The Camino Voyage

Cert: PG; Now showing

Early on in The Camino Voyage writer, poet, adventurer Danny Sheehy says: “If you’re sensible all the time you’d never do anything.” He is at that point a man in his sixties sailing in a small boat from Ireland, along the west coast of France and down to Santiago in Galicia with three friends: fellow Kerrymen musician Brendan Begley, stonemason Breandan Moriarty and Kerry adoptee artist Liam Holden. For the final leg Moriarty was replaced by Glen Hansard, who described himself as a sub on a journey, the beginning of which was “30 to 40 times harder” than he imagined, but the film of which is beautiful, calming and life-affirming.

They built the naomhog, Naomh Gobnait, themselves and over six weeks in three Mays, from 2014 to 2016, they sailed the 2,500km of the different stretches of the journey. Along the way, they camp, meet people, play music and chat. Donal O’Ceilleachair directs what is, as the Camino is intended to be, much more than just a physical journey. Each man offers snippets of their process, that you need to be free in yourself, that if you worried what people thought you’d never do it, grief, healing, being in the moment, but these are just sprinkled in, there is no heavy banana spiritual stuff, this is the story of an adventure based in Irish traditions and told largely as Gaeilge and it’s a pleasure and privilege to get to see people who just do things.