An Irishman’s Diary about the Dublin Camino

People recently returned from it are always urging me to do the Camino de Santiago, the ancient “Way of Saint James” pilgrim route that now seems as popular among culture tourists as it ever was with the religious.

And I will do it one of these years. The problem is time – travelling on foot (or even by donkey, as some hardcore medievalists do), it can take weeks.

In the meantime, as it happens, I cover a small section of the Camino every day. This is because the main route into Dublin from my home in Kilmainham is via St James’s Street, where the Irish pilgrims traditionally started. A sign on one of the street’s two St James’s churches still proclaims: “The Camino begins here”.

Penitent pilgrims

People were heading for Spain from this area as far back as 1220, at least, which must have been around the pilgrimage’s medieval peak, before the Black Death and the Reformation combined to undermine it. And it’s not hard, even today, to imagine St James’s Street as part of the narrow way along which penitent pilgrims went, trying to escape the world’s temptations.

Indeed, speaking of things black, the Dublin Camino now passes through an urban canyon formed by the buildings of Guinness’s Brewery, the indirect cause of many Irish sins.

The old St James’s Gate, once the main western entry into the city, no longer exists. But there is a modern gate at the spot. It’s by the side of the street, rather than across it, and – pilgrims beware! – it leads into the brewery, not to Spain.

As for all those penitents trekking past you in the opposite direction, they’re on a different pilgrimage – to the Storehouse round the corner, Ireland’s most visited attraction.

Also overlooking the Dublin Camino, and a tale of worldly excess in itself, is “St Patrick’s Tower”.

It’s actually a decommissioned windmill (the sails have been taken out if its wind, as it were), so named because on top of it, like a weather vane, is an effigy of the national saint.

This is in questionable taste, because the windmill used to serve the profane cause of whiskey manufacture. Roe’s distillery, which built it, once occupied a 17-acre site here and was the world’s largest manufacturer of the hard stuff.

How the Apostle of Ireland felt about presiding over this is unrecorded. And even though he saw Roe’s go out of business in the end, he’s not exactly high and dry these days either, since he’s now surrounded by a brewing empire.

Still on the subject of alcohol, it might have been a sobering thought for pilgrims of old that Dublin’s two great medieval cathedrals, which you still pass on this stretch of the Camino, are both now, in a way, monuments to drink.

St Patrick’s owed its 19th-century restoration to Benjamin Guinness, while the Christchurch job was paid for by Roe’s. And nor does the theme of the unholy spirit end even there. Of the aforementioned two St James’s churches, the deconsecrated Anglican one is currently being restored, but only as part of its transformation into a distillery.

There were many hazards facing medieval pilgrims in France and Spain, apparently, including the so-called “Camino bandits” who lurked along the route. But the Dublin section must have had a few too.

To this day, there’s a steep alleyway near St James’s Hospital which used to delight in the name of “Murdering Lane”, until the city fathers decided to rebrand it as something less controversial (er, “Cromwell’s Quarters”). There was also a “Cut-Throat Lane” nearby, now part of the hospital grounds.

And the local bandits still strike occasionally, as I’ve found. Some years ago, I was sitting at a window table in Manning’s Cafe on Thomas Street – one of the many hospitable inns that line the Camino route – with my still new-ish bicycle attached to a post outside, where I could watch it.

Then I looked away for a moment and when I glanced back, the bike was gone, from under my nose. I was a walking pilgrim for a while after that. And two or three more thefts later, I gave up on bike ownership altogether.

So if I’m travelling along my local Way of St James today – his feastday–- it will be on one of these French-made JC Decaux rentals, which fit the pilgrim’s purpose in more ways than one. They’re a bit like donkeys, in weight and speed range. But they do get you there eventually and, especially on cobbled sections of the route, they add to the penance.

@FrankmcnallyIT