A 500-mile, 40-day journey across northern Spain

And they were graced with perfect weather, of bright spring days, cool in the mornings and evenings and never hot during the day.  Galicia is known as “the Ireland of Spain,” and the travellers had a couple of days of walking through “Irish mist,” Ms. Hunt said.

There are hostels along the route for pilgrims, basic places to sleep, usually in large rooms with bunk beds, and three course meals including wine and bread are provided for pilgrims for about $10.

The food was similar to what they would eat on the Island, with one great connection to home  — scallops, with the scallop shell as one of the symbols of the Camino. One poignant memory was seeing an artisan carving scallop shells out of different types of wood at the side of the road.

The symbol of the shells comes from a myth that when the boat bearing the remains of St. James ran into a tempest off the coast of Spain and the craft was lost, the body of the saint was found on the shore, intact, covered in and protected by scallop shells.

The people along the Camino were invariably welcoming, some leaving water and fresh fruit outside their homes for the pilgrims, or directing them to places to rest along the way. “They embraced you,” Ms. Hunt said.

She hit a low spot, a sort of wall, about a month in on the long hike, which lasted a couple of days, but when it passed, she returned to a feeling of living moment to moment with few thoughts “of the future or the past.”

Ms. O’Halloran didn’t have a let down, although she admits to being worried she would make it all the way to the end. “But every day, every moment, even if my feet hurt, it was joyous,” she said.

Both women said the motivation to make the journey isn’t easy to describe. For Ms. O’Halloran, some lines from W.B. Yeats can be used, she said, as a clue to the emotions she felt:

“How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face.”

In the airport waiting to fly home, Ms. Hunt met a woman who had finished the Camino, who said, jokingly, “Well, back to the real world.”

She thought about that, and wondered which world was more real, the simplicity of life on the road to Santiago de Compostella, with all your possessions in a pack, with a clear goal in mind? Or life at home?

“When I got home and opened my bureau, I thought, there’s way too much stuff,” she said. “That’s another gift of the Camino.”

There was no great sense of accomplishment in walking 500 miles. “I think it was more a feeling of gratitude,” Ms. Hunt said. “It was in some ways big, in some ways small. In some ways personal, and in some ways there was a feeling of wanting to share it.”

But she treasures a thought she had when first arriving at St. Jean Pied-de-Port, the stepping off point for the Camino: “Well, I showed up.”