The Camino de Santiago is not one road. There are officially recognized Camino routes throughout Europe. Though, in the Spirit that is the Camino, any road ending in Santiago de Compastela near Spain’s northeast coast may be called the Camino when followed as a pilgrim (or peregrino/a in Spanish). Many choose not to end their pilgrimage in Santiago, instead going on to Finisterre (Land’s End) and Muxia on the coast itself. We chose to walk the Camino Francés, which begins in St. Jean Pied de Port a medieval town at the base of the French Pyrenees. At 800 km, or 533 miles, it is the longest official route. Extending your pilgrimage to the coast adds 90 km (56 mi) over three to five days. We stopped in Santiago after thirty-two days of walking.
All of these are estimates. There are alternate routes here and there that may add or reduce miles, but then, being without other means of transportation pilgrims walk everywhere. In more frequented areas there are buses and taxis you can use, but they are not always accessible, do not always go where you are going, and can be expensive. So, you pretty much walk everywhere. We got in the habit of walking around in the evening’s daylight to locate our starting point in the dark of the next morning. Exploring the town, maybe walking to dinner or a local café or the plaza or the church or to museums. There is a lot of walking that add miles to every day’s Camino stage.
When I got home in October, 2019 I found myself parking in the middle of a shopping center’s parking lot and walking to each store I needed to visit. It felt crazy to move my car from store to store. A year later I catch myself reverting to pre-Camino habits and purposely park between my destinations. A small reminder of my time as a pedestrian.
As you walk the main route you come to points where other Camino routes join Camino Francés. These are places where, at the busiest times of the year, you can encounter a large influx of additional pilgrims. Either people who had begun somewhere other than St. Jean, or were just beginning their Camino. We were walking in September which, in the pre-COVID years, was the Camino’s busiest time of the year. The newbies were noticeable, especially on their first nights in an albergue (think hostel, though I’ll explain those differences later), but the additions of more people rarely caused us a problem. Generally it meant new people to meet!
Almost every pilgrim carries a guide book written for the Camino route they are walking. The most popular when we walked was John Brierly’s. I preferred the Village to Village Guide by Dintaman and Landis. The two books contain the same information in a little different format and each have their pluses and minuses. To cover as many bases as possible Kris left her Village to Village at home and carried Brierly’s, so we had the best info each offered. I saw other guidebooks, usually in the hands of pilgrims from far parts of the globe. Guidebooks are small, easily carried and kept accessible at all times for quick reference. Mine became so fat from getting wet, and marked up with notes, it was comical. I thought of its shabby waterlogged look as a badge of honor. Unfortunately, it was lost toward the end of my journey. Near as I can reconstruct it fell out of the pocket of my jacket when it was tied around my waist, the weight banging against a leg in rhythm with my step. Until it wasn´t. Somewhere along the way. The Camino gives and the Camino takes away. I am eternally grateful that I had transferred quick notes the evening before it disappeared into my journal of every place we had stayed. That type of serendipitous event is a Camino hallmark.
Typically, guidebooks are laid out in “stages”, or recommendations for daily distances to cover and in which towns to spend the night. The two guides we used are set up in slightly different stages. This comes in handy. Whichever guide is most popular tells you where you will find more pilgrims with whom you will be competing for limited bunk space. We only ran into concerns with getting a place to sleep twice. And only once did we have to ignore our exhaustion and body aches to continue a number of hard miles to the next town.
No matter how many pilgrims you set out with in the morning they quickly spread out. It was not unusual to walk for long stretches of time without seeing anyone ahead or behind me as far as I could see. And then, poof, I would find myself weaving in and out of groups of people all walking to the same place as me, Santiago. I do not know how true this holds post-COVID as pilgrim numbers have swelled.
Every night Kris and I would plan our next day’s Camino, calculating miles, noting the type of road surface and elevation changes, (which had much more to do with how far you could go than the number of miles you would be walking), weighing alternate routes, and considering accommodation availability. We consulted both books and everything we heard from our fellow peregrinos. It was an incredibly communal experience. All of us with the same goal. All with hopes of making it.
That is enough for today. Until tomorrow, ¡Buen Camino!
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