[contiued]

The following morning, I’m piecing together the tatters of a sandblasted bus timetable and blearily headed a few miles down to Finisterre – another Land’s End; like the Cornish and Breton versions, more an idea than a place, struggling to live up to the responsibility of being the last place on earth. The village is likeably scruffy, built on the sheltered side of the steep headland around a stone harbour. Today, the fishing boats (rust and registration number) and smart visiting sailboats (Isabella 2, Little Princess) barely bob in a calm that seems unearthly, given the 3,000 miles swilling beyond the promontory. I want to take a chalked-up mast and skim red buoys across the baizey harbour waters into lobster pot pockets.
On the road up to the lighthouse which marks mainland Europe’s last whimper are a handful of pilgrims unsated by Santiago’s lichen and gilt and walking on until there is no more land to walk on. The Camino straggles semi-officially here, following a route that predates the Christianised version with a simpler narrative – a walk to the end of the world. The tradition is to collect a seashell, and then, without bitterness, to burn the boots or clothes which have barely survived the weeks on the road. It’s unexpectedly moving to come across these twisted remains on the rocks facing westward to nothing but water and weather. This is a place for contemplation, with a wistfulness that comes of knowing what’s behind, and what little there is left in front.

Up on the headland, with wrens and linnets darting and gorse and blackthorns clinging to rocks, the relative bustle of the cluster of buildings around the lighthouse is lost high above the Atlantic, silent on a sunny day but for the putter of a few dinghies as fishermen drag crabs from between the green knuckle headlands. Emptied of anything but stillness and hunger, I wander down to the harbour, and, in one of the smaller bars, work my way through some spectacular razorshell clams and one Estrella Galicia after another. It starts to rain, and doesn’t look like stopping. This time the bus takes it slowly, nudging round the hairpins and the pinetopped cliffs back to the campsite. With tent flapping wildly, peering out into a mist with foghorns lowing from three directions, I’m starting to understand this place.