pilgrimage Archives - Nadine Walks

24 little nuggets of wisdom for walking the Camino de Santiago

February 7, 2018

I’ve been talking to several people lately who are going to embark on their first Camino sometime later this year. I love hearing their enthusiasm, their questions, their worries, and it makes me remember those months before my own pilgrimage. There was so much I didn’t know, so much research I tried to do, so much I learned in such a short amount of time.

But I couldn’t learn it all, and there was so much I needed to figure out along the way. And so because I’m in a very nostalgic mood, I thought I would put together a list of tips that I gathered as I walked the Camino Frances. This is not a very informative or even necessarily helpful sort of post, so if you’re in serious preparation mode right now, then you might find more help elsewhere. But it was stuff like this that I remember reading before my first Camino, the kinds of words and images that made me think- “Am I actually about to be doing all of these things? Am I going to be having these experiences?” And I could feel the little ball of excitement in my chest expand.

So here they are, 24 little nuggets of wisdom for walking the Camino de Santiago:

Begin with a single step.

Your walking stick might just become your new best friend.

I may or may not have shipped the piece of wood I plucked off a hillside in Northern Spain home to the States…

Hang out with people in a different age bracket than you.

Fill up/top off your water bottle every time you pass a fountain. There should be plenty of fountains along the way, but this ensures that you always have more than you need.

Bring an empty container along with you on the day that you pass by the wine fountain. (I’m not necessarily saying that you should fill it up and drink it during the day’s walk, but rather that it will be convenient to have a vessel for sampling the wine. Or, you could be like me, and just stick your face under the wine stream and hope that you don’t make a mess. There’s a picture of me doing this, but it will never, ever see the light of day).

Whenever possible, stop for second breakfast. I didn’t even realize this was a thing until I walked the Camino, and once I did, it quickly became my favorite thing.

Soak your bare feet in every cool stream that you pass.

Sleep in the bunk by the window: you might be able to watch the moon and the stars, plus you might be able to have some control over whether the window is opened or closed (hint: crowded albergues on hot nights = open windows. But not all pilgrims may agree…)

In larger towns/cities, look for the menu del dia. Similar to the pilgrim menu, it tends to offer higher quality, regional food at a fabulous deal.

If you come across an albergue offering a communal meal, stop here and dine with your fellow pilgrims, and always offer to help prep and clean up.

Don’t be tempted to think that a donativo albergue means a free albergue. Pay what you think the service and accommodations are worth; some of my best experiences were in donativo albergues, with kind hospitaleros, communal dinners, coffee and toast in the morning, a generous spirit and a sense of community and care. You can certainly choose to drop only a few coins into the can, but I’d encourage everyone to take a moment and think about what the experience was worth to you. Without ample donations, these albergues will struggle to remain operational.

Even if you’re not typically an early riser, do it anyway, and walk at sunrise. The sun will be at your back, so don’t forget to turn around and take in the splendor.

You’ll get a deeper tan on the left side of your body than on your right. I have no tips for this. And unless you wear sandals, you’ll get an intense sock tan. Even in the depths of winter, I can still see my Camino sock tan.

Take the detour.

Eunate is closed on Mondays. Go there anyway.

Magnum White ice cream bars are the best thing you’ll ever taste on a summer day on the Meseta.

Don’t dread the Meseta. The path through this stretch of land known as the breadbasket of Spain may be long and straight and monotonous, but there is great opportunity for insight here. Use the time to walk alone, walk in step with the rising sun, and consider the world around you. Consider the world inside yourself, too.

Visit the chickens in the church in Santo Domingo, and consider the miracles in your own life.

Whenever you stop for a break, take off your shoes and socks and let your feet air out. This can help prevent blisters! Plus, it just feels really good to feel fresh air between your toes. (Also, consider coating your feet with a thin layer of Vaseline before putting your socks back on. I’m convinced it helped me avoid (most) blisters).

Push your limits. This could mean a lot of things: a 40km day, making a friend who doesn’t speak your language, trusting that you’ll find a place to sleep even if all the albergues are full, accepting help from a stranger.

Try the pulpo.

Consider yourself lucky if you happen upon a festival in a small village while walking to Santiago. And always stop for awhile and join in the festivities.

Embrace the rain (I’m still working on this one).

Always, always, walk your own Camino. This is the most important one, which means that you can feel free to ignore all of the tips above. Everyone will have opinions, and everyone will have the things that work for them (boots vs sneakers, sock liners, bed bug prevention, how many km per day to walk, how fast/slow you should go, carrying your pack/shipping it ahead, etc). One of the most beautiful things about the Camino is that you can do this pilgrimage any way you want, any way you need. No one walks your Camino, but you.

If you’ve already walked the Camino, what are some of your favorite little nuggets of wisdom?

Holiday gift-guide for the pilgrim/traveler/walker in your life

December 14, 2017

Does anyone else save their holiday shopping until the last minute? I always think that I have all the time in the world, or certainly enough time to have gifts bought and delivered in time for Christmas. But inevitably, every year, I cut it awfully close.

And this year is no exception- it’s December 14th, and I’m just now starting to think that I should probably go out and buy a few gifts for the people in my life. That, and also give my family a few suggestions from my own wish list.

It was when I began to put together a little list of my own that I started to see a trend: guidebooks and good socks and travel notebooks. In other words, some of my favorite things to take on my trips and my walks.

So this is a little collection of gift suggestions, for the traveler/pilgrim/walker/hiker in your life. And, of course, don’t forget yourself; sometimes the holidays are a nice time to treat ourselves to the things we’ve been wishing for all year long.

(As I briefly referred to in my last post, some of these links will be affiliate links; this means that if you click through and order one of these items, a small commission will come to me at no extra cost to you. A win-win! And, I’ll never use an affiliate link on something that I haven’t used and loved myself.)

Stocking Stuffers $15 and under

Dr. Bronner’s Soap: While this could give some people the wrong message, I think a good bar of soap is always a fun and appreciated little nugget to find in your stocking. There’s a lot I like about Dr. Bronner’s- it’s a family business that focuses on organic and environmentally responsible products, and I’ve used their Castile bar soaps on every Camino and long-distance trek (my favorite is peppermint). On my walks I use the soap to wash my body and my clothing and it works great, and smells even better.
Buff: Ah, the strange piece of tube-shaped fabric that has countless purposes. It took me a couple Caminos to warm up to my buff, but now it’s an indispensable part of my pack. Some popular uses: head band for windy days, head band on hot days (soaked in cold water first), wrist band for strange patches of sunburn (shout-out to my cousin!!), neck wrap to avoid sunburn, napkin, worn over the mouth in dusty areas, etc. The list is really endless.

Moleskine Journal: I use Moleskine notebooks in my job, and I also use them in my travels. The link will take you to the particular type I use on my walks: they are thin and lightweight but high quality and perfect for capturing details and memories.
ExOfficio Underwear: You might not give this to a friend (unless it’s a really close friend!), but with family anything goes. This is great underwear for traveling: light, comfortable, dries extremely quickly.
Nalgene Water Bottle: I’ve had my Nalgene for years and years (I have several, but my 16oz bottle comes with me on the Camino, along with a backup supply of water in my pack). The bottle has taken quite a beating, but it’s been indestructible.
ChicoBag Daybag: I’ve taken one of these on every summer trip for the past 4 years: they barely weigh a thing, are perfect for using in the evenings when I’m not carrying my large pack around, and they also work well as a shower bag (they are water resistant and can hold an incredibly large amount of stuff).

Gifts $15-$50

Camino Frances Guidebook: Now’s the time when pilgrims are planning their 2018 treks on the Camino de Santiago, and many will start with the Camino Frances. Love it or hate it, John Brierley’s guide is the most popular of them all (personally, I really liked it).

Or if you’ve already walked the Frances, get the Norte guidebook!

Darn Tough socks: They keep my feet warm in the winter, cool in the summer. They are durable and the pairs I’ve had for several years and worn day after day on my long-distance treks have held up really well.
Eagle Creek Packing Cubes: These were a game-changer on my second Camino. They helped me organize my clothing, protected it from the rest of my (dirty) pack, maximized space, and were ultra-lightweight. I’ll probably never travel without them again.
Havaianas Flip Flops: Hiking shoes or boots aren’t the only footwear you’ll need for a long-distance trek… you’re going to need something to change into in the evenings. For a summer walk, I love a pair of Havaianas. Soft, durable, designed and made in Brazil.

Camino break!

Gifts $50-$100

Marmot Rain Jacket: Bought it for my first Camino, used it ever since. Lightweight and protects pretty well from the rain. A must for any long-distance walking trip.
JetBoil Cooking System: I suppose you’d only take this on a pilgrimage if you were planning to camp (which some pilgrims do!). But if you are planning on any camping or backpacking trips in 2018 and don’t have a way to heat up water to cook food, then I highly, highly, highly recommend this system. Compact, lightweight, beyond easy to use, heats water to boiling in 2 minutes. I’ve only really been on one solo-camping trip, but this thing worked like a charm.

I use my Jetboil to make coffee… what else??

These are just a few ideas; if you want to read more about the things I brought on my Camino you can take a look at my packing list, as well as this post, which goes into more detail about the items I used and loved on my treks.

Happy holidays to everyone, and I’ll be back with more soon.

Ending in a Blaze of Glory; Day 14 on the Chemin du Puy, Cajarc to Cahors (undetermined number of kilometers)

October 29, 2017

My last day on the Chemin du Puy had a bit of everything: Beautiful trails. Transportation snafus. Kind and helpful people. A couple of tears shed on the side of the road. Ice cream, to make up for those tears. A big dose of adventure.

It was my 14th day of walking. I was ending my Chemin in Cahors, which is roughly 250km from where I started in Le Puy en Velay.

I needed to end in Cahors because I had a reserved train ticket, one that would take me to my writer’s retreat a little further down in the south of France. So I’d needed to make it to Cahors by a specific date, but because of a decision to arrive in Conques when the rest of my friends did (still one of the best decisions of my Chemin), I knew I wouldn’t be able to walk all the way to Cahors.

This meant that I needed to come up with a Plan B. The day before, when I’d arrived in Cajarc, my very first stop was the tourism office. I propped my walking stick against the wall, leaned over the counter, and explained to the women working there that I needed to arrive in Cahors the next day, and wondered if there were any alternate routes that I might be able to take.

Maps were pulled out, discussions had, and finally we came up with a plan: I would take a bus to Saint-Cirq-Lapopie (voted the most beautiful village in France, although I’m pretty sure that this was at least the 3rd village that seemed to have this distinction), from Saint-Cirq I would walk on an alternate route, the GR36, to Cahors. The woman pointed her finger along a wavy line on the map. “See,” she said, “It is only 22km. Easy.”

This seemed like a fabulous solution, and I was full of confidence and a renewed sense of adventure when I woke up in the morning. It was early and while everyone else slept, I quietly gathered my things, loaded them into my pack, and headed out into a still dark morning. I was catching an early bus, the 6:30 which would get me to Saint-Cirq before 7am. Once there, I reasoned that I could have a coffee and a little breakfast, and then enjoy my last day of walking.

Oh, the best laid plans.

First of all, the bus schedule had been changed the day before. The tourism office didn’t know this or have the most updated version of the bus schedule, so I missed the bus I’d intended to catch by only a couple minutes, and had to wait nearly 30 minutes for the next one.

Then, when I got on the bus, the driver spoke quickly and sternly, first making me stow my pack in the luggage compartments under the bus (which I thought was a bit unnecessary, given that my pack is on the small side, but who knows, maybe he wanted to keep his bus clean). Then, he rattled off something in French and I couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell me. Something about Saint-Cirq and when I should exit the bus.

Eventually I realized (only when he waved at me to get off the bus) that this bus for some reason didn’t actually go all the way to Saint-Cirq, and so I’d had to get off at a stop about a 4km walk away from the village.

No problem, I thought to myself. I’m a pilgrim after all, and I can certainly walk.

When I did arrive in Saint-Cirq, it was after 8am and while the village was beautiful, it was also a gray day and the place was deserted. Maybe it was too early, but I still can’t figure out why there were no people. I circled through the village, walking up and down, exploring the church and some ruins and snapping photos and I only saw one woman, who was outside watering the flowers in front of her house. This was a very touristy place but nothing was open, and finally I went inside a nice looking auberge (guest house) and asked if I would be able to get a cup of coffee.

If you’re new to this blog, let me briefly tell you how important coffee is to my walks. Coffee is… necessary. Usually getting my first cup isn’t too much of a problem on the Camino, though there have been a few mornings in the past that I’d had to wait several hours for that initial coffee. But the Chemin du Puy excels at the coffee conundrum; because nearly ever gîte offers breakfast, I always had a hot cup of coffee (or two, or three) before I started walking.

So coffee was never a problem on the Chemin until that very last morning. I’d stayed in the municipal gîte in Cajarc and no breakfast was offered. So after waiting 30 minutes for a bus, then walking an unexpected 4km to Saint-Cirq, I was not amused to see that there were no cafés open.

But luckily, the woman at the auberge must have seen the desperation in my eyes, because she told me that if I could wait a few minutes, she’d bring out some coffee.

A white ceramic pitcher of hot milk and a mug full of espresso, along with a half of sleeve of cookies pulled from my pack (no other breakfast available), and I was finally ready to get going.

The first couple of kilometers of the walk were great. I was walking on a canal towpath next to the River Lot that was carved directly into a cliff-face. It made a sort of half tunnel that snaked along the river and the walk was pleasant and quiet and the scenery dramatic.

I arrived in the next village, Bouziès, found a public bathroom in a park and then saw a sign for the GR36 route that I’d be following.

Cahors, it read. 34.2km.

Wait one minute. 34.2km? How could that be right? I pulled out the map that I’d gotten in the tourism office and studied it a little more closely. Somehow we’d made a mistake, or we’d added the wrong numbers or we’d followed a line for a road rather than a hiking trail. In any case, Saint-Cirq to Cahors was not a mere 22km.

I added the numbers in my head. I’d already walked 4km to get to Saint-Cirq, and then another 4km to Bouziès. If I could actually walk all the way to Cahors, it would make for a 42km day.

Now, readers of this blog know that I’ve done 40+km days before. I’ve done several, so I know it’s not out of my comfort zone. But the day that was unfurling before me was a bit out of my comfort zone. It was already 9:30 and I still had 34km to go. This wasn’t ideal, but it was a distance that still seemed do-able. No, the biggest problem was that I had no idea what the route was going to be like. I didn’t know if it would be flat, or hilly, or steep or rocky or if it would ascend or if it would descend. I had no idea.

I passed slowly through the town, mulling over what I wanted to do. I saw an open boulangerie and bought half of a baguette and a croissant and then I kept walking. And I started walking fast.

I decided that I would going to try to do it. I walked as fast as I could and then I started climbing a hill, and after awhile it felt like a small mountain. I huffed and puffed and finally made it to the top and then I began the descent and sometimes I was walking on small rocks and I had to be careful. I wasn’t moving as fast as I wanted. I felt more tired that I wanted to feel.

I walked and walked and I ascended a second very large hill and my legs and calves screamed at me and I walked slower, daring to only rest for 10 minutes at the top to eat some cheese and bread and dried apricots.

Eventually, I stopped walking and consulted the bus schedule I’d gotten the day before. Something in me knew that I didn’t want to walk all the way to Cahors. I wasn’t making good time, I felt stressed about not knowing what was ahead of me on the route. I hadn’t passed another pilgrim, I didn’t even know if I could make it to Cahors before dark. I suspected I could, but I just didn’t know, and that made me feel very unsettled.

So, finally, I decided to just take a bus. I looked at the bus schedule, I looked at my map, and I walked onto another GR route to get to the town of Vers, where I had about 90 minutes to wait for the 2:37 bus that would take me to Cahors.

I arrived in Vers, I confirmed the bus stop with some people in a hotel restaurant, and then I made my way to a bench outside of the church where I would wait for my bus. I took off my socks and shoes and filled my water bottle at a nearby fountain and I thought to myself, “This is the end of this year’s Camino. Not what I expected, but overall, not a bad walk.”

This would have been a decent ending, if only I had gotten on that bus.

The hour for my bus came and went, and every time I heard a vehicle I’d anxiously look and wait and hope it would be my bus but it never was. Five minutes passed. 10 minutes passed. Finally a bus turned onto my road and it was moving fast as it approached but I waved it down and the brakes screeched to a stop. I went over and the door opened and a woman looked down at me curiously. “Is this the bus to Cahors?” I asked.

“No, no,” she said. “That bus stops at the other side of the bridge. Down there.” She pointed.

My heart dropped and I thanked her and then without thinking I took off down the street, running to the bridge, fearful that I’d already missed my bus.

I stood at the side of a busy road and waited and I could feel in my gut that something was wrong. I didn’t know exactly where to stand. It was already 15 minutes past when the bus was supposed to arrive.

And then, coming down the road, having just passed the church where I’d been waiting for the past 90 minutes, came a bus. It was moving fast and turning onto the road where I was standing and I realized that the spot by the church had been right all along, the bus had just been late.

I waved my arms, I’d started waving as soon as I realized that this was my bus and the driver was looking straight at me. I waved wildly, I started jumping up and down but the bus turned and roared down the road and headed off to Cahors, leaving me in its dust.

The next bus wasn’t for another 4 hours, not until after 7pm.

I tried to hold it all in but I couldn’t help myself. Tears gathered in my eyes and a couple rolled down my cheeks and I was hot and tired and I felt like I was somewhere far off of the Chemin, in a small and empty village and the only way out- other than my own two feet- had just rolled out and left me behind.

I didn’t know what to do and in that moment, I just wanted to be done with the Chemin. I wished I were at La Muse, in my cozy room at the writer’s retreat, not having to worry about speaking French or going off route or having to eat broken cookies for breakfast or waving wildly at buses or any of it. I was done.

I brushed the tears off of my cheeks and tried to hold back the lump in my throat. Sometimes a Camino ends in a blaze of glory, arms lifted in victory… and sometimes it ends on the side of a road in a sleepy village that’s not even on the actual route, the tail lights of your ride out of town fading from sight as they leave you behind.

But, you know, sometimes that’s the just the way. I went back to the hotel’s restaurant and asked the staff if they could help me call a taxi. At first everyone was confused about what I was doing. They told me that they didn’t know if a taxi would drive out here. That the taxi would have to come from Cahors, that it would be expensive. They doubled checked the bus schedule, and it was confirmed that there wouldn’t be another one until that evening.

The manager asked all of her staff if anyone was going back to Cahors that afternoon. “It’s too bad,” she told me. “Someone just left for Cahors, but you missed him.” The staff ran around the hotel, seeing if they could find me a ride, but they came up empty. (Still, this was such a bright spot in the day, how willing they were to find a solution for me).

In the end, the manager called a taxi for me, and within 20 minutes I was picked up and whisked away to Cahors. The ride was at least 30 euros more than the bus would have been, but I suspect that the driver didn’t charge me as much as she could have. We chatted in French, I think I was so relieved to be in a moving vehicle that I didn’t worry about what I was saying or whether what I said made any sense.

And then, when I arrived in Cahors, I had a pretty special Chemin evening. My gîte, Le Papillon Vert (green butterfly), was a quirky place in a slim apartment building that spanned at least four floors. The first floor was a large entryway cluttered with bags and shoes and socks and a table covered in papers and books and half empty glasses of flavored water that Eden (our hospitalero) provided for pilgrims. Eden was a former pilgrim himself: in either his 30’s or early 40’s, with long dark hair and small glasses and a quiet and gentle manner. There was another group of women who’d just arrived to the gîte and we all spoke together and Eden told us where we’d sleep and when dinner would be served. As he stamped my credential and took my money for the night, he asked where I was from.

“Des Etats-Unis,” I said.

“Non,” he replied, shaking his head.

I wasn’t sure what to say to this, but he went on to tell me that he couldn’t believe I was an American. He complimented my French and my accent and thought that I must be European. It was a great compliment to me, that after two weeks of muscling my way through French conversation that I might have improved. In fact, I knew that my French was better than when I’d started. I could understand conversations more easily, and I wasn’t quite as timid when speaking. Eden even asked me to translate a bit throughout the night for a German pilgrim, a woman in her 20’s who I was sharing a room with.

It was a good evening. It was the kind of evening that redeems a pretty challenging day. Before dinner I wandered through the city; the sky had cleared to a perfect shade of blue, there were bustling markets and narrow roads and quiet corners.

And then dinner was one of the best meals of the trip: a salad with chunks of blood-red tomato and cucumber and thick slices of brie, a vegetable puréed soup, two different homemade tartes, boiled potatoes, a local wine, bread, and surely something wonderful for dessert that I’ve since forgotten.

And the conversation was good. There were 8 women at the table: a group of 4, a group of 2, the German girl, and me. The other women were French but they were friendly and jolly and make an effort to try to translate or speak slowly and there was so much laughter and happiness. As we were finishing our last bites of food and lingering over wine, Eden told us a few of his favorite pilgrim “lessons”, stories like parables, examples of Chemin magic, of long-lost friends and finding what you need.

Finding what you need, yes. I’d found what I needed in that gîte: community and laughter and the spirit of the Chemin. My pilgrimage hadn’t ended on the side of a dusty road with tears in my eyes. After all of these years, how could I have thought that my Chemin ended when the walking did? No, a Camino or a Chemin is about more than the walking, it’s always been about more than the walking.

It’s the journey, the villages I pass through and the cities I explore, the people by my side, the voices joining together in laughter, in song. This was the blaze of glory. This was what it was all about, all of it together, all of these pieces. It’s the walking, but more than that, it’s the spirit of everyone who is walking and everyone who has walked for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Will I walk again? Surely. There are so many paths to discover, there are more routes to Santiago, there may even be some footsteps to retrace. I will certainly walk again, and the only question that remains is- ‘where to next?’.

*****

Previous Post: Days 11, 12, 13 on the Chemin du Puy

Have you walked a Camino/Chemin, returned home and wondered ‘what comes next?’ If so, check out my e-book, ‘After the Camino’!

Revealing my latest Project: ‘After the Camino’ e-book!

October 18, 2017

Hi everyone, I’ve written an E-book! It’s called ‘After the Camino’!

Here it is, for your viewing/reading pleasure (click this link, or any of the links in this post). I’ve been calling it a ‘small’ and ‘simple’ thing, though when all was said and done it clocked in at a little over 50 pages. Some of those pages are photos and there’s much less text per page than what I’m used to, so 50 pages feels much bigger than it actually is.

Despite this, ‘After the Camino’ is a book, and I’d love for you to take a look. The chapters read like blog posts, so in a way it feels a bit like a collection of blog posts, with a focus on tips for dealing with the ‘post Camino blues’. Its ideal audience is anyone who has walked a Camino and has returned home and felt a bit lost, or felt like they weren’t sure what to do next.

But in some ways, I think it can be for anyone who has had a big experience and is transitioning back to regular life, and feeling like something is now missing. Most of the content is framed around a Camino experience, but the concepts can be applied to nearly anything. In any case, the book is free, so I think you should all take a look, pilgrim or not! (And if you’re in the planning stages of a pilgrimage, then bookmark this page and come back when you’ve returned from your Camino. This book might help).

Writing this and putting it together was a good experience for me. It never felt overwhelming, and maybe that’s because I worked in stages, and with small steps (like I usually do). I wrote most of it back in the spring, added a few chapters this summer, and have spent the last couple of months tinkering away at putting it together in an e-book format. There was a lot to learn there, and still more to go, I’m sure.

I could have toyed with this for another two months but have you ever heard the expression ‘begin before you’re ready?’. Hmm, well, I’m not sure that this was the expression I was looking for… but in any case the idea was that I may have never felt ready to hit publish and send it out into the great unknown. I needed to finally say to myself ‘good enough’ and then just take the next step.

Here are a couple technical details: if you want to download the book, you’re going to have to submit your email to essentially ‘subscribe’ to the book. There are a couple emails involved here; you’ll have to enter your email and name, then confirm, wait a few minutes (this is key… just wait for it, the email will eventually arrive), and THEN you’ll get the email with the link to the book.

I wish this process could be smoother and less complicated, but it’s what I’ve got for now. Doing it in this way is important to me because it gives me a sense of how many of you are interested in taking a look at the book. As I’ve mentioned before, I have other ideas for projects around this ‘After the Camino’ idea, and am thinking about developing an e-course. But in order to invest a lot of time into that, I want to have a sense of the level of interest.

So, happy reading, and the next time you’ll hear from me here will hopefully be soon, with my final blog post from the Chemin du Puy.

In The Center Of It All; Day 10 on the Chemin du Puy, Sénergues to Conques, 9km

October 3, 2017

The day I walked to Conques was probably my favorite day on the Chemin du Puy (the favorite part of my post-Hilary time, anyway).

What made it so special? It certainly wasn’t the actual walking; I woke up to another day of gray, heavy clouds, and needed to don my raincoat from the moment I stepped out the gîte door in Sénergues. The rain pelted down, and sometimes the wind blew so fiercely that the rain drops came in sideways, splashing against my cheeks and my forehead and my nose and my lips. At one point, I started to walk backwards, just so that I could have a break from the wind and the rain against my face.

It was a short day, too, at only 9km. Typically I don’t love short days on the Camino or the Chemin, especially if I’m feeling strong and good. But with the rain and the promise of potentially meeting up with friends in Conques, I was relieved that I’d only have to walk for a couple of hours in the morning.

The descent into the village of Conques was tricky. It’s already a stretch of path that’s infamous for it’s steep, rocky downward slope, but it’s made infinitely harder when the rocks are slick and wet. I walked carefully, slowly, measuring each step, always looking for a spot to plant my foot before I made any movement.

In the middle of my descent, my concentration was broken by the sudden appearance of a large, black, angry barking dog. He seemed to appear out of nowhere but now, all at once, he was below me on the path, taking steady steps towards me, growling as he bared his teeth.

The rain continued to fall, water was now dripping from the hood of my coat onto the tip of my nose. My hand, gripping my walking stick, was slick with the rain. I was mid stride, one foot planted lower than the other and I wasn’t sure how to take my next step. The dog continued to bark, slowly advancing. My heart pounded and I did the only thing that I could think to do- I pushed my stick out towards him, keeping my voice stern. “Arrêt!” Stop, stop. I repeated the word and brandished my stick but the dog only barked louder.

Finally his owner appeared, yelling his name and eventually grabbing him by the collar. “He is afraid of your stick,” she told me. Hmm. I carry the stick to protect myself from angry dogs- not that there are ever all that many, but if makes me feel better to have some sort of protection, just in case. But meanwhile, maybe I’m making the dogs angry because I’m carrying a stick?

In any case, they walked past me, the dog giving me a side-eye the entire time, and I continued slowly down the path until I arrived at the entrance to the village of Conques.

Oh my. Even in the rain, this small village was stunning. I’d been here once before, when I studied in Toulouse during college, but I have almost no memories of the trip. It was likely that we had just passed through the village, stopping only briefly to see the cathedral.

But now, at 10am, my walking done, I had the entire day at my disposal. The rain had slowed and then stopped as I gingerly made my way down the wet cobblestones and into the village. I took my time, walking up and down the streets, snapping photos and getting my bearings (which wasn’t difficult; this truly is a small village, with only a few winding streets).

I knew that Conques was an important stop on the Chemin du Puy, and had been since the Middle Ages. The relics of Sainte Foy (Saint Faith) are located in the Church, and these have drawn pilgrims for centuries. In the second century, when Sainte Foy was only 12, she was decapitated for refusing to worship pagan gods. She became an extremely popular saint in Southern France, and her relics drew a great number of pilgrims to the small and very isolated village of Conques.

And Conques continues to be a popular site on the Chemin du Puy. I knew this from the bits of reading I’d done before setting off on my pilgrimage, but as I walked I kept hearing people mention Conques. “You need to stop there,” they told me. “And be sure to stay in the Abbaye.”

The Abbaye was just behind the Church, and even though I wouldn’t be able to check in until 2:00, I was greeted and instructed on where I could store my bag in the meantime. I pulled out my day bag and stuffed it full of things I might need for the next few hours: my bottle of water, a snack, a fleece, my journal.

And then I headed back into the village, wandering through the streets, into the cemetery, up and down and around and around until I decided that it was time to sit with a hot coffee.

And as I was walking down a road to find a café, I heard someone shout my name. Inside one of the cafés were the two French women I’d shared a room with back on the day when Hilary left. I’d been criss-crossing with them for awhile but it had been a few days since I’d seen them. I knew they were both ending their pilgrimage in Conques (and in fact, Conques is a stopping point for many pilgrims who are only able to do the Chemin du Puy in stages); so it made me happy to see that we’d arrived in the village on the same day.

They ushered me into the café and over to their table, paying for my coffee and asking me how my days had been. We spoke in French, but already I could tell that I was getting a little better, and even if the conversation was basic, I could mostly understand what they were saying. They hadn’t yet dropped their things off at the Abbaye, so I instructed them on where to go, and then set back out into the village. I walked through the Church and then went back outside into the square, and in the distance, walking down the street, was Mario.

I leaned against a stone wall and waited until he was closer to call out his name. When I did he looked at me, did a double take, and gave me a huge smile. “You’re here!!” he laughed. “I thought you might have walked past, or walked here yesterday.”

“No,” I shook my head. I couldn’t really say anything else then, I could only smile. I’d felt it so strongly the day before, the fact that I hadn’t said goodbye to Mario. He was the only real friend I made on this year’s Camino- there were others I considered my Camino friends, but Mario was a true friend. It hadn’t felt right to just walk away the day before, and I regretted the decision as soon as I’d realized what I’d done. There were many reasons for walking that short day to Conques, but the most important was to see Mario again, and to spend the last day of his pilgrimage with him.

We walked to the Abbaye together and on the way we saw Jerome and Nassim, hanging out at a nearby bar. We saw others, too- the kind French men, the French Canadian couple, and more. Mario stored his pack, and we headed back out- into the rain- to find a place to eat lunch. There was a restaurant just outside of the Church square, and inside we saw Pierre and his wife (who wasn’t on the pilgrimage but had arranged to meet him here for a rest day).

Mario and I ate a huge meal- I can’t remember what I had anymore, but I know that we lingered over several courses and I had ice cream and there was bread and wine (does the rest of the meal really matter, if I had those other things?).

And then the rest of the afternoon, the rest of the day, was Camino/Chemin perfection. It seems like at least once on every pilgrimage, I have a day like this. When everything just comes together. My friends are all in one place and we spend time together and we eat great food and see beautiful things and I’m just overwhelmed by a strong feeling of happiness.

Somehow I ended up in the quiet, mostly empty dorm room in the Abbaye. Everyone else was squeezed together in one of the large bunk rooms and I was in the other, with only three other people. I rested and wrote postcards and then headed back out with Mario to find something to drink. We saw Jerome and Nassim and we all walked together and somehow ended up on the upper, covered terrace of a bar, shielded from the rain. No one else was up there and we pushed two tables together and ordered a bottle of wine. From our perch we could look down onto the streets and it seemed like every 10 minutes, Nassim would see someone he knew, shout down to them, and our group grew larger, and larger. Paul Andre and Chantal, the French Canadian couple, joined us. So did Therese, and later Georges, and we talked and laughed and I sat in the center of it all, not completely understanding all the French that was swirling around me, but for maybe the first time, not really caring.

I was included in this group, the group that had somehow become my own. It didn’t matter to any of them that I couldn’t speak French very well, in fact, it seemed that they hardly thought twice about it. I had been folded into the mix or, maybe, I’d even folded myself into this mix and once again, for just this short time, I’d found myself a Camino family. My Chemin family.

There was a communal dinner back at the Abbaye and afterwards a service in the Church, followed by an explanation of the stunning Tympanum of the Last Judgement. And following all of that, an organ concert in the church with the chance to walk around the upper levels.

It was one of those evenings that I wished could last much longer. I thought about this as I walked around the upper corridor of the Romanesque church, Pierre Soulages’ stained glass glowing gray and blue and even orange, the organ pounding and filling the body of the church with a swelling, glorious sound. The music built and built and I walked out to the very center of the church and looked down and everything was glowing: the windows and the candles and the aisles and the faces of all the pilgrims: some in their seats, some in front of me and some behind me and all of us on the very same path.

It’s the sort of moment that rises above, quite literally, everything else. I felt full of something that night, full of so many things: of wine and bread and hearty French food, full of friendship and love and community, full of light and full of music and full of spirit and full of faith.

After the concert Mario and I stood outside for a few minutes, other pilgrims lingering as well, soaking up every bit of that soft night. The sky had grown dim, a dark blue, and a half moon hung, heavy, in the sky above us.

I breathed it all in, as deeply as I could. I knew that tomorrow everything would change but that night, I stayed rooted in the moment: in the center of it all, in the middle of France, in a small mountain village under the moonlight, music still in my ears, the love of my friends enveloping me. I wrapped myself in the warmth of it all, and breathed deep.

Previous Post: Day 9 on the Chemin du Puy

Next Post: Days 11, 12, 13 on the Chemin du Puy

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Day 9 on the Chemin du Puy, St-Génies des Ers to Sénergues, 22km

September 12, 2017

When I woke up on the morning of Day 9, it was raining.

It had started raining the evening before and continued through the night. There were puddles of mud in the yard. We’d forgotten to close the windows of the outer porch area where our clothes were drying, and I was dismayed to discover that my clothes were just as wet as they’d been the night before. I squinted at the sky, all I could see were dark clouds.

But the little kitchen of our gîte was warm, there was coffee, and bread, and leftover plums from the day before.

Mario and I looked through our guidebooks as we ate breakfast, and he told me his plan for the day. We were about 30km from Conques (it was hard to tell because we were on a variant, the GR-6, and the guidebook wasn’t specific), and it was a distance that Mario was going to split into two days. He was ending his pilgrimage in Conques (as were many other pilgrims), and there was no reason for him to cover the distance all in one day, especially in the rain.

I was undecided. A big part of me wanted to walk the 30km into Conques. I felt that I needed to reclaim my Chemin, break out on my own, walk a bigger stage, have my own adventure. I also knew that I needed to make up some kilometers if I wanted to arrive in Cahors in 5 day’s time (for my train reservation).

Mario was trying to talk me out of it. I knew that he wanted to have my company for the last few days of his pilgrimage, but he had other good points as well. “It’s raining,” he pointed out the window. “You’re going to walk all day in wet conditions, and arrive to Conques late in the afternoon. It’s an amazing village and you’ll wish you had more time to spend there.”

I nodded. Conques is a significant site along the Chemin du Puy; not only does it have the reputation as being the most beautiful village in France, but it has a rich history. I didn’t want my time there to be rushed, but I also knew that there was more rain in the forecast for the next day.

There was one other factor that I was weighing in my decision: if I walked the longer day, I’d not only be saying goodbye to Mario, but I would most likely be moving ahead of everyone else I’d met so far on the walk. I hadn’t seen any of them for the past few days, and it made me sad to think that I might never see them again.

I told Mario that I would make up my mind as I walked, and that I would surely see him somewhere on the path. And then I left, and he gave me a head start because he knew I wanted to walk alone.

The morning was… just okay. I don’t like walking in the rain. That’s no surprise, and I’m sure that most of you probably agree with me on this: rain just sort of dampens the whole day (haha). I just plodded along, the skies were gray, the path was muddy, rain spit at me on and off. My hood was up, I could only see the path in front of me, and I focused only on thoughts of a dry café and a hot cup of coffee. Because I was on a variant, my guidebook had no information on towns or services, so I knew that it could be a long time before I passed an open bar or café (if at all).

But to my surprise, I came upon a lovely village with signage for a café, a little grocery store, and a bakery. The place looked deserted, but I crossed my fingers as I walked through the empty square and headed towards the café. To my great delight, I saw a woman sitting inside at one of the tables, so I took off my pack, left it outside in the driest spot I could find, and went in for a café crème. The owner was kind and she asked me questions about my walk and where I was from. In turn, I asked her what she knew about the weather for the next few days, and if she had any opinions on whether I should walk all the way to Conques or not.

I still didn’t have an answer for myself, but I continued to linger over my coffee. It was nice to let my clothes dry out a little, but I was also sort of waiting for Mario. He eventually arrived (after the first 20 minutes of the morning’s walk he realized that he forgot to put money into the donation jar at our gîte, so he turned around and went back). We chatted for a few minutes, and he told me that he was definitely walking a shorter day and not going all the way to Conques.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

I was leaning towards walking all the way to Conques, but I told him that I was sure I’d see him again at some point during the day. We’d only been walking for a couple hours, and I knew that I would probably stop again a few times. I was certain that Mario would catch up to me, even though he had a doubtful look on his face.

The rain had stopped and I felt anxious to keep moving, so I said goodbye to the café owner, waved to Mario, and headed out. Before leaving the village I found the boulangerie, and bought a fresh croissant. I ate it as I walked, flakes of pastry falling onto my white rain jacket, and I brushed them off and smiled. I was feeling energized by the coffee, comfortable now that my pants were no longer wet, satisfied with the fresh croissant, happy that I had seen my friend.

The rain continued on and off but it was never heavy, and I felt energized. I walked fast, barely taking note of the places I was passing through. After a few hours, I arrived in another small village just as the skies were beginning to clear and sunlight poured over the square. It was the perfect spot for a little lunch break, and I set up at a picnic table: my jacket and shoes and socks came off, and I positioned them in the sun so they could get a chance to dry. I filled up my water bottle at a nearby fountain, and took out my food: apricots and cheese, day old bread.

As I ate I looked at my guidebook, and when I saw where I was, I could feel my heart sink. I’d passed the place where Mario was planning to stop for the day, and I hadn’t realized it. I must have misjudged the distances or underestimated how fast I’d walked, but I knew that unless I walked backwards to find him, and if I did indeed continue on to Conques that day, I’d never see him again. We hadn’t exchanged contact info and I hadn’t even said goodbye- I’d just breezily waved at him when I left the café.

I sat at that picnic table for awhile, tilting my face up towards the sun and letting the warmth pour over me. I knew I wasn’t going to turn around, but I was hoping that Mario might decide to walk further than he planned. I kept looking over my shoulder, thinking I might see him on the path, but there was no one. In fact, I didn’t see a soul in the entire village.

I kept walking. It was just past 1:00 and the next village was less than 3km away, and it felt like I arrived in no time. It was the village of Sénergues: another small place, with a church and a bar that closed on Wednesday afternoons (guess which day it was??), a tiny cemetery and a park. There was a large gîte/inn at the entrance of town, with pale blue shutters and a beautiful terrace in the back. I circled through the town twice, and then sat down on a stoop in front of the gîte. I still hadn’t seen anyone, the village was empty, and it was barely 2:00pm.

Should I stay, or should I go? I sat there for what felt like a long time, not knowing what to do. I wanted to keep walking, I could feel it in my bones. The sky was a brilliant blue, the clouds were a shocking white, the sun was warm. There was more rain in the forecast for the afternoon- a chance of thunderstorms- but I wondered if I could beat the rain. And I didn’t know what I was going to do with an entire afternoon and evening in a deserted village with a closed bar.

But there was a lump in my throat. I hadn’t said goodbye.

And then a group of pilgrims arrived- two men and two women- and we all wondered if the gîte was open and suddenly I was walking inside with them, and inquiring about a room.

And I was given a bed in a room with no one else, in a small little private corner right next to a small little private bathroom. I took a shower and washed my clothes and hung them on the shutters in a small patch of sunlight. I walked through the town again, three more times, around and around in circles. I went to the small grocery store and bought a bag of chips and a banana and two postcards and a cold drink and took it back to the gîte, where I set up at a table on the beautiful terrace.

It began to rain after only 10 minutes, a heavy and lashing rain and I ran upstairs to my room and pulled my clothes from shutters, as the wind howled and tree branches whipped and lightening flashed through the sky.

Thank goodness I had decided to stop walking. I think I might have known, all along, that I wasn’t going to walk to Conques. I think I just needed to feel like I was making my own decisions. I’d enjoyed Mario’s company, but I needed a little time on my own, and I’d given it to myself that day. And even though I was feeling a little lonely, and a little restless, even though I wished I were still walking, I felt good about my decision.

The evening was quiet: I wrote in my journal and tried to plan out the next few days of walking. At 7:00 I went downstairs to dinner, and met other pilgrims. They were all walking in groups or pairs, all of them from France, and it was hard to understand the conversation but the food was good. There was quiche and salad, sausage and mashed potatoes, and some delicious pudding-like thing for dessert. (And bread, of course, always bread).

I went to bed early, by 9:30, tucked under the covers and with a cool breeze blowing through the room. The next day would be a short one- only 9km to Conques- and I wondered what I would find there. A beautiful village? Familiar faces? Mario? The rest of my friends? I hoped so.

Previous Post: Day 8 on the Chemin du Puy

Sprigs of lavender and a bowl of fresh plums; Day 8 on the Chemin du Puy, St-Côme d’Olt to St-Genies des-Ers, 26km

September 5, 2017

I woke up in the gîte in St-Côme d’Olt feeling like I had gotten a really good, refreshing sleep. In fact, it was probably the best sleep that I’d gotten so far on the trip, and I could feel the effects of that throughout the day: I was energized, happy, and able to walk and walk and walk.

And that’s what I did- or, at least, that’s what it felt like I did.

I suppose the 26km distance wasn’t incredibly long, not compared to what I’ve done before, but Day 8’s walk wasn’t flat; in fact, it was anything but flat.

Mario and I decided to opt out of taking the morning detour that would lead pilgrims along a rather flat path bordering the Lot river. This detour was supposed to be pretty, but it was no comparison to the main route of the Chemin, which would climb steeply for several kilometers (and then descend almost as steeply). Why climb unnecessarily? For the views, of course!

The morning was perfect: blue skies, warm but not-yet-hot sunshine, low humidity. I felt strong on the ascent to the Vierge de Vernus (the statue pictured above), and then just as good on the walk back down. It also helped that things moved a little more slowly with a walking companion. Mario’s pace was similar to mine, but whenever you’re walking with someone, the journey always seems to take a little longer. He would stop for a photo, then I would stop for a photo. He would point out a large cobweb, I would stop to admire the view. With a lot more stopping and starting, it was like I had little breaks built in (when I walk alone I always take photos, but I usually just slow my walk down to a ‘pause’, and begin again just as quickly).

But by the time we got to Espalion, I was feeling a little restless. Maybe that’s not the right word, I’m not sure what the right word is. I’d had fun walking with Mario, but I was also craving a walk to myself. I know, I know, I’d been walking alone ever since Hilary left, but these walks are completely different when you’re with someone vs when you’re alone. At least, the feeling changes completely for me; it’s a different experience. I knew that Mario would respect whatever I wanted to do- continue walking with him or continue on alone- but I also sensed that he liked my company, and maybe that he expected that we’d continue on together.

So it was back to the drawing board for me- isn’t this always the case? I continue to come back to the Camino, in part, for the camaraderie and to make strong connections with like-minded people, and some of my very best moments have been in the company of the friends I’ve made. And yet, and yet, I lose my sense of freedom and that pure feeling of adventure when I’m with someone else. I don’t have time to crawl into my head, to think my big thoughts, to write essays and books in my imagination, to go wherever I please.

The truth is, I want both of these experiences, and that can sometimes leave me conflicted.

So, on this day, I tried to have a little of both. When we were in the small town of Espalion, I turned to Mario and said, “I think I’m going to find a coffee somewhere and then continue on a bit by myself.”

We were going to stay in the same place again that night so I knew I’d be seeing him later anyway- but that, too, was leaving me feeling conflicted. He’d found a gîte that was similar to the one we’d stayed in the night before, and I was beginning to wonder whose Chemin I’d decided to walk that day. Where did I want to go, where did I want to stay? I wasn’t really sure.

In any case, I had a coffee, I bought a ham and cheese sandwich and then I left town, alone.

And it felt really good. After a few kilometers there was an unexpected (to me) REALLY steep climb, it felt like the most difficult part of the Chemin so far. I don’t think the climb was actually all that long but it felt like it stretched on forever, and I couldn’t figure out why I hadn’t yet arrived to the top.

But finally I did, and there was a cooling wind and a wide landscape and I could feel the energy returning to my legs. I walked fast, eating my sandwich as I went, smiling as I passed other pilgrims.

Before long I ran into Mario and a few others, resting at a church. I stopped there too, to douse my buff in cold water and to use the bathroom and to eat a juicy peach. From here, Mario and I continued walking together and once again the day shifted and, finally, I let go of trying to control the experience I was having.

And as soon as I did, I could feel myself relax. We told jokes and laughed, we plucked sprigs of lavender from a bush along the path and tucked them behind our ears. We passed through gorgeous little villages and chatted with other pilgrims.

In Estaing, we stopped for a break and I saw two pilgrims who I’d met on the 2nd and 3rd day of my walk, and who I hadn’t seen since. They were two men from Nantes, both were kind but one always seemed to want to make sure that I was having a good time, that I was understanding things, that I was finding the walk through France to be beautiful. (I sometimes think that, as Americans, we’ve generalized the French as being cold or haughty or unfriendly… or maybe just disinterested. But walking the Chemin proves just the opposite: I met some of the warmest, most generous people on the Chemin du Puy, the Man from Nantes being one of them).

Estaing was another beautiful, charming and completely idyllic town, but Mario and I weren’t staying there. Once again, just as I had the day before, I felt a pang of regret when I saw how nice the town was. I’d agreed to continue walking, and to take a detour away from the main path of the Camino, so while most of the people I’d gotten to know were stopping in Estaing, Mario and I were continuing on.

We were hit with yet another steep climb. The day had grown hot, it was 4:00pm and I should have been tired… but I wasn’t. Looking back, this might have been the strongest I felt on any day on the Chemin, and when Mario and I finally made it to our destination, overall I felt good. Did it matter that I was still conflicted on whether I wanted to walk alone or with a friend, did it matter that I’d chosen not to stay in every idyllic village that I passed along the way?

Maybe it only mattered that I was healthy, and strong, and walking in good company.

Back in Estaing, Mario had picked up grocery supplies because the place we were staying in didn’t provide dinner, and when we arrived we found a large house with a small addition where we’d be sleeping. There was a well equipped kitchen and the owner of the house, Caro, made sure we had everything we needed, and brought over a bottle of red wine and a loaf of bread for the morning. There was a friendly dog, a plum tree, and a large tent in the backyard (which would have been a pretty cool place to spend the night but a storm blew in and I was happy to have chosen to sleep indoors).

Mario had picked up four bottles of beer while we were in Estaing (he chose a kind that he thought I would like, noticing that I’d mentioned I wasn’t much of a beer drinker. Once again, more proof of the kindness and generosity of the French!), and we shared it with Caro while he and Mario talked about their philosophies of life. I didn’t feel quite as frustrated that I couldn’t completely follow the conversation- and it might have been because Caro’s accent was easier for me to understand (or maybe my French was improving??)- and if anything I really enjoyed listening to the guys talk. After Caro left we made a late dinner- I chopped veggies while Mario threw together a stir fry, and we talked about the reasons that we were walking, the questions in our lives, the things we believed in.

At the end of the night I felt like I had made a friend. A real, true friend and even though it didn’t solve my ‘walk alone/walk with others’ dilemma (oh just wait for the next post), it only reaffirmed my feeling that I didn’t need to figure everything out. How would I spend the rest of my walk? In that moment, it didn’t matter.

Because I had spent my day well.

Previous Post: Day 7 on the Chemin du Puy

Next Post: Day 9 on the Chemin du Puy

You Get What You Need: Day 5 on the Chemin du Puy, Les Estrets to Aumont-Aubrac, 8km

July 17, 2017

Today, I only walked 8km.

This was all according to plan, but I have to say that initially, I was not pleased. 8km? That’s less than what I typically do after work when I walk around my neighborhood. And this was a day on the Chemin!

But I was doing it out of necessity. One of my previous posts mentioned the trouble around Nasbinals, the town that was hosting a road race for hundreds or thousands of people who had taken all the hotel/gîte rooms.

So my solution around this was to do a really short day, and stop in Aumont-Aubrac, where I had been able to find a bed in a gite. And the following day, I would walk 35km to make up for the shorter day. Now that was the part of the plan I liked: a long day, a physical challenge.

8km, on the other hand, would pass by in the blink of an eye. I tried to linger- I really did- I savored a second cup of coffee, I took a long time lacing my shoes, I was the last to leave my gîte in the morning.

And as I walked, I stopped to take photos and to try to enjoy the view. But my feet felt restless, and I was distracted. When I arrived in Aumont-Aubrac, what in the world was I going to do? I was going to have the entire day at my disposal, I was all alone, and all I really wanted to do was walk.

I was deep in these thoughts when suddenly the boy in the red shirt with the big pack appeared at the side of the trail. There was no avoiding him this time- he started walking just a pace behind me- but I wasn’t in the same mood as the day before. I decided that I might as well say hi and try to be friendly.

It turns out that he wasn’t French afterall- he was German and his name was Sten, a name that means ‘stone’. Even though he could speak English we spoke in French, and I found that I didn’t mind. In fact, I kind of enjoyed it: our levels were pretty evenly matched, and it was so much easier to speak with him than with a native French speaker. We both made mistakes and often had to search for the right word. He spoke slowly and I could understand him easily.

Sten had to catch a bus in Aumont-Aubrac at 9:40am; he had already walked a couple of the upcoming stages so he was going to skip over the sections he had already done. This meant that he had to walk fast in order to catch the bus, but I was able to easily match his pace. It felt good to stretch my legs like this, to move quickly down the trail, to talk easily with the person at my side.

The only downside of walking with someone like this was that I arrived at my destination by 9:20am. We went to a cafe and Sten bought me a coffee, but before I knew it he was standing and shaking my hand and saying how nice it had been to meet me, then was running off to catch his bus.

I watched him go, and then smiled. The interaction had been just what I’d needed, just enough to shake me out of my loneliness over saying goodbye to Hilary, enough to bring me back into the world of the Chemin. And as I sat in the cafe, I watched as people I knew filtered in and out. They came over and said hi, Pierre sat with me while he waited for Stephanie, the young Quebecoise girl. Katherine, a blond German women who had been in the samegîte as I had the night before, talked to me about how out of place she’d felt at dinner. “Really?” I said. “You looked so comfortable.”

“I wasn’t,” she replied. “I try to speak in French but it’s really hard.”

Eventually they all left, on to other towns and other gîtes (most of them had found beds in a gîte that was a bit off the main path of the Chemin. I’d tried to get a bed there as well, but had been too late).

I walked around the small town to get my bearings. It wasn’t a large place, just one main street with several restaurants and shops, a main square full of cafes, a church, a park. I found a boulangerie and bought a sandwich to eat for lunch, I stopped by an epicierie to load up on snacks for the next day.

In the park I settled into a picnic table in the shade, opened up my guidebook, and mapped out a plan for the next several days. I made phone calls too (this was one of my least favorite parts of walking the Chemin; calling ahead to book gîtes meant that I not only had to talk on phone, something I don’t even enjoy doing in English, but I had to speak in French which was still kind of nerve-wracking).

I looped through the town a few more times and then around 1:00 decided to see if I could get into my gîte. I was suprised to see that the door wasn’t locked, and that in the hallway on the bottom floor was a note that said to leave my shoes and pack downstairs, and then go upstairs to see which bed I had been assigned to. The hospitalera would be by in the evening to take our money and stamp our credentials, and in the meantime there were notes and signs all around, instructing us on what to do.

The gîte was perfect. Sometimes on the Camino and on the Chemin you get just what you need, and this had been happening to me all day. The place was clean and bright and modern and spacious. We were in a narrow apartment building and the gîte was spread out over three floors. Above the entryway and downstairs hallway was a floor with a sitting room and the kitchen, along with a couple of bedrooms. And the floor above was where I was staying. There were several rooms up here, too, and I was staying in a room with four beds. Since I was the first to arrive in my room, I could have my pick of beds, and I discovered that my room was actually split into two spaces. One had three beds, and another- behind a curtain- had one bed and a little desk by a large window. It’s like it was meant for me! Maybe it was.

The bathroom was large and clean, there was a rack to dry my clothes outside on the small balcony (set up in the sunshine), there was a fridge where I could keep my fruit and yogurt, there was an outlet right next to my bed where I could plug in my phone. This was gîte paradise.

The rest of the day was slow, relaxing, restorative. The other three beds in my room remained empty, the other pilgrims never showed up. The hospitalera, when she arrived, was so kind and helpful; she gave me the names of other gîtes along the way that she thought I might like, and gave me some advice about the trail for the next day. I met another pilgrim who was also staying in the gite- a guy from the Netherlands who had been carrying a big guitar down the trail. In the afternoon he played for us, slow Spanish flamenco music, the sound filled the rooms and floated down the hallways and out the windows and I was so relaxed I almost fell asleep in my chair.

There was no demi-pension at the gîte so in the evening I went out to one of the restaurants nearby. I wanted something simple so I ordered a goat cheese salad and a glass of wine and I should have known that my salad would be anything but simple: there was the goat cheese over toasted bread slices, yes, but also tomatoes and corn and carrots and peppers and lardons and grilled onions and slivers of garlic.

After dinner I walked through the town again, just to stroll through the streets and stretch my legs before bed. I found my way to the church, stained-glass glowing, empty pews, a line of lit candles and I added my own, giving up a small prayer of thanks for the day, for getting what I needed, for feeling renewed and refreshed and ready for what would come next.

Previous Post: Day 4 on the Chemin du Puy

Next Post: Day 6 on the Chemin du Puy

And there goes our shuttle; Day 4 on the Chemin du Puy, Le Sauvage to Estrets, 21km

July 14, 2017

Here is the image that stands out the most from Day 4 of the Chemin du Puy: standing next to a small chapel in the middle of nowhere, waving our arms wildly at the shuttle hurtling down the road, watching as it passed us by without even slowing down. This was Hilary’s ride back to Le Puy.

But let me back up for a minute. We started our morning in Le Sauvage, eating breakfast after nearly everyone had already finished and headed off for the day. We were in no hurry because Hilary’s shuttle wouldn’t arrive until 11:10am. We would have to walk just a bit- 4km- to the place where the shuttle made its pick-ups; usually shuttles come to the gites, or some central place in town, but since we were in the middle of a field and the only roads were gravely and sandy, the man at La Malle Postale (luggage delivery and shuttle service) told me that the pick-up was 4km away, at the Chapelle de St Roch.

I’d made the shuttle reservation before leaving for France, and then confirmed it in La Malle Postale’s office in Le Puy at the start of our journey. So I wasn’t really worried unil we we met a couple who were also lingering over breakfast. The woman told us that they were also getting picked up by the shuttle- at 11:20- but their pick-up was at the gîte.

This seemed a bit strange, and Hilary and I laughed about that fact that she was going to walk for an hour, only to be picked up by a shuttle that would most likely be taking her right back to where she’d started walking an hour before. But we shrugged it off and walked on, and finally the morning was cool and almost crisp, the path running through a forest track that was quiet and peaceful and beautiful.

We got to the chapelle an hour early, and had plenty of time to eat snacks and for Hilary’s to rearrange her bag, and to sit and talk about the last few days of our journey together. As 11:10 approached we gathered our things and stood as close to the road as possible. We waited, and waited, and I didn’t start to get really anxious until about 11:15. The minutes ticked past and finally, at 11:20, we saw a white van approaching.

“That must be it!” I said, but the vehicle didn’t seem to be slowing down- in fact, I swear it was gaining speed as it drove past. We waved frantically and I’m pretty sure some of the passengers must have seen us but the driver just stared straight ahead, and we watched as the shuttle faded from view.

I immediately got on the phone with La Malle Postale’s office and didn’t even attempt to speak in French as I explained what had just happened. The guy in the office put me on hold as he made a call to another driver who was out in our area, and luckily, in about 5 minutes another shuttle came by and pulled over to pick up Hilary.

I’m still not sure exactly what happened- later, Hilary told me that the driver of her shuttle said that she was lucky that the office had called him and that he was nearby. That first shuttle was the one she was supposed to be on, and it was clear that the driver had no idea he was supposed to pick someone up (although, two girls on the side of the road waving their arms wildly would have been a good tip off…). Something must have gotten mixed up with my reservation, but with an email confirmation AND an in-person confirmation of the date and the time of pick-up, I have no idea what the mix-up was.

In any case, after a long hug and holding back some tears, Hilary got on the shuttle and I watched as it drove away. And man, did I feel strange and alone. It’s worse than the feeling you get when you leave your walking stick behind: it’s like a vital part of my pilgrimage was no longer with me, and I would have to figure out how to carry on without it.

I wasn’t even totally alone just then- a few minutes before Hilary got on the shuttle, a young guy in a red shirt and large backpack had walked up to the chapel and was taking a break there. After Hilary left I saw him lingering but I waited until he packed up and moved on. I was in no mood to meet someone new or try to speak in French or anything else. I just needed a little time to be on my own and to miss Hilary and to adjust to Phase 2 of my pilgrimage.

To be honest, the rest of the day was… off. I didn’t feel particulary strong as I walked, the day grew hot, I was indecisive. I passed through a town that felt abandoned and strange, and even though I was hungry and needed to pick up something for lunch, I walked past several open cafes, not wanting to go inside. I sat in the shade by the church, knowing I should take off my shoes and rest for awhile, but I felt restless. I saw the guy in the red shirt again and still didn’t want to even attempt to say hi.

Eventually I got myself a sandwich and ate it on bench in the shade just outside of town, and then I kept walking, and the day continued to be off. Right on cue, it seemed, dark clouds suddenly rolled in and I was walking at a bit of elevation and without much cover. I was so focused on the clouds and listening to the rumbles of thunder in the distance that I took a wrong turn and got myself off of the Chemin. I think I was happy to be on a path that was heading away from the clouds and towards a patch of blue sky that I didn’t realize I was no longer going the right way. But the Chemin is well marked and after awhile I realized I hadn’t seen the red and white striped waymarkers for quite a long time. Feeling defeated, I turned around and had to trudge back uphill, towards those dark clouds.

I saw one bolt of lightening and that’s when I got scared. Several days before, Mario had warned me about getting stuck in a thunderstorm and now here I was, alone and off-track with a storm brewing. I found the most tucked away spot that I could and crouched down and waited for awhile, unsure of what else to do. Was it safe to keep walking? Was it safe to stay here?

Finally, when I hadn’t heard a rumble of thunder for several minutes and it seemed as though the clouds were beginning to move away, I started walking. I found the Chemin, I continued on, and as luck would have it, not 10 minutes further down the trail was a shelter made of branches and sticks! There were wooden stumps inside and a sign that welcomed pilgrims and I hunkered down in here until I was sure that the threat of the storm had fully passed.

I was actually fairly close to my gîte and arrived after only another 30 minutes of walking. I was staying in another beautiful spot: a large stone building with a big lawn and plenty of space to hang laundry. There was a cozy space inside to sit and read, and you could “order” a drink and the hospitalera would bring it to you from the kitchen. I was sharing a 4 bed room with two other women, and even though I was probably the last to arrive in the gîte, I still had time to shower, wash my clothes and have a glass of wine before dinner.

But dinner was difficult without Hilary. I think I was feeling sad that she was gone, and suddenly self-conscious about speaking French. I was sitting at a table with such nice people-Pierre, who I’d met the day before- was there, so was a young girl from Quebec, and two brothers, and the kind women I was sharing a room with. But the French was spoken so quickly, the voices jumbling together and it was so difficult for me to keep up, to understand what was going on. I felt isolated, sitting at the end of the table and hoping the meal would be over quickly so that I wouldn’t have to keep feeling so awkward, and out of place.

Mostly, I think I needed a little time to transition into this now solo journey, a little time to adjust to being alone and speaking French and needing to meet people and make friends. I tried to remind myself that it doesn’t happen all at once.

Sleep that night was restful, and in the morning the two women I was with agreed: the way to go was to try to stay in a room without men, to be assured of no snoring! (I know it’s no guarantee, but throughout the night we were all quiet as mice, and it was such a relief to get some sound sleep).

Stay tuned for the next post: no room at the Inn, so I need to come up with a plan of how to walk the next few days AND find a bed for the night.

Previous Post: Day 3 on the Chemin du Puy

Next Post: Day 5 on the Chemin du Puy

Oversleeping and Walking Sticks, Day 3 on the Chemin du Puy, Saugues to Le Sauvage, 19km

July 12, 2017

It’s not easy to oversleep on a Camino/Chemin, but Hilary and I figured out how on the morning of Day 3: share a room with 4 people who begin to get up and pack their things before 5am. Listen to them rustle around, bump into things, whisper in the small room. Finally fall back asleep after they leave. Realize, a little after 7am, that you’d forgotten to set an alarm and because there is no longer anyone else in the room with you, you sleep well past the time you’d intended.

7:15am may still seem early, but I can’t remember another day on any Camino when I’d slept so late. By many accounts, the time we started that day shouldn’t have mattered: we were walking 19km- so not a huge day- and we already had our reservation for the night. But there was one factor that did make this late wake-up a slight issue: the heat.

Somehow, we weren’t actually on the road out of town until nearly 9am. Packing up, eating breakfast (no milk for my coffee, grr), searching for a boulangerie, then an epicerie for fruit… and once we finally got moving, we were sweating within minutes.

“How is this possible?” I turned to Hilary, sunglasses already secured over her eyes. “It feels like we’re walking under a hot, mid-day sun.” I paused to catch my breath, and we weren’t even going up a hill. “This is crazy.”

Much of our walk that day was over a dirt track through rolling countryside and deep green forests. The stage wasn’t technically difficult, but the heat was oppressive, and made every step feel like we were climbing a mountain. We ran our buffs under cold water at every opportunity, we listened to music and show tunes to regain energy, and we stopped for breaks. We stopped a lot.

Our first rest was in one of those spots that seems utterly ideal: just as you’re truding along, wishing that the perfect rest stop could appear, BAM! There it is: a picnic table nestled in the shade. This particular spot had an added bonus- a perfectly straight, carved walking stick was propped up against the table. Hilary’s knee had started to act up and we’d been keeping our eye out for a suitable stick, and now here was one that seemed to be waiting for us.

We looked around for an owner of the stick, we took our time and rested and finally decided that either the stick had been left there accidentally- and by taking it with us we might be able to return it to its rightful owner- or the stick had been left there purposefully, for someone who needed it.

So we marched on, sticks in hand (I’d found mine sometime on my first day- crooked and with some sharp bits and at that point I wasn’t sure if I would keep it or not). More cows, more countryside, and then our second rest stop, a beautiful lawn with cold drinks and umbrella-covered tables and puppies running around. One playful guy got a hold of Hilary’s sock and for a long time refused to let go (he also grabbed onto someone’s walking stick- clearly this dog was meant to be on a pilgrimage).

More walking, more resting, and finally we entered the home stretch- a slight uphill section through a forest path that opened up onto a wide-open field in the middle of hills and forests. It was here that the path wound though patches of wildflowers and down to a massive stone complex; the only building in sight (aside from a lone cottage). This is where we’d be staying for the night, in the Domaine du Sauvage.

The day before, one of the men in our gîte told me to look up the history of this place and read all about it in English so that we could understand exactly where we were staying. Hilary and I tried, but all the information we could find was in French, and it was difficult to understand and follow. About all I could gather was that we were in a massive farm building, whose granite stones had probably weathered hundreds and hundreds of years of history.

Despite not understanding where, exactly, we were, the place still had a powerful and special feeling about it. Maybe it was the sweeping sky, so vast; maybe it was the thick, anciet stone walls; maybe it was that there was nothing else out here, just this large building that was here for us, for the pilgrims on their journey, all of us arriving by foot like we’d been arriving for so many years.

We settled into our room, again waiting for a free and open shower. Once all my chores were done I headed downstairs to the main room/bar/restaurant area to try to make a few phone calls. Hilary would be leaving the next day and I hadn’t thought much beyond these first few days of the trip, the part that I was sharing with her. I needed to chart a course for myself, at least for the next few days, and I needed to call ahead to the gîtes I hoped to stay in, and make sure I could reserve a bed.

But right off the bat, I ran into a few problems. I couldn’t get a cell signal anywhere on the property (everyone else was having this problem too) so I asked a man behind the bar if I could borrow the gite’s phone. Another pilgrim was already using it; she had a notebook and papers spread across a table and was sitting with two other pilgrims, shaking her head with a frown.

“Everything is full!” I heard her say, so I hovered nearby and then starting asking questions. It turns out that she was trying to make reservations not for the next night, but for the following one- Saturday- and she couldn’t find anything. There was a big race being held in Nasbinals, a medium-sized town where many pilgrims ended their day’s stage. I’m not sure how many runners were registered for the race, but I heard the number was in the thousands. Not only was everything in Nasbinals booked up, but so were all the gîtes and auberges and hotels in all of the surrounding towns and villages.

Hmm. I borrowed the phone and made my reservation for the next night and decided to worry about what to do on Saturday later.

Dinner that night was much better than the awkwardness of the previous night, in Saugues. Earlier that evening I’d met Pierre, a French man who had just retired and was walking to Santiago. When Hilary and I found seats at an empty table, Pierre asked to join us. Two older French women also came to the table, along with another American- Stephen, from St Louis (he would be the only other American I’d meet on my trip).

It was a good group. There was a mix of French and English, and a lot of laughter and hilarity. And the meal was another good one (as they all would be): vegetable soup, a beef ragu and potato casserole, a cheese plate with three different selections (the sheep’s cheese was the best), an almond cake (that I couldn’t eat because of my nut allergy but I heard it was delicious). Bread, of course, and wine.

Hilary and I stayed up to watch the sun set; we ate gummy candy and compared notes on the day and I thought about how much I would miss her when she left the following morning. Even though I’ve been doing these Camino’s and treks mostly solo, it had been such a joy and so much fun to be with my cousin. There was so much laughter and encouragement and odd moments and joyous singing and shared misery and I wondered what this trip was going to be like without her. I was happy to be entering into a new phase of this pilgrimage, eager to tackle some big days and capture that pure feeling of freedom that only standing totally alone under a big open sky can give me… but I was suddenly nervous, too. I hadn’t even said goodbye and already I was overcome with such a bittersweet feeling: that happiness to have shared something big and amazing with one of my favorite people, the sadness with having to say goodbye and continue on alone.

But that’s been such a big part of these Camino experiences for me, hasn’t it? Being together, being alone.

We couldn’t hold onto the night forever so we gathered up our notebooks, collected our laundry that had dried completely in the hot sun, and tip-toed up to bed.

Previous Post: Day 2 on the Chemin du Puy

Next Post: Day 4 on the Chemin du Puy

Why is it so hot? Why are we still going up? Day 2 on the Chemin du Puy, Combriaux to Saugues, 17km

July 9, 2017

Even though I’ve done this walking thing many times before, it still takes a few days to get into the rhythm of the pilgrim life. I woke up on Day 2 feeling a little disoriented; our room had been hot during the night, and at some point in the night I had flipped myself so that my head was at the foot of the bed, and closer to the window. Once we woke up, we had to tiptoe through the other rooms with sleeping pilgrims in order to get to the bathroom, and we packed our things as silently as possible

And then downstairs to another pilgrim breakfast in France. These breakfasts would all look the same: coffee or tea or hot chocolate, bread and butter and usually at least 3 flavors of jam (many of them homemade), yogurt and sometimes fruit. Once I had a fresh croissant brought over from the boulangerie two doors down (this wouldn’t happen until nearly the end of my trip, and oh what a good morning that was!). I really loved the breakfasts on the Chemin, bread and butter and coffee are my preferred breakfasts at home, too, and it was such a treat to come downstairs every moring and have a spread laid out for us. Unlike on other Caminos, I never had to walk before my morning cup of coffee (well, actually, I had to do this on my very last day but you’ll have to wait for that story).

So after fueling up and rearranging things in our packs, Hilary and I headed out for Day 2. The morning was soft and beautiful, and the beginning of the walk was stunning: we were headed into the hills, climbing above the clouds and looking out onto views that stretched over the countryside.

There was another beautiful view that I loved seeing France, but one of a different sort than the sweeping landscape: the WC. France nails it with their public bathrooms; not only would you sometimes come upon a little shack in the middle of the trail (usually not much more than a toilet, but it’s still a good option), but in so many of the small villages and towns you would always see a sign pointing you towards the nearest WC. Some of these toilets were, ah, quite adventurous, but I appreciated them all.

Our morning was wonderful, and despite the increasing heat, Hilary and I were both in really good spirits. After about 5 or 6km we stopped in the small village of Monistrol-d’Allier for a coffee and a snack; this would be just before starting a long and diffficult ascent and fueling up seemed like a good idea.

We ran into Mario, our French translator and fellow pilgrim from the night before, and he told us about the amazing sandwiches the cafe could prepare for us to take along. He held up a wrapped sandwich that was roughly the size of his head. “Local goat cheese with a carmalized onion and fig compote,” he said. “You don’t want to miss this.”

Hilary and I were both already a bit loaded down with food; we’d picked up Babel cheeses wrapped in wax that could last the journey, as well as little sausages and a loaf of day old bread. Suddenly, our lunch options didn’t seem so appetizing, and we made what I think might have been one of the best decisions of the trip: to buy the sandwiches with fresh and local ingredients. (Later, we spread out on the grass for a long picnic lunch and those sandwiches were, indeed, the best sandwiches I’d ever tasted. It helped that we’d walked a long day and were hungry, but then again we were also in France, where the food truly is top notch).

Our packs now even more weighed down, we began our ascent. The guidebook we were using (along with all the French) was the Miam Miam Dodo. It breaks down each stage into detailed sections and shows either a green, orange, or red line (going up, down, or flat) to illustrate the difficulty of the grade of the route. Green is easy, orange is tougher, red is difficult. And very quickly, we came to regard the red line (especially a red line going up), as the enemy.

We began a nearly 4km stretch of ‘red up’, and remember, this was during the European heat wave. We were drenched in sweat within minutes. We criss-crossed on the trail in order to find tiny sections of shade. Water breaks were only taken in the shade. The buffs came out, and for the first time on any Camino, I discovered the momentary delight of running the buff under a cool stream of fountain water, then wrapping it around my head.

But despite the heat this continued to be a good day. Other highlights included: stopping in a chapel carved into the rock of a hillside, our first walk alongside a line of cows, a kind man resting in the shade of a tree who gave us cherries, the wooden carvings lining the entrance to Saugues- our destination for the evening. The day’s walk was only about 17km (but with the ascents and heat I wouldn’t call it an easy day), but it meant that we had time for long, leisurely breaks, and still arrrived to our gîte an hour before it opened.

But once we did get inside, we discovered that there was only one shower for 8 pilgrims (this, too, would become a theme of the trip). There was a lot of waiting around in our sweaty clothes, a storm rolled in and cooled off the air a bit, and once we were finally cleaned up we headed into town to explore and find some ice cream.

Dinner that night was, in a word, awkward. I don’t even know if it would have helped much if my French were stronger; the combination of people around the table was not a good one, and there were a lot of long silences. Then, when dinner was over and the owner of the gîte was trying to arrange a breakfast time, there seemed to be a tense moment. The group of 4 pilgrims staying in our room were pretty insistent on ther 5:30am start time (the only time I would see anyone leave this early on this Camino), and the owner of the gîte didn’t want to serve breakfast that early. There was a lot of back and forth that I didn’t completely understand, but it was finally understood that we’d all help ourselves to breakfast, whenever we decided to get up. (All the while, in the background a radio played 90’s soft rock and sometimes I’d just disengage from trying to understand the conversation and instead tune into Whitney Houston and Celine Dion).

Hilary and I escaped once dinner was over and headed back into town for a pre-bedtime glass of wine, and when we returned to the gîte we sat outside with the kind dog, watching the day’s light fade to black, strains of soft rock drifting through the air.

Previous Post: Day 1 on the Chemin du Puy

Next Post: Day 3 on the Chemin du Puy

You Have to Go Slowly

July 7, 2017

As some of you may or may not have noticed, I am quite behind on my Chemin Le Puy blogging updates. In fact, the walk is already over, the two weeks have come and gone and three days ago I arrived at La Muse, where I’ll spend the next three weeks writing (and hiking, and staring off into the green mountains).

I want to try to post as much as I can about my walk, but those posts might not start rolling out for at least a few more days. And the biggest reason for this is because I don’t really have the means to write them.

It’s like a strange riddle: how can I be a writer at a writer’s retreat and not have the tools to write? In the past I’ve traveled with a lightweight, foldable keyboard that I hook up to my iPad and it’s worked brilliantly. That first keyboard stopped working at the end of last summer, so I bought myself (what I thought was) an identical replacement. Here’s the first lesson of the summer: always check your equipment before setting off for a 6 week trip.

This keyboard is a mess. Quite frankly, I hate it, and I know those are strong words but it’s hard to convey my frustration. For example, it took me a solid 20 seconds to type the word ‘convey’. My fingers hit the keys and some of them take, others don’t. I press harder and the same letter shows up three times, others not at all. If I type really slowly and carefully it’s okay, but I move at a snail’s pace. I can write much faster by longhand (and for a fast typist, this is totally inefficient).

I realized the keyboard was a problem while on the Chemin, but I sort of thought that it might just take some getting used to. It didn’t. So this was a big reason I didn’t blog while on the walk: posts took forever to try to write, and I didn’t have forever. I don’t have forever here, either, but I certainly have more time to sit and tap out a post (even if it does take me 10 times as long as it normally would).

Okay, this rant is over. Yesterday I ordered a new keyboard and it should be here soon, and then the writing can commence in ernest.

In the meantime, I want to write a few general thoughts about the trek I just completed, as well as what it’s like to be back at La Muse for a third time.

It may be too soon to say, but I like the order of things. Two weeks walking, then three weeks at a writer’s retreat. Two weeks of movement, long days of activity, unpacking in a different place every night, repacking every morning and moving on. A constant rotation of faces and voices. Introductions and goodbyes, every day. And just as I was beginning to crave permanency, just as I was wishing I could dry myself with a full sized towel and not have to roll out my sleeping bag liner every night, just as I was longing to keep the same people beside me each evening… the walk ended, and now I’m able to do and have all these things I’ve wished for.

That being said, I’m also missing the Chemin and the walking and the constant discoveries. My French was just starting to improve. I was understanding conversations much more easily and on my last night was translating for a German girl who couldn’t speak French. As I’d drift off to sleep, conversations and voices in French would replay in my head.

And I was also getting into the walking. I felt pretty strong from the first day, but it always takes my body time to adjust to a long walk. And after 10 days I was feeling really, really strong. Which was just in time to finish up the trek and transition to something new.

Walking the Chemin in France was both different and similar to walking the Camino in Spain. I’ll explore all of this in my posts about the walk, I’m sure, and for now I’m still reflecting on the comparisons. There was definitely a strong feel that we were all on a road leading to Santiago (even though most people I met wouldn’t arrive there, at least not any time soon); the spirit of the Chemin, the Camino, was strong. There was a sense of comraderie and support, there were brief converstions that yielded strong connections, there were beautiful churches, there were coffee stops, there was rain, there were blisters (none for me, thankfully, but I saw a few that were bad enough to end the pilgrim’s walk).

There was also a lot of peace, and quiet, and sometimes- for me- a feeling of isolation. This came and went, and never while I walked; only in the evenings and especially if I was among a large group of French people who were all traveling together. My French, even if it had been improving, is only passable. If one person was speaking to me, slowly, I could pretty much understand. If a group of people were all talking at once then forget it: and this was common at dinner time. So there were a lot of nights where I sat at the end of the table, smiling, trying as hard as I could to keep up but not being able to understand, not being able to contribute to the conversation. I’d take another sip of wine and laugh along with everyone else but actually have no idea what was happening.

But this wasn’t the case every night and by the end, I got to know the people I was with and so even when I couldn’t quite understand the conversations, it didn’t seem to matter as much. I was no longer uncomfortable sitting in the middle of all that French: now I felt a bit like I belonged. Maybe a lot like I belonged.

So. Now I’m in a tiny village that hangs off the side of a small mountain and I’m in the midst of a different group of people. There are, currently, 9 of us here at the writer’s retreat (it’s actually a writer’s AND artist’s retreat but this particular group is all here to write). Four of them I already know- we were here together last summer- and four are new to me. All women and one man. Homer (the dog) is still here and I hope to go on lots of hikes with him. I’ve already been on one hike: up to the waterfall and around to the viewpoint that looks down upon the ruins of Cathar castles and further out to the Pyrenees. The hike felt good. Not effortless, but also not too difficult. I like that after my weeks of walking through France and I can setttle in here and still hike to my heart’s content.

But I’ve also got to write and that’s going to feel a lot easier once I get my new keyboard. I haven’t said nearly everything I want to say but for how frustrating it’s been to type out these words, for how long it’s taken, for how much I want to throw this keyboard out my window, I need to hit publish on this post and then go old school, and start writing by hand in my notebooks.

And maybe, actually, that’s just what I need for now. The French had this word that I heard a lot while waking: ‘doucement’. Slowly. Gently. Quietly. Carefully. ‘Il faut aller doucement’. You have to go slowly.

Go slowly. Go slowly. Doucement.

Yes.

Previous Post: Day 1 on the Chemin Le Puy

Is it just me or is this ‘easy’ section actually quite difficult? Day 1 on the Chemin Le Puy, Le Puy en Velay to Combriaux, 25.5km

June 24, 2017

I wrote about half of this four days ago, and am just now getting around to finishing and publishing. So these posts are going to be delayed and maybe not quite in real time, but I still hope to write as much as I can!

It’s nearly 10:00pm and I’m just now attempting a blog post; I don’t think much is going to get written tonight. Hilary (that’s my cousin, who’s walking the first 3 days of the Chemin Le Puy with me) and I didn’t do a super long day- just 25km- but it was the first day and it was oh so hot and maybe there was still some jet lag and last night I couldn’t sleep so all of this adds up to a lot of fatigue.

I meant to get a blog post written this afternoon but, as you can probably guess, that didn’t even come close to happening. Because what happened instead was the Camino.

Can we even call it a Camino? We’re in France, so the ‘way’ is ‘Le Chemin’ and not ‘Le Camino’ but to me, I can’t call this anything other than a Camino. (So I wrote that a few days ago and already I’m getting used to saying ‘Le Chemin’- how quickly we adapt!).

So this is the recap, for anyone who may not have caught up with my previous post: I’m in France (got here on Sunday morning), and I started walking the Chemin Le Puy today (Tuesday). Hilary is with me until Friday morning and then I’ll continue on for another week and a half.

There’s a lot I could talk about from the past few days, just the whole process of getting down to Le Puy en Velay and being back in France, in Europe. It feels really great to be here, almost like I never left (which is maybe what starts to happen when you travel to the same places a lot?). We spent a night in Paris, staying in my favorite hostel, the MIJE. I was showing Hilary around all my favorites spots and I had to really smile at how I knew my way around the streets: this is where I buy groceries, this is a good cafe, that’s the best boulangerie. I can only do this in one small corner of Paris but to be able to do it at all? It felt pretty special.

There were some initial bumps, the small bits of culture shock that still happen. How do I set up a SIM card? Why is my phone ringing? How do I answer in French? Why does my pack feel so heavy? (this is a question that gets asked every single year).

But after settling in a bit, strolling though Paris and eating ice cream in the shade along the Seine, and getting good and solid sleep, I felt more ready to tackle this French adventure.

We took a train, then another train, then a bus and finally arrived in Le Puy en Velay. I figured out what to do with my extra luggage, I confirmed a shuttle reservation for Hilary. We walked through the town, up the winding, cobblestones streets, and into the cathedral where we bought our credentials. The cathedral is amazing, it sits at nearly the top of the town and you have to walk up dozens and dozens of stairs in order to enter through the arched portal. But it’s really when you turn back and look out onto the town you’ve walked up from that you can feel how majestic the position really is. You almost feel on top of the world.

We ate a communal dinner with other pilgrims (nearly all conversation was in French, something I’m going to have to get used to), then headed back to the cathedral to watch a light show. This meant we were up well past a pilgrim bedtime, not getting into bed until nearly midnight.

But despite the lack of sleep, today was a solid first day. Full. Tough. Hot. Beautiful. At times hilarious. We attended a 7am mass in the cathedral which was followed by a benediction for all the pilgrims starting that day and wow, it was quite a group. It was a special way to start a pilgrimage: we were all given a small medallion and a prayer, rosary beads if we wanted them, and many well wishes and ‘Bon Chemins’.

At first I struggled to remember what it was like to be on a pilgrimage. Hilary and I made our way down the steep street and at the bottom, paused. What, exactly, were we looking for? Oh yeah, didn’t we see a scallop shell on the pavement the day before? So we were off, following the shells, heading west, heading straight up a hill. We were breathing heavily in no time and my pack felt heavy but this is how a Camino begins. This is how it always begins.

9am and suddenly it was very, very hot. And only going to get hotter: we started our Camino in a heat wave. But despite the heat it was a really beautiful first day, and quickly signs of the Camino returned: winding dirt roads. Small chapels. Pilgrim rest stops on the side of the trail.

Most people end the first day in Saint-Privat but I’d chosen a gîte in Combriaux, a hamlet just another kilometer or two further along the trail. We made the wise decision to stop in Saint-Privat for an ice cream, and then continued on for a short section that our guidebook promised would be easy, and yet was deceptively difficult (but maybe that’s just ‘end of the first day on the Camino’ type stuff? Who knows, but a hill at the end of any day is never very welcome).

The gîte experience is a new one for me: gîtes are like albergues but are generally privately run, with smaller, shared rooms that hold 4-6 people (or so). Some gîtes are private homes, with a section of the house open to pilgrims. Nearly all gîtes offer a demi-pension, which provides a bed for the night, a communal dinner, and the typical breakfast of coffee, bread and jam before you leave for the day (I’m finding costs for demi-pensions to be between 30-35 euros; more expensive than Spain but overall a great bargain).

Our first gîte was quite an experience. We stayed in the home of a Welsh man and his wife (and daughter too, possibly?). Elfed offered us a drink then showed us upstairs to our room, which was basically up in an attic (all the rooms were up here, partitioned off with plywood and curtains). There were three beds in our room but Hilary and I had it to ourselves, in the space next to us was Mario (who, despite his name, was French), and at the end of the space were Marc and Veronique.

Just as we finished taking showers and washing our clothing a storm rolled through (this would be a theme of the first few days of the trip), so we were all ushered inside. Elfed kept the wine flowing and later served us a feast: vegetable soup, tomatoes and cheese and capers and olives (it sounds simple but oh, those French ingredients!), lentils de Le Puy (a regional classic) with pork, bread pudding and ice cream for dessert. There was bread, too (mais oui!).

Mario spoke perfect English, and jumped back and forth between conversations with Hilary and I, and then with Marc and Veronique, and would translate and somehow kept the conversation going steadily. Just as dessert began there was an incident with a cat and a dead bird, but otherwise the meal was pretty perfect. It was a good first day on the Chemin.

Coming up next: the heat wave continues, we climb and climb and climb, we eat the best sandwiches ever.

Next Post: Day 2 on the Chemin du Puy

Things that surprised me about the Camino de Santiago

March 28, 2017

Before my first Camino I spent a lot of time reading blogs and books and articles about my upcoming journey. This is my approach to anything that makes me nervous: I prepare, and then I prepare some more. I liked knowing what was in store for me, I liked having the information. After weeks of training and frustrating hours spent in REI searching for the right pair of shoes, after reserving my first two nights on the trail and debating whether I needed special, quick-drying underwear or not (verdict: not needed, but it’s an awfully nice splurge), I set off for Spain.

In some ways I was really prepared for this trip. All of my diligent training walks meant that I felt mostly strong on the very first days of the Camino, and my meticulous packing meant that I wasn’t carrying more than what I needed.

I had a decent idea of the terrain, I’d made note of a few special albergues along the way.

But then, there were the other things. A whole bunch of things that I hadn’t considered, hadn’t expected, or just completely surprised me. Here are a few of them:

The Camino Shuffle

I’ve heard people refer to the ‘Camino Shuffle’ as the kind of walking you do when you have blisters on your feet but you need to carry on walking, so you just have to go off and hobble down the trail as best as you can.

To me, the Camino Shuffle means something totally different. This is the shuffle I do when I really, really have to go to the bathroom.

It hits you out of nowhere. This is what happens after a week or two of walking the Camino, at least in my experience, and no one warned me about it. I’d be walking along, fine as day, and suddenly I’m hit with an overwhelming need to pee. It’s not some slow thing that comes on gradually, oh no. All of a sudden it’s there, and it’s urgent. And man, it’s annoying. I drink a lot of water on the Camino but I drink a lot of water in my real life, too, and it’s just different on the Camino. There were too many times that I was shuffling along as fast as I could, hoping and praying that a cluster of trees or bushes would appear so that I could duck behind them and relieve myself. Or that a car wouldn’t zip by at an inopportune moment. Sometimes I couldn’t go more than 30 minutes without needing to use the bathroom yet again.

There’s all this talk about ample bars and restaurants along the Camino so when the need arises, you can always duck in and buy a coffee or a bottle of water and use their restroom. But in my experience, if you’re really drinking as much water as you should be (which is a lot), then you’re going to get the call of nature a whole lot more than you ever expected.

Or, you know, maybe this is just me.

(There is nearly always a cluster of trees or a bush you can duck behind. You can always find some tucked away place, if you’re able to keep walking. But I have to tell you, I had a couple pretty close calls…)

Needing to Tell Someone I Want to Walk Alone; Needing to Tell Someone I Want to Walk With Them

Camino talk often includes this notion of how you’re never really alone, but at the same time how you can go off and do your own thing. And this is totally true! I’ve always said that I’m never really alone on my Camino’s (unless I’m on the San Salvador but that’s a different Camino altogether), and I have ample time to be on my own as well.

Usually, this all works out nicely. It’s sort of amazing how friends pop up just when you need them, and how I get a quiet and uninterrupted morning just when I’m feeling like I need to be alone.

But sometimes, you have to ask for what you need, or tell someone what you need. This might not be difficult for others but man, this is one of the biggest lessons that the Camino has taught me.

I love making people happy, and it’s easy for me to be accommodating. But I was on the Camino for me, and (even though I’ve been three times now), it’s this rare opportunity: time and space to do exactly what you want to do. My walks on the Camino have always been about spending time with myself- that deep and introspective and beautiful time that I adore. It’s certainly about my connections with others as well, and I’m excited about some upcoming trips and opportunities to practice walking with others, and not totally alone. But my past Camino’s have been about me, and my freedom.

I kind of learned my lesson the hard way on my first Camino, when a handsome Irish man didn’t want to let me out of his sight. I stood my ground and asked for my own time, but then I relented. It went back and forth like this for awhile and after the Camino ended I wished I had spent my last 10 days in a different way: totally free.

At other times people have wanted to walk with me when I was craving a day alone, and eventually, I learned how to tell them what I needed. Sometimes that was hard. And the opposite of needing to be alone is true, too: sometimes you have to know when you don’t want to be alone, and sometimes you have to practice asking for companionship. And this isn’t always easy, either.

Sometimes You’re Sick and Tired and There’s Absolutely No Camino Magic

I spent 65 days on a Camino route over my first two trips to Spain. Of these 65 days, I can honestly say I only had one day (and not even the entire day) that I felt unhappy and frustrated and wishing that I could just take a break from all of the walking. I had other difficult moments (blisters, walking in rain, negotiating the social stuff), but overall my Camino Frances, Camino Norte (Part One), and Camino Primitivo were full of so much happiness and joy and, well, magic. Those feelings energized me and permeated so much of my experience.

But this past summer was a different story. I was on the Camino de San Salvador and the Norte (Part Two) and I got pretty sick on the last day of the San Salvador. I took a rest day in Oviedo, and then I started walking on the Norte and it just wasn’t pretty. I was in bad shape: coughing and sneezing and so fatigued. I’d lost my appetite and I didn’t want to talk to anyone or even share an albergue with anyone because I was afraid my coughing would keep others up (not to mention that I could pass on whatever bug I’d caught).

I was pretty miserable. Being sick is never fun, but being sick while traveling? While you’re in a country where you don’t speak the language and you’re all alone and you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere? I was on a Camino, doing something I absolutely love and it was the last thing I wanted to be doing. And that made me feel even worse, because my precious and beautiful days were becoming a blur of orange juice and tissue packs and being alone in hotel rooms.

Where was the Camino magic in that? How was the “Camino providing”? Was this the Camino I was “supposed to” have?

Believe me, I think the Camino is a powerful experience and I’ve had moments that were so incredible that I truly think there must have been something greater at hand, something pretty special going on. I’ve learned so many lessons, and I’ve learned lessons in the hard parts too… but being that sick? That was just bad luck. Sometimes you get sick. Sometimes you’re miserable, even on a trip of a lifetime. Sometimes you just have to power through to get to the day when you begin to feel better, because that’s how the magic comes back in.

Hotel room in the middle of nowhere

They Really Do Give You An Entire Bottle of Wine

It’s true what you’ve heard: the wine in Spain is good. Really good. And it’s cheap- really cheap. And you get a lot. I’d heard all of this before leaving for the Camino but to be honest, I thought it was a bit of a myth. Wine cheaper than water? How is that possible?

But it is.

Usually if you’ve sat down to dinner with a friend and both of you order a pilgrim’s menu, you’ll be given one bottle of wine to share. This is pretty amazing: pilgrim’s menus are usually between 8-12 euros and include two courses, plus dessert, plus bread, and your choice of a bottle of wine or a bottle of water.

On the Frances I was always eating dinner with other people, but on the Norte, there were several times- lunch and dinner- when I was all alone. And when I ordered the pilgrim’s menu, or a menu del dia, an entire bottle of wine was delivered to my table. Sometimes it was an excellent Rioja (a Tempranillo-based red wine from one of the best wine regions in Spain) and these were the times when I wanted to drink the entire bottle (I never could, which is probably not a bad thing).

Be careful, though, if you sit down to a leisurely lunch in some sun-soaked seaside town, drink a good portion of that bottle of wine, and then decide to keep on walking. It could make for quite a different sort of adventure than the kind you’d been used to.

I Got to Santiago and Felt Underwhelmed

The morning I walked into Santiago I was excited and full of this amazing, jittery energy. I was so distracted as I was walking through the city towards the cathedral, I even stopped paying attention to the arrows and had to slow down and get my bearings, take a deep breath. There was so much anticipation because I was moments away from arriving to the place that I had walked over 500 miles to get to.

And then I walked into the square in front of the cathedral and it’s not like I was let down or underwhelmed, exactly… but nothing really happened. I walked right to the center of the square and then I stopped walking and I looked up and I wasn’t sure what to do because that was where the walking ends. It was really early in the morning and hardly anyone was around- I liked the peace and quiet but I also just wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen, what I was supposed to do.

Later (and in subsequent years), I’ve seen pilgrims burst into tears. I’ve seen pilgrims lay out flat on the ground with their eyes closed, I’ve seen them in groups- jumping in the air and screaming in happiness and laughing and singing and cheering and hugging and crying.

This was not my experience at all. This is also not the experience for many pilgrims. Sometimes, it’s disconcerting to arrive at the end of something really big, because we haven’t really considered what is supposed to happen next. Or maybe we were expecting something big to happen even if we didn’t know what it would be, and we were disappointed to not feel it or experience it. And in my case, I felt deep in my heart that I wasn’t done walking. Santiago was my destination, but it wasn’t my final destination (which I didn’t realize until I arrived in Santiago). I’m still not sure what my final destination is, or if I even have one.

I love the city of Santiago, I love it more each time that I’m there. And each time, there is something so special about arriving in front of the cathedral… but for me, it’s not a momentous and joyous occasion. It’s something more quiet, something softer, something deeper, sometimes it’s something almost a little bittersweet and sad. And that’s okay.

I Thought the Route Was Beautiful

Before I walked the Camino Frances, I stumbled across an article listing 10 reasons why the author believes the Camino de Santiago ‘sucks’. It was jarring. He talked about how often you need to walk on paved road, that you can hear traffic 95% of the time, that the scenery is monotonous (and several other negative points).

After reading this article, I worried that I wouldn’t find the Camino to be beautiful. That I was going to wish I were on a more isolated, rugged path through some wild areas. I knew that the first day through the Pyrenees would be stunning, but would I wish that I could continue walking through the mountains? Would my feet hurt from all of the pavement walking, would I find the parts of Spain that I walked through to be boring and uninspiring?

Turns out, I needn’t have worried. I was in awe for so much of my walk through Spain, and I found the route to be absolutely beautiful. Part of what I loved was how varied the scenery was: mountains and hills and countryside and all of that flat Meseta. I wandered through fields of sunflowers and rows of grapevines. I saw stone ruins and lines of cows and bright wildflowers and bustling city streets and sleepy village squares. I also saw cars and traffic and industrial areas and trash and graffiti and growling dogs on chains. But all of that stuff? It wasn’t what stayed with me, and it didn’t detract from the overall beauty of the impressions of my Camino.

I’m sure those of you who have walked the Camino had some surprises too. Please share, I’d love to hear them!

What to Wear on the Camino de Santiago: A Packing List Explained

March 20, 2017

It’s the first day of spring and the Camino is in the air.

Finally, we’ve moved out of winter and can now start to think about hitting the trails again. We will purchase flights and train tickets, we will start to get our packing lists together.

I’ve written before about my packing list for the Camino de Santiago, but I’ve never gone into much detail. I had to do a lot of research before I walked the Camino Frances, because I had absolutely no idea what I would need for a walk like this. And the truth was, I didn’t really have anything, so I had to buy everything.

I had some hits and some misses on that first Camino trip, but over the past few years I’ve replaced and added items and I think I finally have a pack that works for me.

Because I relied so much on other blogs when I was planning for my first Camino, I thought that I could expand a bit on my own packing list, and talk about some of the items that have worked for me. Who knows, they might work for you, too!

This post is going to focus exclusively on clothing: what to wear on the Camino de Santiago. It’s a basic summer wardrobe for the female pilgrim, though I think it could (mostly) work for men, too. And I’m keeping this very basic: add whatever you want or need (but always be mindful of weight!).

Let’s start from the bottom, up:

Shoes

An entire post could be devoted to the topic of footwear on the Camino, and I’ll attempt to keep my thoughts brief.

I think you really have two good options when deciding what kind of shoes to wear while walking: hiking boots or some type of sneaker/trainer. That being said, I’m somewhere in between; I wear a hiking shoe. It’s sturdier and generally more supportive than a sneaker, but not as heavy and heat-trapping as a boot. If you’re walking the Camino in the summer or in the warmer spring or fall months, then the worry about wearing a boot is that your foot is going to get really hot, which could potentially cause blisters. Its weight is going to get uncomfortable and I would say that unless you need extra support for your ankles (which some people do and then it’s absolutely wise to wear a hiking boot), then a lighter shoe will more than suffice on the trail.

It’s clear that I think a hiking shoe or sneaker is the best choice for the Camino, but some might not agree. And the most important thing is that you’re wearing a shoe that fits well and doesn’t cause blisters. If you have a pair of hiking boots that you love and are well broken-in then they may be your best option for the Camino.

I had to buy several pair of shoes before I settled on the winner, but since finding my “glass slipper” of shoes, I’ve never gone back. I just bought my fourth pair of Keen Voyageurs, and I think I’ll probably continue to buy this shoe as long as the company continues to make them. I have a pretty wide foot so it can be a frustrating process to find a shoe that fits, but my Keens do the job beautifully. Plus, the shoe looks like it’s meant for a long hike, which I like.

One last note: you might need to consider whether you want a waterproof shoe, or rather one that is just water-resistant (which mine are). My experience- so far- is that I haven’t had to walk in many days of steady rain, so I haven’t missed having a waterproof shoe. There was only one day when my shoes/socks/feet were utterly soaked from the day’s walk, and I suspect that even a waterproof shoe might not have kept my feet totally dry in that much rain. A waterproof shoe will take much longer to dry out if it does get very wet, and it will also trap more heat than a water-resistant shoe (again, the potential for blisters). That being said, I’ll soon be walking for a week in the north of England, which has the potential for lots of rain, so I might have an update after that trip.

You’ll also need a second pair of shoes, for the afternoons and evenings after you’ve finished walking. Because my trips have always been in the summertime, I just squeeze a light and thin pair of flip flops in my pack. I wear them in the shower and then around the albergue and they’ve been fine. Others opt to bring a pair of Crocs: also lightweight, but bulkier. The benefit of these is that on chilly evenings you can wear them with a pair of socks and your feet won’t get cold.

Socks

I bring three pairs of either Smartwool or Darn Tough socks. After a couple Camino’s, I’ve determined that I like Darn Tough socks best: I notoriously put holes in my socks but the Darn Tough pairs are holding strong (while the Smartwool, after several years, have small holes). Three pairs is a good number; you don’t need anymore as long as you keep up with the wash, and any less gets a bit risky if you’ve had a day or two of rain and don’t have enough time for the socks to dry out.

Some people like to wear sock liners (a thin layer that goes under the hiking sock); they add some warmth and also can protect your feet from blisters. I’ve worn them on training hikes and didn’t really like how they felt, so I’ve always opted to not bring them on my Camino. (They may indeed help prevent blisters, but I’ve found that coating my feet in a thin layer of Vaseline works just as well).

Pants

This is my magic combo for a summer Camino: one pair of long, zip-off pants. One pair of shorts. One pair of lightweight, loungy pants to wear in the evening and to sleep in. I like hiking pants/shorts with pockets (useful for carrying tissues/cell phone/spare change), but I’ve also worn a pair of athletic shorts without pockets, and those have worked out fine.

Some people bring rain pants, though I’ve always been fine without them. (Note: I do have a pair that I’m bringing for my upcoming Hadrian’s Wall walk, so I think it’s wise to have this extra piece of rain gear if you’re walking in a particularly wet time of the year).

And if you’re walking in the colder months, you might want to think about bringing a base layer (basically a pair of long underwear), to layer for warmth.

Camino lounge style

Underwear

Three pairs. Honestly, any kind will be fine; I didn’t get ‘fancy’ until my second Camino, when I bought myself a few pairs of ExOfficio Underwear. It dries extremely quickly so I’m a big fan, but I also did just fine with my regular ol’ underwear on my first Camino. Buying all of this gear starts to add up, so I decided that underwear was a splurge that I would hold off on.

Shirts

On every Camino I’ve brought two short-sleeved, quick-dry t-shirts. I usually refresh these each year (they’re pretty cheap and sometimes I’m not convinced that I can completely get the smell out after a trek across Spain), so I like to have fresh shirts. REI and EMS have lots of options, but I’ve also worn t-shirts that I’ve found in Target. If you have a little extra to spend, you could consider a Smartwool shirt: odor resistant, doesn’t itch, comfortable, keeps you warm, keeps you cool… they sound great. They’re also $$ but I think it could be a nice investment. I actually just bought a long-sleeved Smartwool shirt for my England trip, and already I like it a lot.

And speaking of long-sleeved shirts, you should bring one (even in the summer!). On my first Camino I didn’t wear the long-sleeved shirt much, but I was glad I had it. On other Camino’s I’ve worn it much more.

I also bring a lightweight, soft cotton t-shirt to wear in the evenings and to sleep in.

Sports Bra

I bring two, and any kind will do.

Outerwear

For the summer it’s ideal to bring a lightweight fleece; I found a good one on sale from Patagonia a few years ago. There are lots of options out there, but know that you don’t have to get something bulky. For a summer Camino, look for a fleece with a rating of 100-weight (this will be lightweight, highly breathable, and works great as a layering piece). The higher this number gets, the heavier and warmer the fleece will be; 200-weight is probably also a nice option, certainly for a spring or fall Camino.

You will need to bring either a rain jacket or a poncho; I’ve always opted for a rain jacket, but this is one of those Camino debates that will probably never be settled. A rain jacket will do the trick and keep most of the rain off of your arms and upper body, but the waterproof material traps heat and at times my arms have been so sweaty inside the jacket that I wondered if it was worth wearing it at all. A poncho sort of gets around this problem, plus the poncho can drape over your pack, as well. I’m going to stick with my Marmot PreCip Jacket because I really like it, but I think a poncho is a fine option.

Pilgrims on Dragonte route, Camino de Santiago

Poncho-wearing pilgrims

Extras

I always carry a buff with me (which is basically a lightweight, stretchy tube of fabric). I don’t use it a ton, but it comes in handy to wear around my neck on really hot and sunny days (dipped in cold water makes it even better!). It can be a headband and provide extra warmth, too, or worn to keep sweat out of my eyes and the hair out of my face on windy days.

I always bring a ball-cap with me, also to keep the sun off of my face. Many people bring sunglasses too.

Recap:

-hiking shoes
-flip flops
-3 pairs socks
-1 pair long, zip-off pant
-1 pair hiking shorts
-loungy pants
-3 pairs underwear
-2 sports bras
-2 quick-dry t-shirts
-1 cotton t-shirt
-1 long-sleeved shirt
-lightweight fleece
-rain jacket
-buff
-ball-cap

That’s it! There are always other options and some people bring more, some even bring less. If you’re walking in colder months then it’s wise to bring a warm hat, gloves, a coat. Some people use gaiters for the rain. Some bring a bathing suit. Some women bring hiking skirts, or a casual skirt/dress for evenings or to wear to church.

For me, one of the best parts of the Camino is that I never have to think about what I’m going to wear. I don’t have to make decisions, I don’t have to worry if I’m going to be over or under dressed, and as long as I’ve made wise packing decisions, I have just enough but not more than enough.

Now it’s time to celebrate spring and get out on a walk. I’ve just bought myself yet another pair of Camino/hiking/trekking shoes (my adored Keen Voyageurs!!), and I need to start breaking them in.

packing list for the Camino de Santiago, Keens hiking shoes

My fourth pair of Camino shoes!

What’s your packing list for the Camino de Santiago like? Is there a must-have item that I’m missing? A “luxury” item you manage to squeeze in? Something on this list that you’d leave behind? Please share, I always love knowing what other pilgrims have in their packs!

Note and disclaimer: several of the links in this post are Amazon Affiliate links; this means that if you click through and purchase these items, a small percentage of the purchase will go towards supporting Nadine Walks. These are all products I used and love and believe strongly in, and I hope some of these recommendations will work for you, too!

My favorite albergues on the Camino del Norte, Part Two

March 15, 2017

About a year ago, I wrote a post all about my favorite albergues on the Camino del Norte. In the summer of 2015 I walked from Irun to Oviedo, which is about two thirds of the Norte route, and I stayed in some pretty great places. Before I set out on that walk, I’d done some research and asked around for albergue recommendations, and that’s how I found a few of my favorites.

Some pilgrims don’t plan like this, and I certainly didn’t for my first pilgrimage, on the Camino Frances (but there, too, I stayed in a few gems, as well as a few… ahem… let’s call them gems that didn’t have quite as much sparkle). But on the Norte, I wanted to do things a little differently. I didn’t have things planned out, exactly, but I took great joy in looking through my guidebook each night on the trail, studying the next day’s route and reading up on options of where I could stay. It helped to have made notes in advance about the albergues with excellent reputations, and in a few cases, I purposely planned my walk around these places.

Albergue San Martin, Orio, Camino del Norte

Albergue San Martin in Orio- Day Two of the Camino del Norte

This past summer I finished walking the Norte- returning to the place where I’d stopped the year before (well, almost returning, I did cut a section of the walk out because of time); I started walking just past Aviles. I only walked 9 days on the Norte but there were several albergues that I absolutely loved, and I thought it might be helpful to share them here.

But before I get to them, first, a general note about lodging on the Norte. I didn’t experience this problem as much on my first stint, in 2015 (then, I walked from late June- mid July), but this time around, I walked during the beginning of August: the high season. As soon as the route crossed into Galicia I didn’t have a problem finding a bed for the night, but the several days preceding that? When I walked through coastal towns in Asturias, they were filled with tourists and vacation-goers, as well as a relatively large (for the Norte) number of pilgrims. Several times, I had trouble finding a place to sleep- I had to keep walking or I had to spend more to stay in hotels or pensions. For my first several days of walking (between Aviles and Luarca), I could sense frustration and panic from nearly all the pilgrims that I encountered. Everyone was rushing, everyone was calling ahead for a bed.

Overall, I love walking the Norte in the summer months. With mountains on one side and the sea on the other, the days are warm but rarely hot, and there’s a chance of rain but in my experience, I only had one day of full-out rain. I liked being by the water in the summer months, and it was fun to walk through bustling sea-side towns. But the downside of this time of year- as well as an increasing number of pilgrims walking the Norte- is that you very well may need to think about calling ahead for a bed for some sections.

This being said, after my first few days (and once the Norte moved away from the coast and into the province of Galicia), I discovered a few outstanding albergues. Here they are:

Albergue de Peregrinos de Tapia de Casariego; (Donativo, 30 beds, no reservations)

Blog Post: No Stones in My Pack

Location, location, location.

Here’s the thing about the place: the actual albergue wasn’t that great. It felt a little old, a little run-down, very dark inside. The bunk beds were creaky and the “kitchen” was a microwave and a couple of forks (still, that’s more than some places, but the lack of a sink as well as a knife was bothersome). But the location? It sat right on the coast: if you leaned over the wooden railing you stared straight down into blue water and lapping waves. With a view like this, I didn’t need to spend any time inside the albergue; instead, I set up at a table to eat some chips and drink a cold can of coke, then later a grassy spot against a wall warmed by the sun, and I just stared at the view until the sun set and I couldn’t keep my eyes opened any longer.

Tips: There was no hospitalero staffing the albergue (which was common in a few places on the Norte); a note instructs you to go to the tourism office in town and get a key and pay a donation there. I did this, but I wonder if it’s a step you could skip- pilgrims entered their names in a register upon arrival, and I suppose all but the first person to arrive and the last person leaving in the morning had no need for a key to the place. Plus, there was a jar in the albergue where you could leave a donation.

Because this was a municipal albergue you couldn’t call ahead a reserve a bed, but the place still filled up. All but two beds were taken when I arrived (having walked a 40+ km day!! I think I might have been heart-broken to find the place completo, so a little luck was on my side that day).

Finally, this albergue is in the middle of one of the alternate routes on the Norte. About 6km past La Caridad the Camino splits and it you take an alternate path up towards the coast, you’ll be able to stay in this albergue (and then rejoin the main path of the Camino just before entering Ribadeo).

Albergue San Martin, Miraz; (Donativo, 26 places, no reservations)

Blog Post: The Camino Magic is Back

Run by the Confraternity of St James (a UK based charity promoting pilgrimages to Santiago), this small albergue captures the heart and soul of the Camino. Here, it’s truly about the Camino spirit. Volunteers staff the albergue and offer hot tea or coffee when you arrive, and then provide a simple breakfast in the morning. The rooms are clean, the bunk beds are new, and there is a large kitchen and dining space. Miraz is a small Galician village and the albergue is surrounded by fields, so this is a quiet, peaceful stop for the night. The hospitaleros offer an evening talk- a mini history and art lesson- in the village church.

Tips: A vegetable truck makes deliveries to the village most days of the week- we were able to buy supplies for a large communal dinner that evening.

The albergue doesn’t open until 3pm, but if you arrive hours early, a 5 minute walk through town will take you to a restaurant offering a pilgrim’s menu.

Albergue San Martin, Miraz, Camino del Norte

It might not look like much, but there was so much warmth and Camino spirit inside!

Albergue de Peregrinos de Sobrado dos Monxes (in Monastery); (6 euros, 120 places, no reservations)

Blog Post: The Last, Perfect Camino Day

This was my favorite place of them all, maybe my favorite albergue on the entire Camino del Norte. Sobrado dos Monxes is basically the last stop before the Norte joins up with the Camino Frances, which means it’s the last chance you get to be surrounded by the community of people you’ve been crossing paths with on your pilgrimage. Because the monastery is so large, nearly everyone stops here- it’s like a great, big Norte reunion. And with 120 beds, there’s no worry about arriving late and missing out on a place to sleep!

The monastery is amazing. Great sections of it are all but abandoned- empty and hollow, with moss and vines growing along the stone walls, pigeons flying through opened windows. The bunk rooms, bathrooms, kitchen and laundry facilities are all located in small rooms off of the cloister, and I’m kicking myself for not taking more photos of our lodgings. The rooms are small and cavern-like, and despite the size of the place and the number of pilgrims staying there, there was a quiet hush over everything.

Tips: Walk around and explore the monastery, stay to hear the monks sing a vespers service in the evening, and then hit the town for a meal. There’s a fabulous restaurant just around the corner from the entrance to the monastery (unfortunately I can’t find the name of the place but the food is unbelievable- fresh and local!).

Honorable Mention: Albergue de Peregrinos de Baamonde (6 euros, 94 places)

I don’t have any photos and honestly didn’t spend all that much time in the albergue. I’d walked another 40+ km day to get there and I’d been alone the entire way, so when I arrived at the albergue I sort of felt like I was stepping into a party I wasn’t invited to. This had nothing to do with either the albergue or the other pilgrims (because in the next two days I befriended many who had been in Baamonde that night), but just about my own frame of mind that day. So I spent most of the evening in a nearby bar, writing and journaling with a glass of wine. But the albergue itself was nice: large, with places for 94 pilgrims. The building felt new and modern but also sort of rustic, and there was a large and pleasant outdoor space, as well as a fully stocked kitchen and a lounge area with couches and tables.

Do you have any favorites from the Camino del Norte?