On the way up the fair Nello noticed something strange, something moving slowly ahead of us - it was a shadow! For the first time since we entered Galicia five days ago, the sun had appeared - spirits lifted, the woodland birds seemed to sing more loudly, the frogs in the trackside pondage croaked their approval and, to quote the refrain from an old song that came into my head, "the whole earth sang, the whole earth sang". Not even the long stretches of walking beside the roadways could dampen this sense of elation, as we passed a large brick factory with its piles of red clay, and pushed on into the sparkling Galician countryside.

In fact the sun played cache-cache with the clouds as we pushed on, which never quite lost their menace and forced us unconsciously to quicken our pace. A quick refuelling stop of coffee and cake at Gonzar, and we continued the gentle climb along roadsides and occasional laneways, through Castromaior, Hospital and Ventas de Naron to the day's high point, crossing the 720m Sierra Ligonde. More and more, pine plantations were becoming part of the landscape.

Dropping down to the village of Airexe, we declared a lunch break and, over a large bocadillo de jamon y queso, watched the continuing stream of pilgrims pass by. Since Sarria, the number of pilgrims had increased dramatically. It is the closest starting point on the camino from where you can obtain the compostela for completing the pilgrimage, and there were many of these "caminantes sarrianistos". They were easy to pick, carrying small day packs or none at all, support vehicles bringing them lunch or carrying their cases between stops. It was hard to resist a feeling of unpilgrim-like condescension. However, while we might be walking 500km, others were doing the whole 800+km of the Camino Frances, some like The Quebecois were walking all 1500km from Le Puy in France, and we had even heard the tale of one pilgrim who had walked 2500km from Gdansk in Poland. Each must choose his own path!

Lunch over and values reassessed, we pushed on into the expanding sunshine, passing Porto, where we noticed for the first time that red tiles and light sandstone blocks had replaced the grey of slate as traditional building materials. Not long after Porto, a waft of nostalgic scent caught our attention - we were passing our first eucalyptus plantation.

From the traditional stone-housed village of Furelos, we climbed up past the bland concrete apartment blocks of suburban Melide, to reach the centre of this town. It was alive with people at the morning markets and out for Sunday strolls, so we found a cafe on a street corner and had an early lunch as the fair Nello engaged one of her favourite past-times - people-watching.

Still, we were only half-way to our destination and pushed on, warmed by the presence of sunshine in the unpredictable Galician sky. A cool wind seemed to be blowing the clouds away.

Emerging form the woodland, we reached the village of Boente, stopping for a snack in the quiet square, before descending steeply to cross the Rio Boente in its forested valley. The ascent out of the valley was as steep and even longer, requiring us to get into a regular rhythm to push on to pass through Castañeda and up to the ridge overlooking distant Arzua.

The other thing we noticed was a growing lethargy, again perhaps because we were nearing the end, but also because there was a certain sameness of landscape over the past couple of days. Pretty as it was, the flow of country road and laneway, forest, field and fallow, hamlet and village was beginning to blur in the memory. There were no attention-grabbing vistas or sights to define the passing of our footsteps. We strolled on through this landscape to stop off for our now traditional morning coffee at a roadside bar in Calzada, moving on through the ever increasing plantations of pine and eucalyptus to the village of Calle.

After wandering down its narrow laneways, we once again crossed the Galician countryside to Salceda, where a bit of walking next to the busy Ruta N547, taking road traffic into and out of Santiago, brought us noisily back into focus. Just after Salceda, we passed a memorial to a pilgrim who had died on the track, one day short of his goal - another reality check.

From then on it was a steady procession through forest and scrub, to pass beneath the end of the runway of Labacolla Airport and the busy autostrada - civilisation was returning with a vengeance as we neared the city of Santiago. A final morning coffee, and we headed off for our last push into town, winding through the backroads of Labacolla village, before commencing the climb up to Monte del Gozo. It was the last chance to walk in the peace of the Spanish countryside, and we were hurried up the long and steady climb by a stiff tailwind that rushed through the canopy of eucalypt, pine or oak.

Reaching the high point and the pretty little Chapel of San Marcos, we could now look over the broad spread of Santiago. Without fanfare we started the descent through suburbia into the city. For some strange reason, I had conjured up an image of pilgrims massing at this stage to enter the city in joyful crowd - not so, just a steady dribble of ones, twos and small groups.

Modern memorial on the heights of Monte del Gozo

It was a somewhat low key entry, crossing autostrada, railway and wandering down busy roads. In fact, we decided to stop off at our somewhat new age albergue, drop our packs and clean up before heading off on the last kilometre. Thus, light-footed and feeling decidely unpilgrim-like without our packs, we entered the old city centre. My emotions on arriving were somewhat unexpected - a sense of achievement was there but the point still eluded me.

The 12th century Cathedral de Santiago de Compostela

Arriving in the huge Praza Obradoiro, dominated by the massive and ornate western face of the Cathedral de Santiago, our long walk was effectively over, apart from a few time-honoured pilgrim traditions - visiting the cathedral itself to pass by the Portico de Gloria and see where pilgrims over the centuries had worn finger-holes into the 12th century carved marble columns (no touching any more!).

My sense of sadness was completed when, on leaving the crypt, I passed a sign offering extra indulgences for coming to Santiago in this special holy year of 2010 - for the living or the dead (plus an extra 10% discount at the airport duty free shop if you were flying home). How could such a simple message from 2000 years ago have become so distorted? How does symbolism become reality? Was I just experiencing a rush of anticlimactic cynicism? We wandered around to the pilgrim office to collect our compostelas (our own bit of symbolism for this walk), and sat in the Praza de Quintana de Vivos, slowly sipping a cold beer to celebrate and try to make some sense of it all. Meanwhile, the long queues to hug St James and visit the relics continued to snake by in the place below.

Panoramic views lay in almost every direction. To the north, the rugged promontory of Cabo de Naves, not as charismatic as Finisterre, but geographically the most westerly point of continental Europe. To the east, the colourful village of Fisterra lay on a narrow neck of land, windmill-lined hills to its rear and a rugged coastline, dotted with white sand beaches, sweeping away to the south.

To the west, the sky and sea blurred hazily together beyond the rugged shore of Cabo Fisterra. We sat in the lee of the wind and looked out from the end of the earth to the endless blue beyond. The only direction without a view was south towards the tip of the cape, so we headed on to reach the end of the ridge and look down at the lighthouse of Finisterre. After the cathedral at Santiago, this is the next most visited place in Galicia.

Following the road back, we dropped down to wander past the old fort and on to the fishing port, with its outdoor restaurants. Here we stopped off for a late celebratory lunch of freshly caught seafood and a chilled Galician white wine, in sunshine cooled by the ocean breeze and accompanied by the Atlantic gulls wheeling in the sky above.

Today was a good way to end a very special journey - BUEN CAMINO!!