Durban - The pilgrimage to Spain’s holy city of Santiago de Compostela scheduled to be taking place now would have been Sylvia Nilsen’s 13th such journey.
Lockdown made that impossible. But instead of regretting that she had been struck by an unlucky number, she and her husband, Finn, have walked “round and round the garden” in their Pinetown complex, clocking up the equivalent in foot kilometres.
“We’ll reach Santiago in November,” Sylvia said.
Every Friday they work out exactly where the kilometres they would have walked on the “camino” would have taken them.
Yesterday, it would have been a historic and beautiful little town called Viana in northern Spain’s province
of Navarre. It’s where Cesare Borgia who, in the 1500s, became an archbishop in his teens and was also the ruthless commander of the papal army, lies buried.
Veteran ‘Camino’ walker Sylvia Nilsen in their Pinetown garden.
Friday lockdown “camino” evenings in the Nilsen household involves an online meeting with family members in Westville and Mount Edgecombe. Some were going to accompany them on her 13th pilgrimage.
Chatting with one another and seeing each another on Zoom, they celebrate the evening with the Spanish dish “tapas”.
Finn, 77, and Sylvia, 72, walk around a 100m-long route in their garden, 50 times a day, clocking 5km. Doing that from Monday to Friday amounts to a day’s walk on the real pilgrim route.
“On rainy days it’s on a treadmill. You do get to feel like you’re a hamster on a wheel,” said Sylvia.
They imagined setting off this week from the town of Tores del Rio. Sylvia recalled that the last time she was there, a woman on her tour broke into song as she entered an empty hexagonal-shaped church that had been built in the 1100s after the town had taken a hammering during the Moorish invasion.
Sylvia is a tour guide who has specialised in the “camino” and similar pilgrimages including the Trappist Trail linking outstations of Mariannhill Monastery all the way up to Reichenau Mission, near Underberg.
Husband Finn Nilsen is walking their Camino trail ‘in Spain’ in their Pinetown garden.
The Nilsens have raised money on various stretches of their lockdown “camino”. They raised funds for the Kloof SPCA on their “stretch to Pamplona”; for the Hillcrest Aids Centre on their “stretch to Puente la Reina” and for iCare on their “stretch to Estella”.
From next week, three walking friends will join them, in their own walking areas in and around their homes, to raise funds for the SA Guide Dogs Walkathon on their “stretch from Viana to Narrate”.
They will be calling themselves the Hearts-and-Soles team and aim to cover 100 000 steps.
The Nilsens have been reluctant to expand their walking route into the 5km radius around their home that is allowed under level 4 because their complex is full of elderly people who are vulnerable to the coronavirus. They therefore voluntarily limit their excursions to shopping and medical outings as everyone had to do under level 5.
Whenever they pass one another on their 100m laps, Sylvia and
Finn greet one another with the way pilgrims do on the way to Santiago. “Buen Camino”.