Camino de Santiago with Manni Coe

Ramblings

BBC

Science, Nature, Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.6 • 732 Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is a very special series of Ramblings. To mark Clare’s 25th year of presenting Radio 4’s walking programme she is off to Spain to fulfil her long held desire of hiking one of the world’s most famous pilgrimage footpaths, the Camino de Santiago. Translated roughly as The Way of St. James, the Camino isn’t just one route, rather it’s a network of trails across western Europe converging on Santiago de Compostela, the reputed burial place of St. James. Clare's first companion is Manni Coe. He first walked the Camino 22 years ago with his brother Reuben, following the Francés, or French, path. This is probably the most famous route, which starts in the French town of St Jean Pied de Port. Reuben has Down’s Syndrome and Manni recalls their journey together as the most magical yet challenging time of their lives.

Manni now lives in Spain and works as a tour guide, including leading pilgrims along the Sanabrés which begins in Granja de Moreruela and stretches around 225 miles to Santiago. Manni is also an author about to publish his second book, ‘Little Ruins’. As he explains to Clare, the simple act of walking has been invaluable in enabling him to complete this personal project which is about recovery from childhood trauma.

This is the second time Clare has walked with Manni: search in our episodes list for ‘Brotherly Love in Burton Bradstock’ to hear Manni and Reuben walking in Dorset. For this episode, Manni and Clare walked from Bendoiro (What3Words: tuxedos.unwed.enjoys) to Silleda (W3W: expecting.shortcuts.outsells)

Presenter: Clare Balding Producer: Karen Gregor

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, it's Lucy Worsley here and we're back with a brand new series of ladies swindlers.
0:07.5	Promise never to mention a word of what is going on.
0:10.1	Join me and my all-female team of detectives as we revisit the audacious crimes of women trying to make it in a world made for men.
0:19.5	This is a story of working class women trying to get by in a world made for men. This is a story of working-class women trying to get by.
0:24.4	This is survival.
0:25.3	Join me for the second season of Lady Swindlers,
0:28.2	where true crime meets history with a twist.
0:31.4	Listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:36.3	BBC Sounds, music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:42.0	It's a chilly morning, and I'm looking to the left across a vast expanse of fields, crops, interspersed with trees, and away to hills in the distance that are rising, dark and proud.
1:01.5	And I'm in northwest Spain, because in celebration of 25 years of ramblings, we are basing the whole series around the Camino de Santiago, the way of St. James.
1:13.5	Over the course of the next five programmes, we're going to walk different sections of different routes,
1:19.1	finish in Santiago de Compostela and then do two walks in the UK with people who have done the route for different reasons.
1:30.1	And there's an expert on particularly the route we're doing today. Mani Coe is with me who is a guide,
1:38.3	but also regular listeners of ramblings will have heard in a couple of years ago I did a
1:41.9	programme, Mani, with you and your brother Rubin in Dorset.
1:46.7	And we told your story of brotherly love, and it really is extraordinary.
1:51.4	But you've done the Camino with Rubin as well.
1:53.5	And with your other brother, Nathan.
1:55.0	Yeah, we did it in 2002.
1:57.9	And Nathan and I, to date, say that it was probably the most foundational month of our lives.
2:03.9	That's when we understood a lot more about living Ruben's world.
	...

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