn is a brilliant in-depth podcast about sexuality and sexual psychology, and I loved this two-part interview with Laura Westengard, author of Gothic Queer Culture.
💖 And speaking of celebrations of subculture: I recently watched the 2017 documentary Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution, featuring an all-star line-up including Kathleen Hanna, John Waters, Kim Gordon and Justin Vivian Bond, and a much-needed reminder of the power and impact of making your own culture.
Jane is heeeere!
This makes me so happy.
What a beautiful, evocative way to invite us into your Substack space. Thank you for sharing. And this is SO COOL. You really followed that inner call. I can't wait to read the next part of your adventure and some of the things you've discovered.
Oh brilliant, something I too have always wanted to do! Looking forward to the next instalment.😍