travel Archives - Nadine Walks

November Recap: Ringing bells and blazing sunsets and writing the book!

December 1, 2020

I’ve spent a lot of time in the past 8 months thinking about windows (though maybe not in the most traditional sense). Rather, I’ve been thinking about windows of time and how to ride the waves of this pandemic.

I was so fixated on this in the summer, trying to find the best window of time when it might be possible to travel. When restrictions would lift and case numbers would fall and when it might feel safe enough to venture out and take a trip, or when it might be okay to see family, and friends.

The fall has been like this too, and I think it’s why, in October, I took a few weekend trips and made an effort to get together with friends/family for hiking and coffee as much as possible (well, for me, an introvert through and through, “as much as possible” really means “on the weekends”, but I digress).

November started off strong, fall was still chugging along at full steam, the colors were never more vibrant, the sun was still shining, the air was warm enough for outdoor get togethers.

But all at once (or so it seems), we’ve reversed course. The fall/winter pandemic wave has descended, and even though I expected it, that doesn’t lessen the jolt of its arrival.

I canceled plans, work goes virtual in December (I work in a school and right now it’s only for a week but that could stretch into something much longer), the Thanksgiving table was small.

And yet, despite it all, November held a lot of good moments. I used to think that October was the most beautiful month of fall in the northeast (at least where I live), but in the past few years I’ve found November to be almost as good. And this year it felt as though fall stretched longer than ever- with crisp and sunny days, and the trees displaying a slow and long unfolding of color (are the Japanese maples always this spectacular in November? The reds never seemed so red!)

Here’s my roundup from November, maybe not as full as October’s, but nearly just as satisfying.

Hiking

Bryn Coed Preserve, Chester Springs, PA: My local Camino chapter gathered in early November (well, actually, it was the last day of October but it didn’t make it into last month’s roundup, so I’m including it here), to hike the trails in the Bryn Coed Preserve (which means “wooded hill” in Welsh). This preserve is part of the “Natural Lands”, a nonprofit organization in PA and southern New Jersey that aims to save outdoor spaces in order to connect people to the great outdoors. There are 16 preserves in the greater Philadelphia area and I’ve been to four of them so far; one of my winter hiking projects is to visit all 16! This was my last meet up for the foreseeable future with my Camino group; due to the rise in COVID cases, all of our scheduled group events have been canceled. Our group only started up again with organized hikes in early October, and I’m grateful I got to several of them while it lasted. Here’s hoping that late winter/spring will bring a return to the Philadelphia-area Camino group hikes!

This was the only notable hike of the month; I was scheduled to hike with my Camino group in Havre de Grace, MD, to see the bald eagles at the Conowingo Dam. I did this hike 2 or 3 years ago and it was spectacular, we saw dozens of bald eagles fishing in the Susquehanna and nesting in the trees; the hike was canceled this year but if travel restrictions are eased I might try to make it there sometime this season; eagle spotting is good between November and February.

Otherwise, it was a month full of my local walks. I zipped out to the Harvey Run Trail in the Brandywine valley several times (this is a small network of trails totaling about 5-miles that I discovered in the spring; there are wide open spaces, fields of wild flowers, hardly any people, and the trails wind past the studios of N.C. Wyeth and Andrew Wyeth. One of the bright spots of the pandemic was finding these paths!)

I also made an effort to hike down to my local wildlife preserve, the place I frequented in the spring when I was working from home (a quick ten-minute walk from where I live).

When visiting my parents for Thanksgiving, in Lancaster County, I walked in loops around the park at the top of the neighborhood. I’ve walked in that park so many times that it doesn’t feel notable, but then the light hits the fields just right and I raise my camera to take a photo and realize just how beautiful the landscape in this area of the state is.

Watching and Making and Listening

The best show I watched this month was The Queen’s Gambit, on Netflix. It was so wonderful! My initial thought was that a series about chess would be slow and a little dull, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. The fashion, the music, the characters, the drama… I highly recommend it!

Listening: this song.

The best thing I made this month was my annual Thanksgiving cheeseboard; no cooking or baking involved, just a bunch of cheese, meats, crackers and some fruit, throw it all together on a big tray, and voila! I love putting this together for my family every year, and even though our Thanksgiving was small, the food was plentiful and the company was good.

Writing

This month I did something to try to jump-start my writing: I attended a writing conference! It was an all-virtual event out of Philadelphia, two days of lectures and talks. A lot of it was geared towards writers who were in the final stages of their book writing, and ready to pitch an agent or go after a book deal. Even though I’m not quite there yet, I took a lot of notes and it was so helpful to visualize what the book publishing process would be like. It made it feel like, when I’m ready, I’ll know the steps to take to try to find an agent, what that relationship would be like, the steps to getting published, etc. It also helped me realize that I’m solidly in the “re-write” phase of my book, and that I need to stop hemming and hawing and just get working. I’ve already rewritten chunks of the book but the beginning and first half need a ton of work. But I’m encouraged, and- for the moment- more focused. It feels good!

My essay this month on Patreon is about a Camino date with an Italian man who gave me a necklace (it wasn’t really a date, but then again, on the Camino, it’s so easy to pull up a chair, sit with a stranger, have a drink, and drop into a deep and interesting conversation. It happens all the time, and I wish it were the sort of thing that could happen more in my real life!)

I also wrote a blog post about my summer road trip through the US, here it is in case you missed it.

Other highlights

Around 11am on November 7th, I heard a bell ringing bright and clear, it sounded like it was coming from the house next door. I thought for a moment, then leapt up and grabbed the bell that sits on my mantle. I raced outside and rang and rang, adding to the chorus going up through my neighborhood, all to announce the news: Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States! I knew that it could be (and I’m sure will be) a long two months until he is inaugurated, but in the moment I only felt joy and hope.

I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it every year: are there any skies more beautiful than November skies? It can be frustrating to contend with the dwindling daylight hours, to race against the sun to get a post-work walk in, but so often I’m treated to the most stunning sunsets as I round the corner and head towards home:

When I think back on this month, more than anything it feels quiet and calm and still. I think that feeling is going to continue all winter as the pandemic forces me to retreat even more, to hunker down, to be cautious and safe. There will be hikes, bundled-up rendez-vous for coffee, hopefully some Christmas spirit sprinkled in, maybe another backyard fire with my parents, some freshly baked bread, a stack of good books, a few bottles of wine. It might not be an easy winter, but as ever, I’m going to keep my eyes opened to the beauty and the joy.

Hoping everyone is safe and healthy and finding your own moments of joy. More soon.

October Recap: Waterfalls and Scary Movies and Casting a Vote

October 30, 2020

There’s ragu simmering on the stovetop and I’m back to my regular spot at the kitchen table, beer in hand, the place where I sit to think and to write in the fall and winter months. Sometimes I think that I get my best writing done when the weather turns cool. Maybe it’s the shortening daylight (only 6:30 and already dark!), maybe it’s the desire to retreat, hunker down, put on my slippers and a long sweater and sink in.

And so, back to writing it is!

Despite not posting a ton of content here lately, I think about this blog a lot. I have dozens of ideas for posts, a whole bunch of drafts and half-written things, and dreams of a grand return to blogging. At one point I was tempted to challenge myself to write a post every day for a month (who knows, it could still happen!)

In the meantime, we’ll start here, with a monthly recap. It’s my intention to start doing this every month, to put out a post that rounds up all the little things that I want to share: weekend trips and my latest hikes, what I’m reading/watching/listening to, the things I’m writing and the photographs I’m taking.

It feels like I’m always saying something like- “I can’t believe it’s ** already!”. Wasn’t I just saying that about the end of summer, or the month of September? But now we’re at the end of October and in some ways it still feels like spring. I’ve said this before and I’m still feeling it: it’s as if COVID froze time, as though it were still spring or that it’s one long extension of a very strange season, and that life- real life- won’t begin again until this virus is somewhere behind us.

It feels this way, and yet, life goes on. Real life, as strange as it is, is right now. And October was full of some good things!

Travel

I went on a couple notable weekend trips this month: up to the Adirondacks of New York, and out to the Pine Creek Gorge (often called the “Grand Canyon of PA”) in north-central Pennsylvania. Both trips involved hiking and finding good food and lots of time outside. Plus a chance to soak up the beautiful fall foliage! I think each trip caught the tail end of peak foliage, but even under overcast skies, the landscape was stunning. I might not love cold weather, but I still really appreciate living in a place that has four, distinct seasons.

Hiking

Moxham Mountain (near North Creek, NY), a 5.5 mile hike featuring expansive lookouts over the Hudson Valley and the Adirondack mountains. There were so many scenic viewpoints and the climb up was gradual/steady, and never very steep. I loved it!

Mt. Joy & Mt. Misery, Valley Forge National Park, PA, 6.5 miles: my local Camino group met for the first time since February. The group limit was capped at 10 and we all wore masks throughout the hike (it was easier than I thought it would be! Sometimes when I was a bit out of breath on an uphill section I’d pull my mask down but for the majority of the hike kept it on). Our leader for the day took us on a great loop through the park, including a section on a ‘border trail’ that’s not marked on any of the official maps. Valley Forge can get busy, especially on weekends, but once we got into the woods the people thinned out and it seemed like we had the trees to ourselves. And it was so good to see some of my Camino buddies, and be in a small group again. I was a little nervous heading into the gathering but a hike in the woods- with masks and social distancing- felt safe and good.

Great Falls Loop, Ricketts Glen State Park, PA, 4 miles: On my way to north-central PA to meet my sister for the weekend, I stopped by Ricketts Glen State Park, known for it’s waterfalls. I’d heard of the park before but had never made the trip- now I’m wondering what’s taken me so long! (like so many others, it’s taken the pandemic to get me exploring more in my own backyard). The 4-mile loop wound past 17 waterfalls- 17!! Just when I thought it couldn’t get better, it did. With dappled sunlight and leaves fluttering down from the trees, it was truly a perfect fall hike. (There’s a longer waterfall loop hike- about 7 miles- but if you park in the Lake Rose lot it’s possible to do a shorter loop and still see all- or nearly all- of the waterfalls).

Reading/Watching/Listening

It’s taking me forever, but I’m loving Haruki Murakami’s ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle‘. I was reading a ton in late spring/summer, but now that I’m back to work in a school, my energy is sapped at the end of the day. But I’m determined to finish and then start on some of my current library requests: on the docket is Elena Ferrante’s ‘The Lying Life of Adults‘ (still on a waiting list but I can’t wait to read this!), and Yaa Gyasi’s ‘Transcendent Kingdom‘.

I mentioned this in my last post, but I’m really enjoying David Smith’s new podcast– Clearskies Camino. His blog is a great place for all-things-Camino, and the podcast is proving to be more of the same. Each week he interviews a different pilgrim about their experience on the Camino, and it’s been so much fun to hear the voices of some people I’ve been “following” (blog/social media) for years now. I’m gathering up the courage to be one of his guests- I think I would love talking about my experience but of course these kinds of things always make me so nervous!

It’s October, and that means scary movies! I watched Netflix’s ‘The Haunting of Bly Manor’ and it was the perfect thing to get me in a spooky kind of mood. Along with my annual viewing of ‘The Shining’, of course. On a completely different note, I’m also watching the new season of The Great British Baking Show (I love, love, love this show).

Writing

This month’s essay on Patreon is a reflective piece, about how an encounter on the Pennine Way got me thinking about what my version of heaven might look like. I’m having a lot of fun working on Patreon essays, and love that I have a place for these writings to land. You’ve got to ‘subscribe’ and sign up as a patron to get access to these once-a-month essays, but levels start as low as $1 a month! The support I’m getting here means the world to me, and I love that a platform like this exists.

I blogged about what it’s like to walk the Camino as an introvert, and as ever, I’m continuing to make slow progress on my Camino book. (An early chapter is up on my Patreon site, and it’s a public piece so you don’t need to be a patron to read it. Check it out!)

Photos

Over on Instagram, I’m revisiting my first Camino- my 2014 journey on the Camino Francés- and it’s been fun to share some of those memories. Otherwise, my camera roll is full of tall trees and fall colors: oranges, reds, yellows. This is one of the most beautiful times of the year in my corner of the world, and I’m trying to get outside everyday for a walk, even if it’s often the same loop through my neighborhood. What a beautiful loop it is!

***

Two additional, quick highlights:

1: My grandmother turned 90! Happy Birthday Baba!

2: I voted! Election Day isn’t until November 3rd but this year, millions of voters are getting their ballots in early. I dropped off my mail-in ballot at a local drop-box (I was able to walk down my driveway and onto a path through the woods to get there- what a way to vote!), and I got confirmation that it got to where it needed to go. Hoping, praying, for some good change to come to this country.

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Walking the Camino as an Introvert

October 13, 2020

I had a lot of worries before my first Camino. They mostly centered around the physical nature of the journey: would I be able to walk all the way to Santiago? Would I develop crippling blisters and have to stop walking? Would I fall and hurt myself? Would I lose the way? Would I run out of water, or food?

But there was another layer of worries as well, and these revolved around the social part of the experience. Would I make friends? Would I walk alone? How would I do sleeping in albergues with dozens and dozens of other pilgrims?

Before the Camino I read a lot of books and blogs and articles, and so many mentioned the idea of a ‘Camino family’. Most people, as they walk, pick up a small group of others that they move through the Camino with. The groups can tend to form early and the bonds are strong. These Camino families, it would appear, were one of the highlights of the way for so many people.

I was intrigued by the idea of a Camino family. I was excited about the possibility of it: a group of people you could always be with! No loneliness! No losing your way! Someone to share a bottle of wine with!

But I was also a little terrified of the idea. When would I ever get my alone time?

I was listening to a podcast the other day, the Clearskies Camino podcast, a new venture from David of Clearskies Camino (a blog I’ve been following for years!) He was interviewing Pablo, of Setmeravelles (another blog I’ve been following for years!), and one piece of advice that Pablo shared was this: Don’t be afraid to make connections with other pilgrims, especially if you’re an introvert.

This struck me, because I don’t often hear talk about introversion on the Camino.

I’m an introvert, through and through. I recently did a Myers Briggs test (for probably the 6th time), just to see how I scored, and on the extraverted/introverted scale, I was 93% introverted. I’ve known this about myself for a long time, but I think I can sometimes forget, because I like people. I really like other people (I’m a counselor who talks to teenagers all day!), and I think a common misconception about introverts is that they don’t like to socialize or be around other people. Another misconception is that all introverts are shy, and quiet (I happen to be rather shy and quiet, but it doesn’t mean that all introverts are!)

The real key to understanding an introvert is this: a lot of time around people can really drain them and tire them out. I, for one, have a limit, and once I reach it, all I want in the world is to be in a space by myself. The time to myself is what energizes me, fills me back up. Plus, I’ve always really liked my own company, and often I want to spend time alone, in my own company. It makes me feel centered and solid, grounded.

The Camino is a really great opportunity to be in your own company: if you’re walking the entirety of the Camino Francés, you’ve got 500 miles of walking, day after day after day. There are a lot of other pilgrims around, but there’s a ton of opportunity to be alone and be with your thoughts.

And, also, the Camino is a really great opportunity to be with other people. I remember a pilgrim I’d met towards the end of the Francés telling me about a girl he’d walked with for the first two weeks of his Camino. “We were never apart,” he said. “Every single minute of every day, we were together.” (I shuddered.) And it wasn’t a romantic thing, it was just… a Camino thing. A people thing. It’s fun to be around other people on the Camino, and with all of that walking, having friends at your side can make the time pass quickly. It’s great to share big experiences with other people.

And I might even argue that most pilgrims, on the Camino, like to share their experience with other people. I could be wrong (and please, say hello in the comments and share your experience if you walked!), but so often on the Camino I saw people in pairs or groups. Even if they’d arrived at the Camino alone, they almost always linked up with other people. Formed their Camino families.

I’ve walked a lot of Caminos since that first one, back in 2014, and I’ve never formed or been part of a Camino family, not really. I’ve made deep connections, I’ve made friends, there were people I would always run into or make loose plans with or stay in the same towns with, but never all the way to Santiago, never until the end of my walk. There are lots of reasons for this (and really, that’s a separate post), but I don’t think I ever needed a true ‘Camino family’ to appreciate the social aspects of the Camino. I’ve had such good, deep experiences with other pilgrims, and the opportunities for those connections is something that makes the Camino really special.

Being an introvert isn’t the only reason I don’t form Camino families when I walk. But I do think it can sometimes feel a little difficult to be introverted and be on an incredibly social sort of experience, surrounded by dozens and dozens- even hundreds and hundreds- of other people every day for weeks at a time. You see them on the trail, you see them in the bars, you see them in the places you sleep (often just feet away in the next bunk bed!).

And sometimes, it can feel a little lonely to see other pilgrims in their groups, laughing and sharing a bottle of wine, and to sometimes be the one on the outside. Even if you’re choosing to be the one on the outside. Even if sometimes you need to be the one on the outside.

But I do think it’s possible- very, very possible- to walk the Camino as an introvert and have a fabulous time.

If you’re walking the Camino as part of a pair or a group from home, I think it’s important to have a conversation before you start. I’ve done this on the several occasions that I’ve walked with a friend from home, explaining that, sometimes, I’ll want to walk by myself. It can sometimes feel hard to have this conversation, or to set this expectation (especially if the other person prefers to always have someone to walk with!), but having an open conversation upfront can really help.

And if you’re walking the Camino solo, it’s still important to have these conversations with the people you meet, the friends you make. This is something I learned after my first Camino- when I wasn’t clear enough about my needs and didn’t get enough time alone- and it’s something I’m always working on when I walk. How to be friendly and sometimes walk with others, how to form strong, deep connections, but how to give myself enough of what I need, and the time that I need alone. How to truly walk my own walk.

Sometimes this is hard. Sometimes I can spend hours walking with another pilgrim- sometimes all day- and thoroughly enjoy that time. Sometimes I feel lonely and crave company (and this can be the day after I went slightly off-stage from a group of friends so that I could get alone time). Sometimes I need to tell a friend that I want to walk alone, and I can see hurt and disappointment in their eyes. “It’s not you!” I want to say. “It’s just that I’ll feel so depleted, feel like I’m giving away too much of myself, if I don’t get the chance to walk alone.”

But, mostly, it’s not so bad. I’ve learned how to have this conversation gently, easily (most of the time). Most people get it. Sometimes, I’ll meet someone on the path and fall into a conversation and walk with them for an hour. I love how this can happen on the Camino, and I love that pilgrims usually cut out the small talk, and go right to the deeper stuff (which introverts tend to like anyway). But after walking for awhile, if I want to be alone, all it takes is saying, “I’m going to walk by myself for awhile, but I hope I’ll see you in the next town!” Sometimes I say, “I’m going to stop here and take some photographs.” (Often I do want to take photographs, but sometimes I say this if I don’t feel like explaining that I want to be alone.)

And the Camino really can be the perfect place for both introverts and extroverts. For me, if I’m able to walk all day or most of the day alone, I love that I can socialize in the evenings with other pilgrims. I often really want to spend time with other people, because I’ve already had plenty of time to be on my own.

And if you really need a break, there’s almost always an option to stay in a private room in a pension. I never did on my first Camino (I ended up loving the albergue experience), but on my second Camino, the Norte, there was a night I needed to stay in a pension because the albergues were full. And I have to say, it was an illuminating experience. It was such luxury! To have my own little room, a bed that wasn’t a bunk bed, a bathroom all to myself! I went to a corner store and bought basic supplies for dinner and then returned back to my room and spent hours there, all alone, soaking it up. I loved it.

In the last few years, I’ve gravitated towards less-traveled paths. My 5-days on the Camino de San Salvador were almost completely solo: no one in the albergues until the last day, no one on the trail with me until the last day. My walk on the Pennine Way was much the same: after some great and fun interactions over the first three days, I went on to walk a very solo walk, often staying in empty bunkhouses. Walking like this isn’t for everyone, and these were on the more extreme end of ‘socially isolated’ walks. But there are some good in-between trails. For me, the Camino Aragonés is the perfect blend of quiet time and socialization. Not many pilgrims walk, but there are just enough- maybe a dozen or two- walking the same stages. You’ll mostly be alone on the path, but will inevitably run into the same group in the evenings. Perfect for a friendly introvert like me.

One of my favorite things on the Camino is when I unite with other introverts. I had a few days on the Norte when this happened- somehow, a group of about 6 of us came together. We were all on the Camino alone, none of us had formed a ‘Camino family’, most of us seemed to be doing our own thing, I suspect we were all introverts. But we came together for a night in such a beautiful, perfect way, to share a meal and talk and laugh and feel so at ease together. We parted the next day, we didn’t walk or stay together as Camino families tend to do, but that didn’t make the experience any less magical, or any less meaningful.

I’m always curious about others’ experiences: how many readers/pilgrims/walkers are introverts? Do you ever have difficulty with the social experience of the Camino or a long walk? How do you balance the social opportunities with enough time alone?

If I Had Three Days in Paris…

September 20, 2020

I woke up this morning missing Paris. Maybe it’s the weather; it was cold this morning, almost unseasonably so, and sometimes when there are sharp changes in the weather my memories of past events flood in so strongly. The first time I was in Paris was at the end of October, 20 years ago. I was studying in a city in the south of France and the weather there must have been warmer, because when we got to Paris it felt like we’d stepped into fall.

So maybe it was the weather this morning, or maybe it’s the coronavirus and missing the things that I usually do. Every week it seems like I’m missing something different: the sounds of a baseball game, the stillness of an art museum, sitting around a table drinking a beer with my Camino group.

Today it was Paris. I’ve been there a lot, but this is the first year in a long stretch of years that I haven’t stepped foot in the city. I didn’t think about it so much during the summer, my thoughts were focused on the long walks I was supposed to be taking, not the two or three days I’d planned in Paris at the end of my trip.

But maybe it’s only now, now that the season is changing and we’re entering the long and slow march towards winter, that I can feel it so strongly: I didn’t get on a plane this year. I didn’t see Notre Dame, I didn’t eat a baguette by the Seine.

I have a long weekend coming up. I needed to use a few days of PTO and my school is off for Yom Kippur, so I have this little, extra pocket of time. I’m sticking close to home, going back to the local walks I did every day in the spring, taking a book out to that patch of sunlight on my porch. And yet, I couldn’t help but dream, dream about what it would be like to find a cheap flight to Paris and drive to the airport on Thursday evening and wake up in Paris on Friday morning.

I can’t get on a flight to France right now. But if I could, what would those three days in Paris be like?

I’ve often mentioned how much I love Paris on this blog, but I realize that I haven’t written much about it. There’s this post about my week there in 2017, and this post about Notre Dame, but not much more.

I probably have at least 3 or 4 partially written posts about Paris in the drafts folder on this blog. I always think that I should write about my favorite places, my favorite museums, my favorite walks, tips I have for solo travel and budget travel.

After all, I’m getting to know Paris. It’s the city I know best in the world, and I’m by no means an expert, but traveling there has now become easy. It’s almost mindless, that’s how frequently I seem to stop in. Often it’s just for an overnight at the very beginning of a long trip, or a day at the very end, but sometimes I squeeze in some extra time.

And so I know my way around my favorite areas. I know where I like to stay and where to pick up some groceries and somehow the French comes back to me and I can navigate and communicate. I stop by all of my favorite spots. I sit, sometimes, on the same benches. I can see the same views, over and over, and never get tired of them.

Sparkling Eiffel Tower at sunset, view from the towers of Notre Dame, Paris, France

So if I had three days, a long weekend at the beginning of fall when the air is crisp and the leaves are red at their edges, what would I do?

I’d do all of my favorite things.

This post is by no means a comprehensive guide or itinerary to three days in Paris. To be sure, most people with three days in Paris would spend them very differently. You’ll note that some of the biggest attractions aren’t included here. There are many, many great posts and resources for planning a trip to Paris, and this isn’t necessarily one of them (though, for any first timers to Paris and anyone revisiting this city, I think there’s a lot here to take note of).

This is a dream, a fantasy. If I could close my eyes and be transported back to Paris, back to a city where the spire of Notre Dame still stands and people crowd inside virus-free spaces, this is how I would spend my days.

My Three Days in Paris

In no particular order.

I’ll exit the metro in St-Paul, a neighborhood in the Marais district, and when I reach the top of the stairs at the metro stop, the first thing I’ll see is a small carousel, the one that has always been there. I’lll walk down the narrow cobblestoned alley, a shortcut to my hostel. Sometime in the last few years they upgraded the pillows, but the squares of pink toilet paper- like the carousel- are the same as they’ve always been.

hunting down the best baguettes in Paris, Aux Desirs de Manon

I’ll buy a baguette. (Paris on a budget tip: you don’t need to order an entire baguette unless, of course, you know you’ll eat all of it. I nearly always order a une demi-baguette instead, for the princely sum of about 40 cents. I like to buy bread from a different boulangerie every day (you can find a boulangerie on just about every corner in Paris, and nearly all have high quality baguettes, but this place is a favorite. So is this one.)

I’ll go to my favorite art museums. There are a lot in Paris, but because I only have three days and because the sun is shining, I’ll just stop by two (the two I go back to every time): Musée de l’Orangerie, and Musée Rodin. If I can, I’ll arrive at Musée de L’Orangerie just as they open (or, maybe, within the first hour of opening). This is a small museum about a five minute walk from the Louvre and through the Tuileries, famous for housing Monet’s water lilies. Monet picked this very spot and very museum for his masterpieces, intending visitors to experience a calm oasis when surrounded by his paintings. Because this is my fantasy, and because I arrived early, I manage to have the rooms to myself. The Musée Rodin is another gem, both the indoor museum and outdoor grounds are worth visiting. (Paris on a budget tip: for 4 euros, you can buy a ticket just to the outdoor sculpture garden).

I’ll walk the Promenade Plantée. If you’re familiar with the High Line in NYC, then you’ll understand what the Promenade Plantée is (but Paris did it first): a 4.7km elevated walkway/park, a magical green space above the city, stretching from the Bastille to the Bois de Vincennes. It’s my favorite walk in the city, one that is frequented largely by locals, rather than tourists.

I’ll visit Shakespeare and Company, the historic English language bookstore on the Left Bank. I’ll buy a book and then stop by the café next door for a coffee.

I’ll walk through Père Lachaise, Paris’ most famous cemetery, located in the 20th arrondissement. I try to go whenever I’m in Paris, and each time make sure to stop by to see Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison. There’s now a plexiglass barrier around Wilde’s tomb (and Jim Morrison’s is heavily guarded as well), and it turns out those red lips were wearing away at the stone, so it’s best to keep your distance and pay your respects without doing any damage.

I’ll drink café crèmes and café noisettes (a shot of espresso cut with a little milk) to my heart’s content. A favorite place for coffee is in the charming Place Contrescarpe, just around the corner from the little apartment where Hemingway once lived (74 rue du Cardinal Lemoine).

I’ll have a picnic on the Seine. If the weather is cool I’ll put on a sweater and a scarf and call a friend, or maybe just go on my own: spread out a blanket and open a bottle of wine, break off a hunk of baguette and pair it with a good, soft cheese, a handful of raspberries, a ripe tomato (you can find good picnic food all over Paris, but La Grande Epicerie is an experience. Described as a food department store rather than a grocery store, it has anything and everything you could want for a Parisian picnic).

I’ll visit one or two of Paris’ many beautiful parks and gardens. My favorites are the Jardin de Luxembourg, and the Jardin des Plantes (both on the left bank). On a nice day it will seem like all of Paris is out in the gardens, and you’ll be lucky if you can nab one of the green chairs (bonus points if you get a ‘reclining’, or ‘low’ chair!).

I’ll walk around the city with my camera, looking for that beautiful light, for ornate architecture, winding and empty streets, the reflection of rain on the sidewalk. I’ll take a hundred photos, and then take a hundred more.

Notre-Dame and cherry blossoms, Paris, France

I’ll stop by Notre Dame. Actually, this will be the very first thing I do, because it’s the first thing I do every time. I’ll pretend that there was no fire, that the cathedral sits on the Île de la Cité untouched and perfect. I’ll climb its towers and look out over the city, I’ll circle around and sit beneath the flying buttresses, I’ll walk over a bridge so I can get a perfect view, so I can take it all in.

*****

If I close my eyes and think, hard, about the how the light reflects on the Seine, quiet ripples, steady waves, I can imagine that I’m back there. I go for a long weekend of the imagination, filled with cafés and bookstores and cobblestoned streets, stone gargoyles and rose-colored light.

One day we’ll go back.

The Beginning of Something (a new season)

September 8, 2020

Summer is winding down, ending, already over. How? Is it stranger this year because of COVID, and the feeling like we might still be at the end of winter, early March, and that these last 6 months have all been some sort of a dream? It feels that way, like these last two warm seasons were just a tease, and that real life stopped in March, and that when we wake up we’ll be back there, still wearing puffy coats and sweaters, still waiting for the first signs of spring.

My summer was… okay. It was good, it was long, it was short, it was so hot and humid, I was restless, I was settled, I was anxious, I was joyful. The times when I felt settled were usually when I was driving on a long and empty road, or standing by an ocean. Nearly all the rest of the time it felt like I was waiting: waiting for the day to finish, waiting to move into the next week, the next month, waiting for this virus to be “solved” and to be in a place where I could move ahead with life.

This is not generally the way I want to live, and it certainly wasn’t the way I wanted to spend my summer, but I keep repeating to myself: “We’re in a pandemic. This is still a crisis. It’s okay that the summer wasn’t all it could be. There was no way the summer could have been what you expected.”

And now we’re heading into a new season and the large questions of this time still remain. How long will we continue to be in this? Will I feel unsafe working from my school? Will I be able to manage all of the work that I’m facing this year? What happens when the weather turns cold, when I can’t see people outdoors? What happens in November, who will be elected president? How will that have an effect on the state of my country?

It often feels like a little too much and I can get trapped here, trapped with the questioning and the wishing that time could speed up, that I could arrive at a point where it is safe to get on a plane and travel to a new place and go on a long walk.

Instead, I’m here, home, on my couch and on my porch. Soon I’ll be back in a school and even though I had a long break from work, it almost feels as though there was no real break at all.

I think and think about what I can do to quiet the questions and the restlessness, and the answers are what they always are: Walk. Write. Repeat and repeat.

My writing has gone in slow waves this summer, from nonexistent to small things to occasionally a big burst of something. But then there are the ideas, too, the ideas of new things to write and new things to share and when I start working on an idea, it feels really good. It’s enough to even make me forget that there is a pandemic swirling around, and I can sink into the excitement of something new, even if it’s just the words I’m putting on a page.

I’ve been working on some essays, maybe you could call them pieces of long-form travel writing. Whatever they’re called, they’ve been fun to work on, and I have nearly a dozen ideas of what to write about. They are stories and lessons from the last 6 years (or, the last 20 years, if you go all the way back to my college year abroad). Initially I thought that I might try to put the essays into an e-book, and for the last year have been coming back to that idea (when I’m not trying to finish writing the Camino Book).

But a few weeks ago I had another thought, and this one feels good. Nearly two years ago I started a Patreon, and have occasionally posted short ramblings and photos, but I’ve always intended to do more. The support that I’m getting there has been phenomenal and has meant so much to me, especially because my patrons aren’t getting much directly from the site- no real bonuses or perks. They’re supporting the work I’ve already done, and whether the know it or not, are giving me a tremendous amount of encouragement to keep chipping away.

But then it occurred to me- Patreon would be the perfect place to publish these essays I’ve been working on/dreaming up! I always worried that posting regularly to Patreon would take away from what I would share on this blog, and would also take away from the precious time I have to work on my book. And those concerns are legitimate, but I think an essay a month is more than do-able. It will keep my writing muscles strong, it will motivate me to write out some of the stories I’ve been meaning to share, and it will give those stories a place.

To have access to the stories, readers will need to sign up to be a patron (it’s easy and I’ve included several levels from as little as $1 or $3 a month), and patrons can cancel at any time. To give you a little taste, I’m making September’s essay public for the rest of the month (which means you can read without signing up to be a patron). It’s a slightly altered excerpt from the book I’m working on about my first Camino, and this section includes my arrival in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port and what it was like to face the beginning of a 500-mile long walk.

So go check that out, even if you don’t intend or can’t afford to be my patron- I’d love for you to read some of my work in progress!

It feels good to be writing, and to give myself accountability in this way. It’s nerve-wracking and a little scary, too (publishing/posting anything I write always is), but that’s not a bad thing. And in these months, I need something to focus on, something that moves me forward, something to anchor me while the rest of the world swirls and rages.

And, otherwise, I’m going to walk. There’s nothing big planned- how can there be?- and while I wish I could be chronicling a grand adventure, instead I need to focus on what’s around me. The same walks I always do, but also exploring the parks and trails a little further afield. Finding joy and adventure in these smaller journeys is something I’ve been trying to work on in these last 6 months, and I’m slowly getting better at it. I can’t wait to be back on a long-distance path somewhere out in the greater world, but in the meantime, I’ll continue to look for the beauty in my own backyard. Walking, any way you do it, however you do it, is good.

So that’s the update for the moment: new writing on Patreon, and stretching my legs wherever I can. Mourning, a bit, the end of summer, but keeping an open mind as to what this next season might bring.

Dreaming of Walking Again

August 16, 2020

This was going to be a big walking year. Well, I suppose you could consider every year since 2014 a big walking year for me, since I always planned at least one long-distance hike/walk. But this year? This year was going to be good.

Last summer I returned to Spain after three years away, and spent 30 days walking the Camino Aragonés and part of the Camino del Norte. As I walked (particularly at the three-week mark), I realized that I hadn’t walked a 30-day stretch since 2015. And I have to admit that I was a little surprised to realize that it felt GOOD.

Previously, I’d thought that my body adjusted and my hiking legs kicked in after about 10-days of walking, and while there’s probably some truth to that, something else seemed to happen after another 10-days, at least on this particular trip, something that I hadn’t felt since 2015: I felt like I could walk forever.

I not only start to feel strong, I continue to feel strong. My body adjusts, almost completely.

It’s physical but it’s mental too, because 30-days gives me enough time to really settle in. On my two-week long trips (like Le Chemin du Puy, and the Pennine Way), just as my body starts to adjust, my mind begins the wind-down process, and I never get the chance to just really sink into it. But to have an entire month to walk? The routines feel natural, normal. Walking becomes what I do.

I’ve wondered what it would be like to walk for even longer, and I fantasize about giving myself two months, even three months, to walk continuously. Would my body eventually break down? Would I become restless or bored, wishing I could just stop moving and stay in one place?

While I didn’t plan a two-month walking trip this summer, I did recognize that I wanted to walk for more than a few weeks. I wanted another long stretch. And so I booked a flight to Portugal and had a solid 40-days of walking before I would need to make my way over to France, and my writer’s retreat at La Muse.

I didn’t even have a plan of how I would spend those 40 days! I had a Camino Portuguese guidebook, and the thought that I could spend a few days walking south of Lisbon on the Fisherman’s Trail (Rota Vincentina) before making my way north on the Camino, towards Santiago. I intended to walk to Santiago, but knew that I’d have extra time and thought I could either do another trip out to Finisterre/Muxia (and finally walk the link between the two villages!), or maybe walk part of the Camino Invierno.

The coast at Muxia, Spain

All I knew was that I was excited, really excited, to have 40-days to walk.

But this wasn’t it; had all gone according to plan, I would have done some spring-time walking in Japan, as well, on the Kumano Kodo. That would have been 5 days of walking in the mountains of the Kii Peninsula, and it’s hard to describe how much I had been looking forward to that trip.

And maybe ‘hard’ is the best word for all of this. It’s been hard to give up these trips because of COVID. It’s been hard to not go on a long walk this year. It’s been hard to be uncertain about the future, to worry about where my country (the United States) is headed, to stay energized and hopeful in the day-to-day.

At first, I couldn’t look at or read anything that had to do with travel, it stung too much. But a few months ago, I listened to a podcast where Sherry Ott (of Ottsworld, a great travel blog) talked about her long-distance walks and at first I thought I would have to turn it off but as I listened some little spark reappeared. She talked about St Olav’s Way, in Norway, and my brain started turning. What would it be like to walk in Scandinavia?

Not Scandinavia, but a beautiful path in Spain, on the Camino Primitivo

I started to do a little research and before I knew it, I had a document outlining a 30-day trip on the Gudbrandsdalen Path (the most popular of the pilgrimage paths making up St Olav’s Way). I didn’t know that I would ever actually walk in Norway, and if I did, I had no idea when it would be, but it felt good to plan.

And then, a few weeks later, I bought myself another ticket to Japan. I just pushed my trip back one year and honestly, I have no idea if I’ll be able to get to Japan next spring but I figure I might as well act as though I can (a caveat: I got 100% of my flight/lodging money back for the trip I had to cancel, and my flight for next year has good cancelation options).

In the past couple of months I’ve let myself dream of travel again, especially of all the walks I want to do. A friend living in Spain traveled up to Scotland to walk the Great Glen Way… and instantly I was reading blogs and doing research, planning my own stages. And then I started thinking about Portugal, realizing that I never really looked through the guidebook that I’d bought for my trip and so I started dreaming of walks by the coast and pasteis de nata.

I dug back into Kat’s blog (Following the Arrows). She passed away earlier this year and it was hard to read through her posts but I’ve always gone to her for information and inspiration, and her blog is excellent. I saw that she’d walked the Coast to Coast- had I realized this?

And then I remembered that a few years ago, I’d asked for a Coast to Coast guidebook for Christmas (this must have been right after I walked the Pennine Way), and suddenly I was planning yet another walk, this time a walk across England.

It’s hard to not be able to buy a ticket and hop on a plane and use the last few weeks of my vacation time on a walk through the moors, or along a coast, or deep in the mountains. But I have to say, planning feels good. It reminds me that this virus won’t shut down life forever, that there are so many amazing places yet to discover, so many roads to travel, so many walks left in me.

It feels good to dream, and to have hope for the future.

Here are some links and resources to the walks mentioned in this post, in case you want to do a little dreaming of your own!

Camino Portugués (Portugal):

Overview from American Pilgrims on the Camino, overview from the Confraternity of St. James.
Blogs: Camino Portugues- the Nuts & Bolts, Following the Arrows.
Guidebooks: The Camino Portugués, Cicerone, A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Camino Portugués.

Kumano Kodo (Japan):

Overview from Tanabe City Kumano Tourism Bureau.
Kumano Travel- Official Community Reservation System.
Blog: Following the Arrows.

St. Olav’s Way (Norway):

Pilegrimsleden website: information on the paths and planning resources
Blog: Everything You Need to Know About Walking St. Olav’s Way in Norway

Great Glen Way (Scotland):

The Highland Council: information and planning resources
Independent Hostel Guide: information on hostel/bunkhouse accommodation
Guidebook: The Great Glen Way, Cicerone.

Coast to Coast (England):

Blog: Planning Your Coast to Coast Walk, Rambling Man.
Guidebook: Coast to Coast Path, Trailblazers.
Guidebook: Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk.

And then it all went up in flames

June 27, 2020

I just returned home from a 2-day backpacking trip that was supposed to be a 9-day trip, though to be fair, I always knew that I might have to cut the trip short. I’m new to backpacking, and I like camping well enough but I don’t exactly love it. I’m nervous about animals at night and I don’t like being dirty and when I’m on vacation, I really like a glass of wine or a beer at the end of the day. On a Camino, you can sleep inside and take a shower and have a hot meal and an entire bottle of wine. All reasons I really like the Camino. So nine days for someone who’s never backpacked before was ambitious.

But, you know, I thought I could do it. If not for the coronavirus, I would be walking through Portugal right now; I’d planned 40-days of walking this summer, more than I ever have before, and I was excited for it. Walking long-distance paths has become such a big part of my life, ever since I walked that first Camino in 2014. What’s a year without a long walk? COVID has demanded this question, and I didn’t want to accept its answer. I felt restless, my legs itching to go: to go somewhere, to go anywhere. Could I find a long walk a little closer to home?

The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Towpath (the C&O) runs for 184.5 miles from Washington DC to Cumberland, MD. It’s a mostly flat path and often used by bikers and day hikers, but there are some backpackers who hike the entire trail. With enough free campsites, water pumps and several towns close to the path, I thought it would be an ideal first backpacking experience. And in many ways, it is.

I threw my gear into my pack: a tent and sleeping bag and sleeping pad, a camp stove and a bag full of food and a water filter. I booked a hotel room halfway through the journey, in a town with a post office where I could ship a resupply box full of more food. If all went well, I’d walk for nine days, camping most nights.

I set out early, at dawn, driving to the my starting point, stowing my car, finding the start of the trail. The sun was shining and the air was fresh, my pack was heavy but my legs were eager. I was back on a long path! Nothing to do all day but walk and walk!

After about 3 miles, I realized how much weight I was carrying on my back. I could start to feel an ache in my shoulders and around my hips. My feet were starting to hurt a bit, too. I walked a few more miles, stopped for a short rest. A few more miles, stopped for lunch. I was 9-miles into the walk and starting to get worried. I’d planned for a first day of 22-miles (I know, I know), and the next day I was due to walk 23, the day after that, at least 25.

I’d intended to start a little slower, but poor planning involving picking up my resupply box from the post office meant I had to do big miles (note to self: in the future, don’t time a resupply for the weekend). But I thought I could do it, because hadn’t I walked 20-miles a day before? On the Camino, I do it all the time!

But here’s the thing. When I was planning this little adventure, I was imagining myself on my strongest Camino days. After 3 weeks of walking when my body had adapted to the path and my legs were strong and my shoulders could bear the weight of what I carried. Those were the days I recalled, the days when I felt strong and unstoppable. And there were days on the Camino, or on a hike in England, when I pushed myself hard, when I struggled but kept going. And these are also the kind of days that stick in my mind, proof that I can push myself hard, that I can keep going through some pain, that I can endure.

Well, maybe ‘endure’ should be the word of the last two days. There I was, on the C&O, putting one foot in front of the other, pain radiating through my body. “Have I ever hurt this much on a walk before?” I asked myself. I felt it everywhere: my shoulders and lower back and hips and thighs and feet and even in my ankles. My ankles hurt! I realized that I should have been more careful in my packing, that I probably should have done a few training hikes wearing my pack. Why did I think I could walk 20+ mile days with 30 pounds on my back like it was no big deal?

I made it to 15-miles. I stopped, I rested my feet. “4 more miles,” I told myself. “Then you can stop.” As I walked I came up with a new plan, one where I would shorten my next few days, and then take a bus or an Uber to the next town where I could pick up my resupply box.

After 19.5 miles I made it to a campsite and I sat on a bench and didn’t move for awhile. Slowly, hobbling, I set up my tent and washed my socks and changed out of my sweaty clothes. Two people on bikes road up, and set up camp at the opposite end of the site.

I took out dinner supplies, figuring I could eat and then crawl into my tent and have an early night, that maybe sleep would soothe my muscles.

I have this little camp stove that is nifty and neat and so easy to use. It heats up water in under 2-minutes and I’ve had it for several years, used it a few dozen times.

But this time? I was using a new fuel canister so that must have been it, maybe there was a leak, there must have been a leak, because something went terribly wrong and my stove went up in flames.

I keep thinking of that expression- “burst into flames”. That’s what happened. One minute nothing, the next, the thing was engulfed in flames. I started at it for a few seconds, my brain lagging behind the reality of the situation, lulled by the licking and leaping flames.

I snapped out of it. “Help!” I called out, panicked. The bikers ran over, the guy reached in to turn off the gas and the girl suggested I douse the remaining flames with water. I’d been frozen. I don’t do well in emergency situations, when I need to think and act quickly. If I’d been alone I would have figured it out, I think, but thank goodness there were other people there.

The stove was dripping like a Dali painting, the lower component fused to the fuel canister, the smell of burnt plastic everywhere.

“My stove,” I whispered.

I knew that my trip was over. Half the food I was carrying needed to be heated, coffee included. I might be able to push myself through a lot but I wasn’t going to do this walk without a morning cup of coffee.

It’s hard to quit something. I was thinking about that today, on my drive back home, and I realized that once I set my mind to something and go for it, I rarely quit (sometimes to my own detriment, but that’s another story). I thought about all of my research, the stages I’d planned, the treats I’d tucked into my resupply box, the excitement I’d felt about being able to head down a long path again.

But I knew I was done. I let the stove cool off and ate a cold dinner of tortillas and babybel cheese and tucked myself into my tent and fell asleep to the sound of trains on the tracks and frogs in the canal.

The next morning, at 6am, I packed up my things and turned around and walked the 19.5 miles back to where I started. I didn’t think it was possible that things could get much worse, but maybe it’s just that kind of a year.

About 3-miles into the walk, I could feel a blister developing on the bottom of my foot. I’d felt something the day before, but figured it would be fine. But this time I knew it was a blister. Should I have stopped and tried to do something about it? Probably. But my pack was so heavy that I just didn’t want to stop to take it off and put it back on more than was necessary. I was already feeling defeated, I just wanted to get the miles done and get back to my car.

So I walked, and walked, and the blister grew, and grew. After about 12-miles, I knew I’d be coming to a bench beneath a tall tree (aside from the campsites every 5-7 miles, there were few places to stop and take a break). I stared ahead, constantly looking for the bench, walking on and on.

Finally it appeared, but there was someone already there. A young guy, with a large pack and a tall walking stick.

My head was foggy from the lack of coffee, my blister ached with every step and I was annoyed that I couldn’t stop to rest at the bench. But then the guy called out- “Where are you headed?”

I stopped, and turned. “Just to Cumberland,” I said. “How about you?”

He gave me a small smile. “Denver.” A pause. “Colorado.”

I grinned, something shifted. “Tell me more.”

He talked about the route he’d plotted: starting in Pittsburgh, winding down to Cumberland and then onto the C&O to DC. He would hop to the Appalachian Trail and hike down to Georgia and then through the forests and into the midwest where he would pick up another long rail-to-trails path, and get himself over to Colorado.

“When the coronavirus hit,” he said. “I started to walk around where I live. It’s the best therapy I’ve ever found.”

I nodded and nodded.

“And then when restrictions started to lift,” he continued, “I knew that I just wanted to go out and walk for a really long time. It’s freedom.”

We talked for a few more minutes, he told me that I was the first backpacker he’d seen, and he wanted some advice. I sheepishly told him that I didn’t know much, that I was new to this too, that I didn’t even know the base weight of my pack. But I did know how to walk, and I also knew that walking was freedom, and maybe despite it all, that was enough.

He told me his name was Colby, and I wished him luck on his journey, then I continued on. I thought about him as I walked, wondering what would have happened if I hadn’t had to turn around. If I’d shortened my days would he have caught up with me? We would have been headed in the same direction and maybe I could have made a friend.

Or maybe, I wouldn’t have met him at all. Maybe I needed to turn around to find another person walking the same path.

A half mile further on I found a flat and grassy patch where I could stop and rest. I aired out my feet, drank water and ate a snack and stared off into the distance, where dark clouds were gathering.

Dark clouds. I’d timed the start of my walk for days that promised sunshine and clear skies, no rain. But the clouds were moving closer, and then there was the rumble of thunder, too.

I kept walking. What else was there to do? The clouds moved overhead and rain drops began to fall and then in the next minute, the skies opened up and the rain poured down.

Another expression: torrential downpour. How else to describe this rain? I’ve walked a hundred days on long-distance trails and I’ve walked in the rain but I have never walked in rain like this. I’d put a rain cover on my pack but hadn’t bothered to put on a rain jacket, figuring that I might just walk under a passing shower and the rain would feel good and cool on my skin.

This rain was hard and cold. It pelted down, for 10 minutes, for 20 minutes. After about 30 minutes it slowed and stopped, and I stopped too. I took off my pack and dug through to find my little towel. I looked up and down the trail and then took off my shirt and dried off as best as I could, then put on a dry shirt and pulled out a poncho to carry in my hand and then continued on.

The rain started again, falling even harder than before. I threw the poncho over my head and for awhile I stayed dry but soon there was too much rain. And then thunder, and lightening, and my blister growing larger and larger, I limped with every step through the thunderstorm, through the puddles and the mud, retracing my steps from the day before.

Thunder directly overhead and the path coming to a clearing in the trees and I stopped, and waited, and stared at the ground as water ran down the poncho into my shoes and then I saw tiny white marbles bouncing in the grass. Hail!

When it felt safer to continue I kept walking, and saw that further up the path, there was a bridge overhead and people sheltering underneath. I approached, and a woman called out to me.

“Where are you headed?”

She told me all about her days of hiking the Appalachian Trail. There was wistfulness in her voice, a tinge of envy, she looked at my pack and my poncho and my shoes and told me to savor every moment. Just as I was leaving she asked if I had a trail name. “I don’t,” I said (though the name ‘Flame’ ran through my mind). Trail names are common on the the long-distance hiking paths in the US, but not at all on the paths I’ve walked in Europe.

Something else shifted when she asked this, just as something had shifted during my conversation with Colby. It didn’t matter that I’d only made it one day on the trail and had to turn around. It only mattered that I was out there, and doing it: the weight of the pack, my battered feet, soaked to the bone, water rolling in my shoes and dripping from my nose but my legs still moving, one step at a time. Just call me Flame, I thought.

I continued, two more miles to the end. The rain stopped, the clouds moved out just as quickly as they came in. The sun poured down, warming me again. A man on a bike pulled up alongside of me. “Where are you headed?”

He was biking the final stretch of the C&O, doing an out and back ride and had seen me at my campsite the night before. “I figured you were heading south,” he said.

I told him the story of my stove, that I’d decided to turn around. And the blister, and the rain, and the hail.

“Karma,” he said, “I think if you can make it through this with a smile on your face, then something good will come back to you.”

I had a half mile left, 10 more minutes to walk. The sun was shining. My legs were still holding me up.

I smiled.

Walking in Circles

May 25, 2020

I was reading a post the other day, from my Camino buddy-in-blogging, Beth. As I read I realized how nice it was to hear her voice. I knew she wasn’t out walking in France or in Spain, but that wasn’t why I opened up the post. I just kind of wanted to hear how she was doing, if she was thinking about the Camino, if she missed walking, if she was restless or energized, in despair or filled with hope.

And then I started to wonder if maybe I should l find my way back to my own blog, and post an update of my own. ‘Update’ feels like the wrong word, because not much has been happening. I was on a family FaceTime call today, and I opened my mouth to give some news, but realized I didn’t have much to say. What has changed day-to-day? It starts to feel tedious to say that I went on another walk, I baked another cake, I read on my porch.

So maybe this isn’t an update, but I’ve used this blog to write about my thoughts and feelings too, so here we are. Have I blogged at all since being under stay at home orders? I don’t think so. In fact, I think in my last post I wrote about travel considerations in the time of coronavirus, which feels a bit ridiculous now because a few weeks after I published that post, all travel shut down, just about completely.

It feels a little hard to write about travel. I didn’t go to Japan- a trip that was scheduled for the beginning of April- and I’m not going to Europe this summer, either. Well, despite my June flight having been canceled, I’m still harboring some wild hope that there could be a chance that I could sneak away to La Muse for a week in late July, or August (I know that the odds are less than slim, but I’m letting myself have this hope, because I think I need it).

I was supposed to walk in Portugal this summer, on the Camino Portuguese, but also on the Fisherman’s route, and then I would still have some time to do more walking in Spain, at least from Santiago to Finisterre, but maybe even the Camino Invierno if the timing was right. I’d given myself 40-days to walk, the most I’ve ever walked in one go, and it felt right. There have been a few years- last year in particular- when I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do, where I wanted to travel, which route I wanted to walk. But plans seemed to fall together so easily this year. Once the idea of the Kumano Kodo in Japan lodged itself in my mind, I couldn’t shake it, and it seemed to work perfectly: an inexpensive flight, rooms booked despite the late planning, a chance to see the cherry blossoms.

I’ve always had a vague sort of sense that I’d travel to Japan ‘one day’, but it always felt so far, so difficult, so out of my league. But after I did a little research and started to see how a trip might come together, I realized that I was more than ready to tackle Japan. Again, it felt right. I was doing something new, something so exciting. And it made a decision about my summer feel easy, too: by going somewhere new in the spring, I felt free to go back to Europe to do my favorite things: walk a Camino and spend time at my writer’s retreat, La Muse. I found a perfect flight for the summer too: an unbelievable price that took me into Lisbon, and the return out of Paris. It couldn’t have been more perfect!

To have travel canceled any year would have been a blow, but for some reason it felt particularly cruel this year (although- and I’ve thought about this a lot- does it feel worse only now that I can’t have it? I’ve always appreciated my ability to travel and the time that I have in the summers, but I wonder if it feels even sweeter, in hindsight, now that it is (temporarily) lost). But I do wonder if it feels harder this year because I felt so settled. For the last seven years, ever since I walked my first Camino, I’ve continued to return to Europe, searching for something: to push myself further, a new adventure/experience, a community. Some years, I’ve wondered if I should skip a summer of walking, and see some new countries, instead.

But I didn’t have those questions this year. I felt so confident in knowing what I wanted, confident in the life I’ve built for myself, in the things I’ve grown to love, in the community that I have built from my summers in Europe.

There are other things about these last few months that have been hard, but if I’m going to talk about anything here, it will probably be about travel. But I can’t publish this post without acknowledging that I still have a job, that my family is healthy (even my two grandmothers: 89 and 101 years old! I still worry, so if you have a moment, send a good and warm thought out for my Babas). I live alone, so I’ve been particularly isolated during this long stay-at-home order, but I can’t even really complain about that. For better or for worse, I like being alone, and video-chatting (plus a job where I spend many hours a day conferencing with teenagers) makes it not too difficult to hunker down and not see anyone. And, as I mentioned at the top of this post, I’ve been spending my days walking and reading on my porch and baking bread and cake and scones. I’ve made pesto from scavenged wild garlic mustard, and syrup from the violet petals I picked in my yard. I’ve done a few puzzles and turned myself into a Vermeer painting (this was early on in the quarantine; I thought I’d do a series, but I’ve lost some of that initial energy). I’ve also been writing every day; not in a big way, just small, daily diaries that I post to Facebook. I’m not sure how Facebook became the place where I shared my musings, but so be it. I’ve been taking photos every day and sharing those, too, and I think that small daily habit of writing and taking photographs has been really good for me. I won’t continue forever- in fact, I think I only have another week or two in me- because then I want to turn to other writing.

What’s a summer of my life without travel, without a long walk, without the view from my window at La Muse? I’m not sure, and it’s hard to face, but I’ll need to come up with something. I’m going to have a few months at my disposal. The obvious answer, the one that is trying to knock me over the head, is the one that says: “Nadine, finish your book!!”

It feels inevitable, doesn’t it? I can’t spend 40-days walking through Portugal and Spain, so maybe I should finish writing about that first time that I walked through Spain. Face the difficult parts of the book, do a little research, a lot of editing, find a few people who might be willing to read a few chapters, and see what happens.

So that’s one part of my summer. And the rest? It’s hard to know what this country is going to look like in a few weeks or a month, but I’ve been tentatively putting together notes for a little backpacking trip, and a road trip to the mid-west (I know that Nebraska is not Europe, but I’ve always had some strange fascination with Nebraska, and this could be the summer that I finally make it out there). It might be impossible to do any traveling like this at all, even a road trip or a backpacking trip, but I’m going to remain hopeful.

Yesterday, over on Facebook, I wrote about a cake I tried to bake. I followed a recipe for a Berry Buttermilk Cake, though I didn’t have buttermilk. In the end, it turned out that I didn’t have berries either (where did those frozen blueberries get to??), and all I could do was laugh at my buttermilk-less and berry-less Berry Buttermilk cake. It felt like an analogy for my life, for maybe all of our lives: trying to bake cakes without the key ingredients. But someone commented on my Facebook post, saying it’s what we do with those ‘berry-less’ cakes that matter.

Which is the truest thing I know at the moment. This virus isn’t personal, we’re all affected, every single one of us. I can get caught in feeling frustrated about a plain cake sort of life, a life that’s supposed to have the berries in it, but I can’t let myself get stuck there for too long. I’ve got to make the best I can with the ingredients I have.

I’ll try to write more here in the next few months, to keep you updated on the different kinds of adventures I’m having this year. I hope you’re all well, finding hope and peace and creativity and energy where you can, making the most of your berry-less cake days. More (hopefully) soon.

Travel in the time of Coronavirus

February 29, 2020

To say I’ve been preoccupied with the coronavirus is a bit of an understatement. I started following the news and updates from the moment I heard about it, and haven’t stopped since.

At first it was interesting, almost fascinating. Alarming too, but in a distant way. It felt as though it were out of control in China, but also contained within China. Truly a world away, though I watched as the events unfolded, curious and paying close attention.

In the past week I’ve paid such close attention that I’ve had to tell myself to take a break from reading the news. I’m still fascinated and alarmed, but I’m also worried that the virus will soon be hitting close to home, in several different ways.

This is such a dynamic and evolving situation, and I know in a week’s time it’s going to look different. And more different in another week, and so on.

While I’m worried about the greater impact: to the world, to the economy, to people and their health and their livelihood, I also can’t help but be preoccupied about my own little world, my own little plans.

And one of those little plans is an upcoming trip to Japan.

(These photos are all from a recent weekend trip to the Poconos Mountains, Pennsylvania)

I’d intended to write about this trip differently here on the blog; I was planning to to do a few posts before I left, writing about my trip and how it all came together and what I would be doing. I suppose I can still do that, in an abbreviated way, so here goes:

Japan has always been on my “list”, but until recently, not exactly on my radar. And yet, it all came together in such an easy way that it almost felt as though I was meant to be going. I saw something about cheap flights, and was astounded by just how cheap these flights really were (I’d never looked into flying from the east coast of the US to Japan, and always assumed it would be astronomically expensive. And I’m sure it sometimes is, but it turns out that there can be good deals, too!). Then I started looking at what I could do, and naturally began researching walks and pilgrimage routes. I’d already known about the Shikoku 88 Temple Pilgrimage Trail, and wondered if I could do a small portion. But upon further reading, I discovered the Kumano Kodo, the sister pilgrimage route to the Camino de Santiago! It’s too difficult to explain how the pilgrimage works (in this post anyway, I’ll explain more in a future post); but in a nutshell, the most popular route of the Kumano Kodo is typically walked in 4-6 days, which was the perfect amount of time if I tried to do a trip over my spring break.

So I bought a flight and secured all of my lodging and had this all booked up months ago. In the meantime, I’ve just had to wait. Wait, and walk. I’ve been walking a lot this winter, more in January and February than ever before. I walk, and sometimes it hits me out of the blue: I’m going to Japan! It feels impossible and almost unreal, this little trip at the beginning of April, to a country and continent and culture that is so different and new to me.

When the news of the coronavirus hit, it didn’t even occur to me to be worried that it would affect my trip to Japan. And even as friends and family asked if I was concerned, I brushed it aside. “The coronavirus is bad in parts of China,” I would say. “Aside from that cruise ship, it’s not a problem in Japan.” And it really wasn’t, until it was. The CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, listed Japan as a Level Two Travel Health Notice earlier this week, recommending that “older adults or those who have chronic medical conditions consider postponing travel to the following destinations”. This level could truly change at any time. Several days ago, Italy and Iran were also Level Two, but have since moved up to Level Three, along with South Korea (widespread sustained ongoing transmission; “CDC recommends that travelers avoid all nonessential travel to the following destinations”).

In the last two or three days, the number of countries with confirmed cases of the coronavirus has been climbing, and worries that a pandemic is inevitable are mounting. Every hour, it seems, there is some new update. As I’m writing this post, I just saw that the first person in the United States has died from the coronavirus. There are still few confirmed cases here, but I think that could easily change within a week.

All of this to say: I have no idea if, in a month, I’ll be going to Japan or not. And, looking a little further afield, a summer trip to Europe may be up in the air as well. I’m planning on another Camino, and it’s truly too soon to say what the summer landscape will look like, but I need to accept that anything could happen. I know that pilgrims who are planning or have planned their spring Caminos to Spain or France or Portugal are questioning their trips; posts in the American Pilgrims on the Camino Facebook group and the Camino forum have lots of good information, but no definitive advice (the links provided take you to dedicated threads on the coronavirus).

My current approach, in terms of my April Japan trip, is to wait and see. There’s nothing I can do now, except, well, to just keep walking. I’m relatively young and healthy and generally have a strong immune system; if my flight were scheduled to leave tomorrow and Japan was still classified as a Level Two I would probably go. I’d be extra cautious, load up with tons of hand sanitizer and maybe even a few masks, and avoid close contact with others. And wash my hands like crazy. Once in the mountains of the Kii Peninsula, in the southern region of Japan, I know that I would be able to breathe freely, walk freely.

But my flight isn’t for another month and a lot can happen between now and then. And even though I’m trying to remember that travel is a luxury and that my health- and the health of others- is the most important thing, it’s still frustrating and disappointing to face the possibility that travel plans could change, or be canceled altogether. It’s out of my hands, it’s out of all of our hands. We’ve just got to wait and see.

More soon.

(Listed below are additional reliable sources of information on the Coronavirus- COVID-19):

The Center for Disease Control (www.cdc.gov)
European Center for Disease Control (www.ecdc.europa.eu/)
The World Health Organization (www.who.int)
The US State Department (www.travel.state.gov)

Self-Love on the Camino

February 14, 2020

It’s February, and the word ‘love’ comes up a lot. I hadn’t planned to write a post about love (and not for Valentine’s Day, either), but as I was walking yesterday, my mind turned towards ‘self-love’. And I started thinking about what this has meant for me in the context of my Caminos and other long-distance walks.

Self-love is a practice, and it’s different than self-care, though the two certainly overlap. Self-care gets a lot of talk these days, which isn’t necessarily a good or a bad thing, but I’d say that it’s having a moment. We can have a long discussion about self-care on the Camino (and maybe we should! It’s a topic I’ve never written explicitly about), but for now, I want to think about self-love on the Camino.

Loving ourselves. It can be hard, right? Like, to really, really love ourselves. It takes great self-awareness and intention and focus and practice. And because we’re constantly evolving and changing, and entering new phases of life, I think it’s probably a life-long thing, this idea of learning how to love yourself.

The Camino is sort of the perfect place to work on this. I actually think it can happen without us even realizing it. I’ve heard fellow pilgrims say: “I really liked who I was on the Camino.” The Camino can help us return or, or remember, or unearth our best selves, our truest selves. The people we are, when all of the noise and distraction are stripped away. The Camino gives us time, and space, and a pure physical challenge that makes it difficult to hide. Who hasn’t had a day when you’re in the middle of a long uphill stretch, and there’s nothing left: no energy, no optimism, you’re running low on water. It’s hot and the flies are buzzing around your head and the clothing you washed the night before never dried and you’re hungry and annoyed and you lost your earbuds and everything is wrong. Who are you, then? Do you love yourself, then? It’s hard to hide. It’s hard to hide because there’s nowhere to go, there’s nothing else to do. You can only continue walking up that hill, and then back down the other side. You can only continue walking until your clothing dries and you find something to eat and you regain some energy in your legs and you fill up your bottle at a fountain and you see a friend and you smile. You have to walk through all the pieces of who you are on the Camino. You’re forced to face yourself.

And this experience has the potential to lead us towards self-love.

I’m not sure how much I practiced self-love on my first Camino. I’m sure I did, in ways that I wasn’t even aware of. Maybe it was when I bought a soft black t-shirt in a crowded shop in Burgos, so that I had something fresh and clean to wear in the evenings. Or maybe it was when I stopped in an albergue in the middle of nowhere, in a place where I knew no one, because I wanted time alone. Or maybe it was when I continued walking and walking, because I just didn’t want to stop.

But this idea of self-love has grown for me in the last few years, as I continue to return to Europe for more Caminos, more long walks. I suppose that going on a long walk, at all, is an act of self-love. I’ve learned that it’s something that makes me happy, something that makes me feel like one of the most true versions of myself, something that energizes me and makes me feel healthy and strong and good.

This is what self-love is, to me. Well, it’s a lot of things. But I keep coming back to those words: ‘truest version of myself’. It’s me, in all the wonderful and fun and sweet and quirky and annoying and difficult ways of being me. It’s knowing who I am, accepting who I am, and allowing myself to be who I am. And, the other piece, I think, is being kind and gentle and patient with myself, especially when things are hard.

And I get to do this on the Camino, every year I examine how I feel and try to let myself be totally present with who I am, and how I am. And then, I’ve learned to ask myself what I want. I ask myself what I need, too, but asking myself what I want is different.

How have I practiced self-love on the Camino? What has that looked like?

It looks like this:

Taking myself to a bar and finding a table in the corner, or maybe out in the sunshine, and drinking a glass of wine. Alone.

Walking past where I planned because I’m feeling so good and I just don’t want to stop.

Waking up early in the morning and walking with the sunrise.

Eating three-course meals and savoring every bite.

Making a playlist of favorite songs every year to listen to when I walk. Putting old Disney songs on the mix, and singing aloud as I walk (apologies for anyone who may have overheard my rendition of ‘Part of Your World’ from Little Mermaid this past summer).

Grinning and laughing as I walk down an empty trail, with the sun shining and the wind blowing and my walking stick held high in the air.

Choosing to stay in albergues by the coast so I can spend time with my feet in the water.

Playing with puppies, taking pictures of horses, saying hellos to the cows.

The full English breakfast. (This is not a Camino thing, but it’s a ‘hiking-in-England’ thing, and I love it).

Sitting in a pew in a dark and empty chapel, saying small prayers for my family and friends, saying a prayer for myself, asking for strength as I walk.

Sharing my stories with my fellow pilgrims.

Toasting to my sturdy ankles, learning to appreciate those ankles, those wide feet (I can’t exactly say I love them yet, but I’m getting there).

Carrying the weight of a bigger camera, so I can take thousands of beautiful photos as I walk.

Giving myself pep talks and encouragement when I need it most. My go-to phrase is actually something I mutter to myself in French: Tu peut le faire. You can do it.

Booking a ticket back to Europe, to return to yet another path, to do it all over again.

I just re-read this list and I can feel myself being lifted up; any tension I might have been carrying from the day eases. I feel lighter, I’m smiling, I’m grateful for discovering this thing that I love, this thing that I can choose to give myself (time and time again!).

So in this month where lots of people are celebrating love, I hope that all of you- my good and true friends and readers- can find moments of self-love, moments when you can give yourselves the things that you want, the things that make you feel like the truest versions of who you are.

More soon. With love.

Highlights (and Photos!) from 2019

December 31, 2019

Happy New Year, my friends and blog readers!

It’s felt like a long time since I’ve come on here to write, or to give any sort of update. But the new year felt like the perfect time, in so many ways, so here I am.

It’s one of my favorite times of the year: I love looking back, I love looking forward, I love taking stock of where I am right now. Every year, as the clock ticks down to midnight, I feel a flutter of hope and excitement for what’s to come, and I hope that never changes. There’s promise in a new year. Possibility. In some ways it feels like the slate is wiped clean, and I get another chance. “Begin with a single step”, I remind myself. It never feels more possible- whatever it is that I hope to achieve- than at the start of a new year.

What do I hope to achieve, in 2020? Oh, the same old wonderful things. Wouldn’t it be a dream to finally finish my book? (or, at least finish a solid first draft?). I’ve been slowly working on some essays to eventually publish in an e-book, and it would be awfully nice to get that out to readers soon. I always say that I want to keep blogging- and blog more- and then never do, but there it is, that ever present hope: I want to do more with this blog.

And I want to walk! I want to walk everywhere and I think (and know!) that 2020 is going to bring me to at least one path that’s a bit out of my comfort zone. Stay tuned.

Writing and walking, if I can do more of both in 2020, it will be a good year.

But this past year was a good one, too. Last year I wrote a highlight post of some top travel moments from the year, and I thought I would do something similar this year, too. But instead of travel highlights, I thought I’d just share any highlight, big or small. There’s travel, to be sure, but there’s also more: the stuff that made me happy, the things I’m glad I took the time to focus on, glad to have filled my days with.

In no particular order (or, in vaguely chronological order), here they are:

A new car

At some point, several years ago at least, I wrote a post about change and the fear of it all, and how to take the first steps. I wrote about how I don’t like change and I get very attached to my things and I love them until they fall apart, and I wondered: what would happen if I sold my car? Sold it before I needed to? Bought something more reliable and then drive myself across the country?

Well, it was a good thought, but instead I did drive my car practically into the ground. A year ago I promised myself I wouldn’t put my car through another winter, and so I had a loose deadline, then hemmed and hawed and finally, finally, bought myself a new (used) car in early February.

For me, this is a pretty big deal. My old car, my little silver Volkswagen, it still ran. There was no check engine light on. When I cashed it in for $500 (which was about $400 dollars more than I thought I would get for it), I had a flash of regret. “There are still more miles left in it!” I thought.

But I have to say, when I drove away in the new car, I felt something lift from my shoulders, and it’s been gone ever since. I don’t worry about this new car breaking down, or the transmission going, or the brakes squealing. I don’t worry at all. My old car was safe but this new one is reliable, and it opens up lots of new possibilities. Lots of road trips. And that’s exciting.

Final odometer reading

A somewhat “random” long winter weekend in Paris

It was fall 2018, a month after I’d returned from my summer trip, and already my legs were feeling itchy. I saw an email claiming that flights to Paris were insanely cheap, then confirmed it with a few google searches. I impulsively bought a ticket and when February 2019 rolled around, I found myself jetting off to Paris for a 5-day trip. (and when I say ‘jet’, I mean taking public transportation from Philadelphia up to Newark, and then getting on a flight to Paris that had a layover in Germany. Not the easiest or more direct trip, but still incredibly worth it for the price).

I’m extremely lucky to be able to do this, but even so, I worried that it was a little much. To fly from the States to Paris for 5-days because it’s the middle of winter and I need an break? No, I didn’t need to go to Paris. But I do think it was a wonderful thing to give myself. January and February can be hard months: hours of daylight are short, it’s cold where I live, and my job can be stressful and demanding and in the middle of winter it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t want to burn out from the work that I do, and lately I’ve been more intentional about taking time off and giving myself things to look forward to.

Anyway, this is a long intro to say that I had an incredible long weekend in Paris this past February. Did I write about it on the blog at all? I meant to, but I don’t think I did. I found an inexpensive studio apartment on Airbnb in the 12th arrondissement (it was a little far from the center and for such a short trip I don’t think I’d stay that far away again, but it was a charming little space and in the end just what I needed). I met up with a few friends, went to a poetry reading at Shakespeare and Company, drank lots of espresso and wine, and walked everywhere. I’d intended to spend a lot of time in museums, as well, but the city was having a warm spell, and it was hard to resist the sunshine. So I walked and walked, ate ice cream and sat in park chairs and wrote in my journal. It was perfect.

Concert reunions

Whenever my favorite artist is on tour, I always get together with my sister and best friend and sometimes another good friend and sometimes my cousin. In those moments, I wonder if there is anything much better: some of my very favorite people all together, crammed into my apartment and sleeping on my couch and my air mattress, driving to the show and singing along to our favorite songs, ordering pizza and drinking coffee and hanging out.

Our creepy “band shot”

Walks along the beach

When I was younger, I use to spend a lot of time at the beach. All through my childhood and adolescence my family would vacation at a beach house in North Carolina, and in my 20’s I’d spend time on the coast in Maine and New Jersey. I’d spend hours in a chair or a towel on the sand, hours in the water. But ever since I discovered long distance walking, I haven’t had the same kind of time to spend at the beach.

But I still find something incredibly powerful and compelling about the ocean, or being near the ocean. I may not be sunbathing or riding waves anymore, but I look for almost any opportunity I can to spend some time walking along the sand. And when I tally it up, I realize that I’ve walked on many beaches this year: Cape Henlopen in Delaware, Higbee Beach in New Jersey, Miami, Assateague Island in Maryland, all over the northern coast of Spain, and several lovely stretches on the coast of Maine.

Friends, friends, friends!

I can be introverted and at times like to tuck myself away, but I also value and cherish my friendships, and the opportunity to see friends who live far away. I got a few good visits in this year, with friends I don’t get to see as often as I like (which goes for nearly all of my friends, whether they live near or far), and this made me so happy. Here’s hoping that 2020 includes even more friendship, and time to reconnect with friends that I didn’t get to see this year.

My favorite local park

I’ve mentioned it before, many times, but here it is again: I’ve loved all the hikes I’ve done in my local state park. I know the trails like the back of my hand, and it’s a joy to hike through the forest and let my mind run free. There are just enough hills for decent Camino training, but not enough to make the hikes too strenuous. I’ve also gone on a few great hikes with my Philadelphia Camino chapter, and time with this group always leaves me feeling full and happy.

The Florida Keys!

I told my sister that I wanted to take her on a birthday trip, and asked her where she might like to go. “Key West!” she answered, and that’s how we found ourselves in the Florida Keys in April. I’d never been to that part of Florida before, and we had a blast exploring, seeing alligators in the Everglades, sunset dining on the dock, catching a Phillies game in Miami, and touring Key West with all its vibrancy and energy. We also got to tour Ernest Hemingway’s home, and I tried to soak up some creative energy in his studio.

Camping Weekends

First up, Assateague Island. Assateague is a 37-mile long barrier island off the coast of Marlyand/Virginia, and ever since my adventure on Cumberland Island, I’ve wanted to camp there. Wild horses roam the island and the campsites are steps away from the beach (some are on the beach!). My friend and I spent a great weekend on the island in May. We had ideal weather with no mosquitoes, a horse galloped through our campsite in the middle of the night (that was a close enough encounter for me!), we had hot dogs and marshmallows and wine and I pulled myself out of my tent for a sunrise walk on the beach. It’s definitely a place I hope to return to!

The second camping trip was with friends in Ohiopyle State Park, in western PA, this time in the fall. I liked getting to use my tent a few times this year, I liked getting an open sky filled with stars, I liked sitting around a campfire and spending entire days outside. Here’s hoping for more of this in the new year.

A photo with my baseball hero

I’m a big baseball fan, and I grew up watching the Philadelphia Phillies and cheering for their underdog second baseman, Mickey Morandini. I’ve met him before, but this year it was a somewhat random encounter- my family had tickets to a game, and he happened to be there that night to greet fans. We were walking into the ballpark when a voice said, “Do you want to meet Mickey?” and there he was, hanging around for handshakes and photos. Baseball is the only sport that I really care about, and it’s provided hours of entertainment throughout my life, but also opportunities and friendships. It felt like a privilege to be able to thank my favorite player and tell him that I loved watching him play.

A good, long, summer Camino

I hadn’t been to Spain in three years, I hadn’t walked for longer than 19 days in three years either. This year, I was craving a long walk, and I was craving the Camino. I had 10-days on the Aragones, and 19-days on the Norte, and by the end of it I felt like I could walk forever. There’s no doubt in my mind (or anyone else’s!) that I love the Camino and will probably continue to return all throughout my life, for as long as my legs will carry me.

Three days in Portugal

I’m hoping to write about Portugal on the blog (soon!); after my Camino I spent a few days in Porto and then took a quick trip to Sintra. I’d never been to Portugal before and my short time there told me that I wanted to come back (maybe even to walk a Camino!). I was charmed by Porto, by the blue of the tiles and the winding streets, the boats on the river, the port cellars dotting the hillside and the sound of fado, the taste of a creamy pastéis de nada. I’d just been walking for a month on the Camino and sleeping on bunk beds in shared albergue rooms, so to take a few days and slow down, in a room all my own, to wander through a city without a deadline or any real agenda, it felt perfect.

A birthday meal on the terrace

I returned yet again to La Muse- the writer’s and artist’s retreat that I can’t seem to get away from- and I spent two weeks writing and hiking through the mountains that surround the tiny village. When the other residents heard that I would be having a birthday, they organized a little dinner party on the terrace of the neighboring property (which is occasionally used for overflow musers). It was a magical night. I’m not used to doing much for my birthday, and initially I felt badly for the effort that everyone was making (I’d only met two of the residents a day before!). But in the end, I think it was a treat for everyone to be able to gather together, to dine on delicious food, to drink a glass of champagne, to squeeze around a table lit with candles, to share stories.

Another picnic along the Seine

For the past several years, I keep dreaming about moving to Paris. Not for the long term, but maybe for 6 months, or a year. I’ve never written extensively about Paris here before, but I’ve mentioned it enough for blog readers to know that it’s a city I love. What would it be like to spend more than just a few days there? To settle in and explore with more depth, to make some friends, to become a regular at my favorite spots?

But for now, my life isn’t in Paris, and I’m not sure that it will ever be. That’s the reality, and yet, I look at the ways that I’ve been able to capture some of what I’m seeking, even if I’m not living in Paris full-time. I always seem to manage at least a couple of days in Paris every year, and for the past three years running, I’ve also been able to meet up with friends and have a picnic along the Seine.

Sitting on the cobblestone, drinking a cup of rosé, ripping off a piece of baguette and smearing on some soft cheese, next to some friends, taking and laughing: that’s part of the image of my ideal Parisian life. And somehow, in these last 5 years of travel and walking and writing, I’ve been able to create that image for myself, even if it’s just for a moment.

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As expected, most of these top moments involved travel, but when I really start thinking, there are so many more: my grandmother turned 100, I had a lot of quality time with my family and my mom and I just saw Little Women, which was so special. I went on hikes and walks with a couple of great dogs, I practiced taking photos with my new camera. Work never really makes the highlight list but I worked hard this year, and will continue to. The year wasn’t perfect- none of them are- but the good moments far outshine any of the difficult ones.

I hope that the end of this year brings peace, and that the new year ushers in joy and adventure and opportunities for all of us to begin with a single step, and move ourselves towards our dreams. Happy New Year, my friends, I’ll be back soon.

Gift guide for the long-distance walker/traveler/pilgrim!

November 20, 2019

Two years ago I posted a little gift guide, for the traveler/pilgrim/walker/hiker in your life (or, for yourself!). As the holiday season is rolling around once again (is it just me or are the years just moving faster and faster lately? I swear I was just buying cheese for last year’s Thanksgiving cheeseboard, and here we are again!), I thought I would republish this list, but with more additions.

I know that when I’m trying to put together a small wish-list of my own, it tends to be filled with things I could use for my travels. I always ask for a fresh pair of Darn Tough socks (and Mom comes through every time!). And while there are still so many nifty and useful travel and hiking things out there that I don’t have, over the years I’ve accumulated a small collection of trusty and true gear.

From buffs to journals to cookbooks to camera cases; here is this year’s list. Happy shopping!

(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. And this past summer, in a pinch, I even used mine as a bathing suit top!!

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 6 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).

Clothing:

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.

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.
Marmot Rain Pants: I bought these rain pants a few years ago before walking in England, and every single time I’ve worn them since, I’ve marveled at how wonderful they are. They keep the rain out amazingly well!

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.

Gear

Eagle Creek Packing Cubes: These were a game-changer on my second Camino, and I’ve used them ever since. They helped me organize my clothing, protected it from the rest of my (dirty) pack, maximized space, and were ultra-lightweight. I love them!

Travel Towel: I use a medium sized travel towel that I bought from REI before my first Camino, and it’s the one I’m still using 5 years later. There are different sizes to choose from (the medium is more like the size of a large hand towel, but it’s worked for me), the towels are very absorbent and dry super quickly, plus are light and small and will hardly take up any room in your pack. They’re a great travel towel!
Jackery Bolt Power Bank: It took me five years of traveling before I got myself a power bank to use as backup for charging my iPhone, and now I can’t imagine traveling without it. I rely heavily on my phone to take photos during my walks (and sometimes I use it for navigation, as well), and the last thing you want is to be on a path in the middle of nowhere with a drained battery and no way to snap a photo (this happened to me on the Pennine Way, ugh). The Jackery Bolt is light and small, weighs 5.3 oz, and fully charges my iPhone up to two times (it charges fast, too!).

Backpacks: I still adore the pack I bought for my first Camino in 2014 (Deuter ACT Trail 24 liter- here’s the link but I’ve just discovered that it’s no longer available! I think it’s a wonderful pack, which makes me wonder why it’s been discontinued… though it seems like there are some other, similar options). I also really like my larger pack from Deuter, the Aircontact Lite 45+10 Liter, which I’ve used for the Pennine Way and camping trips. Finally, a couple of years ago I picked up a smaller daypack from REI, and it’s been great to take on traveling and shorter hikes closer to home. (It’s important to note that, when it comes to backpacks, what works for one person may not for another. For anything larger than a daypack, I’d recommend going to a store and trying packs on for fit and comfort. That said, I love Deuter!)
Neoprene Camera Case : Earlier this year I invested in a new camera for my travels, a Fujifilm X-T20 Mirrorless Digital Camera. I knew I wanted a case to protect the camera while wearing it/stuffed in my backpack, but I didn’t want to add too much extra weight. I found this neoprene case, and while it’s specific for a number of Fujifilm models, I wanted to include it in this list to give an example of a light and protective case. I’m sure there are similar types for whatever camera model you might be traveling with.

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 next year 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 use my Jetboil to make coffee… what else??

Books

Camino/Trekking guidebooks: Now is the time when pilgrims and travelers are planning their travel adventures for 2020 (and beyond). For those choosing to walk the Camino, many will begin with the Camino Francés. Love it or hate it, John Brierley’s guide is the most popular of them all (personally, I really liked it). I’ve also used the Cicerone guide for the Camino del Norte/Primitivo and the Trailblazer series for the West Highland Way, Hadrian’s Wall, and the Pennine Way. My blogging friend Kat Davis has authored a Cicerone guide for the Camino Portugués, and I’m adding that one to my own list this year!
Walking to the End of the World: A Thousand Miles on the Camino De Santiago, Beth Jusino. I consider Beth another blogging friend, though we’ve never met (Camino connections are great!). I read a copy of her book as soon as it was published, and think it’s a wonderful depiction of a journey on the Camino, beginning with a pilgrimage through France on the Chemin Le Puy- there aren’t many books out there on Le Puy!
Tastes of the Camino, Yosmar Monique Martinez. While I don’t yet own my own copy (what am I waiting for??), Yosmar’s cookbook is THE Camino cookbook you’ve been waiting for. With 30 recipes from Tortilla Español to Pulpo a la Gallega to Sopa de Ajo, accompanied with personal notes and gorgeous photographs, this is a Camino must-have.

My Kitchen in Rome: Recipes and Notes on Italian Cooking, Rachel Roddy. I discovered Rachel Roddy’s blog years ago, and even though I’m not much of a cook, and even though I don’t do much traveling in Italy, I was drawn in by her beautiful writing and even more beautiful images. Her blog is where I got the recipe for the fabulous lemon ring cake that I make for dinner parties on the terrace at La Muse. Since her early days of blogging she’s published two cookbooks, all recipes and many of the photos are her own.

After the Camino/Misc:

Artifact Uprising photo book: A few years ago, a good friend gifted me a beautiful photo book from Artifact Uprising- full of images from my travels! It’s a beautiful little book that I love flipping through whenever I’m missing the Camino. So often we return from trips and aren’t sure what to do with the hundreds (thousands?) of photos we’ve taken, and I think putting together a book of favorite images is a great way to capture and revisit the memories.
Cairn box subscription: Another good friend of mine once gifted me a few months of Cairn boxes: a subscription gift-box of outdoor goodies. It was such a fun gift: each month I’d receive up to 6-items of outdoor products, including gear, apparel (I got a very warm hat that I wore earlier today on my walk!), food, skincare, etc. You can send a one-time box or choose a specific number of months to gift, and I think this is a wonderful gift for any adventurer in your life. (Or, yourself! I think it’s a great service to use if you’re just getting started in your outdoor adventures).

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 shopping and happy future travel planning!

How to Walk the Camino in a Heatwave

September 28, 2019

One of the stories from this year’s Camino was the heat. Oh, the heat! I like to escape the humidity of a northeastern US summer for Europe where it’s almost guaranteed to be a little cooler and all-around much more pleasant. And usually, it is.

But this summer, Europe experienced some record-breaking heatwaves, and I happened to be walking through one of them.

It was intense.

I like to think that I can handle heat pretty well- after all, until earlier this year, I’ve never owned a car with working air conditioning. I rarely use air conditioning in my apartment, either (I have one small window unit and I generally only use it a few times a year, on the very hottest and most humid days. But I suppose I should say that my apartment stays pretty cool and a fan is often all I need to manage the heat). In any case, walking a summer-time Camino has never been too stressful to me. I expect that it will be hot, but I never worry too much. There have been some pretty uncomfortable days, but I’ve always been able to handle them pretty well.

But this summer was a different story. All told, I only walked for about 3-days in really bad heat, but that was enough. It was the end of June, and the end of my Camino Aragonés. The heat had been building and building and then suddenly it burst: unrelenting and all-consuming. At times, it was hard to think, that’s how hot it was. The highest temperature I saw recorded was 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), displayed on one of the pharmacy signs as I walked through an empty town one afternoon (empty, because every other person was inside, taking a siesta. More on that later). 40 degrees is hot, and it’s very possible that I may have experience heat a degree or two higher; I know that other parts of Europe certainly did.

I learned a few things about walking in this kind of heat, and I thought I would share more of that experience here, in case anyone else ends up in the middle of a long walk and trapped in a heatwave.

When I think back to those days, what stands out the most is the sense of community and support that developed among the pilgrims on the Camino. We were all walking through the heat, and it was a struggle for everyone. I think that the heat helped us form stronger bonds; pilgrims looked out for one another, always checking in and making sure others were okay. And, in addition to the sometimes intense experience of walking really long distances, we added an incredible heat to the pilgrimage, and it was like we were all in it together, even if we were walking separately. Like I’ve said in a previous post, the Camino Aragonés had this really nice community feel to it anyway; there were about 12-15 other pilgrims walking the same stages as me, so I got to know the others from staying in the same albergues. But I think the heatwave just made the connections easier. By the end of the Aragonés, I felt like the entire group was my Camino family, even the Spanish guy in the red shirt who didn’t really say much to anyone. It didn’t matter. When I saw him at the albergue in Puente La Reina, I ran up and smiled and gave him a big thumbs up (we couldn’t really communicate so gestures and body language went a long way). His smile was just as big as my own: we’d each made it, and in a way we’d been looking out for one another. That’s what mattered.

I walked through the heatwave but I never felt like I was in it alone. That meant a lot.

This idea of group support leads me to my next point. When walking in a heatwave, start early. Start really early. I was trying to do that anyway, but ‘early’ took on a new meaning the morning we left Sangüesa. The night before, a Dutch woman organized a 4:30am wake-up call. We were all in one big bunk room in the albergue, and this pilgrim figured that if a few of us were going to wake up really early, we might as well all wake up really early. Initially, I thought the wake-up call was way too early; anything in the 4 o’clock hour is a time that is meant for sleep, and I’ve always felt pretty strongly about that. And sure, I could have stayed in bed while everyone else woke up, but when you walk a Camino, if several people are moving around in an albergue room and packing up their things, it’s guaranteed to wake you up.

So I rose with the others and drank a cup of instant coffee in the common room, ate a bite of leftover tortilla from the night before and then headed out alone, pilgrims a few minutes ahead of me, pilgrims a few minutes behind me.

It’s probably no secret that I like to walk alone. I don’t mind occasionally walking with other people but mornings are my favorite time to walk alone, so even though I left the albergue just after 5am and it was pitch black outside, I was happy that I was walking by myself.

This was good and fine for the first 20 minutes: I was walking on a sidewalk out of town, the arrows (when I could find them with my flashlight) were pointing straight ahead. The air was somewhat cool and it was kind of exciting, a little thrilling, to be walking under what still felt like a night sky.

But then, naturally, I missed an arrow. I walked, then turned around, confused. I heard voices behind me and realized it was a group of pilgrims from the albergue. I waited until they caught up with me and then, together, we figured out where to go. I walked with them for awhile, up and down the hills until the sun began to rise behind a mountain, throwing a soft pink light through the sky. Eventually I stopped for a break and let them walk ahead of me so that I continue walking on alone. But I learned something that I should have already known (because I’ve gotten confused walking in the dark before): if I need a flashlight to walk the Camino, I shouldn’t be too far from other pilgrims.

In any case, waking up really early and starting your day’s walk well before the crack of dawn is important in extreme heat. The first few hours of the day were really pleasant and so, so beautiful as the sun was rising. Once that sun had crested the mountain, however, the heat began. It was a bit like a race against the clock, walking as fast as I could before the sun had fully risen in the sky. But the more kilometers you can walk before the sun rises, the less you’ll have to walk in really bad heat. For those three days of walking through the heatwave, I think I had finished walking and was checking into my albergue by noon, or 12:30 at the latest. The last few hours of the walk each day were tough: by 10am the heat was strong, and the time between 11:00am and noon was just a difficult hour, the kind where you need to focus on each footstep and tell yourself- “One step at a time. One step at a time.”

I can’t imagine what I would have done if I’d needed to continue walking through the afternoon on those days. It would have been really difficult, and maybe dangerous. In the past, I’ve heard pilgrims say that they walk in the morning hours, take a really long siesta during the afternoon, and then continue walking in the evening when the heat has cooled. I think this could be possible if you’re walking a Camino route where you know there will be availability in albergues, or else if you’ve made a reservation in an albergue or hotel, so that you could arrive late and still be guaranteed a bed.

On some Camino routes, it can be easy to alter your schedule and just walk short days in extreme heat. A 10 or 15 kilometer day, if started early, could have you finishing by mid-morning before the worst heat of the day. A lot of albergues don’t open until early to mid afternoon, but it would still be better to hang out inside, at a bar or restaurant, and wait for the albergue to open, rather than continuing to walk through the heat. On the Aragonés, I met two French pilgrims who decided to skip ahead a stage and take a bus to the next town, so that they could walk shorter stages and still arrive in Puente La Reina on schedule. They were worried about walking 25 or 30 kilometer stages in the heat, and so they adjusted their plans.

I think this is always a good idea. Some pilgrims will stop walking if it gets too hot, and either hang out in a village or town, or take a bus to a city for a few days and then just return when the weather has cooled. I think mentioning this is important, because walking through a heatwave can be dangerous. I never felt like I was in any danger this summer, but it helped to start early and walk fast before the sun had fully risen. If I hadn’t been able to end my walking day by noon, it could have been a very different story.

But ending the day around noon has another advantage: if the albergue is open, it gives you time to claim a bed, take a shower, wash your clothing, and then head out for a big menu del dia lunch before returning to the albergue for a nice, long siesta.

I loved doing this. I had some incredible meals and with a full belly and a hot sun bearing down, there was nothing more I wanted to do than go back to my bunk and rest for awhile. This is a pro-tip for the Camino: a menu del dia (menu of the day) is very similar to a pilgrim’s menu, but the quality of the food is often better. The price is comparable- around 10 euros- and you’ll get a starter, main dish and dessert, bread and wine, too, just like the pilgrim’s menu. But it was a treat to have varied and delicious options (and the little pitchers of wine help slow you down for the siesta, too).

Walking in the dark and eating big lunches are good and fine, but what about actually walking in the heat?

I focused on three things: keeping myself as cool as possible, drinking water consistently throughout the day, and resting in shade every chance I got.

In terms of keeping myself cool, options are a bit limited, but there are still some strategies that I think any pilgrim could use. The first is to wear a wide-brimmed hat that will keep the sun off of both your face and the back of your neck. Initially, I only had a ball cap, but when the heat got bad I went out in search of a better hat. The town of Sangüesa had a pretty awesome general store with really cheap stuff, and I found a 2 euro hat with a somewhat wide brim. It was navy blue which wasn’t the best (lighter colors are recommended), and the fit was rather poor, but at least it shielded my head from the sun more than my ball cap did. (Some pilgrims carry an umbrella to fully protect themselves from the sun, which can also work really well).

My other tip for trying to stay cool while walking in a heatwave is to use a buff. I’ve written about my buff before, and it’s come in handy more times than I can count. But my very favorite way to use it is this: when passing a fountain, run it under the water until it is soaked and dripping. Without squeezing out too much of the water, I’ll put it either around my neck or up over the top of my head. Water gets everywhere, but- at least initially- it’s cool and refreshing. The buff will dry out and warm up pretty quickly under a hot sun, but even ten minutes of a cool sensation against my neck or head is such a relief. I’ll refresh the buff at every fountain I pass.

And speaking of fountains, it might go without saying that staying hydrated is really important during a heatwave, but I’m going to say it anyway. Water is key. I read somewhere that it’s better to take small sips continuously throughout the day during extreme heat (rather than gulping down a ton of water all at once), and I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but it’s what I tried to do. In any case, I made myself drink even if I wasn’t feeling thirsty, just to make sure that I was giving my body enough water. And this is something I do on the Camino anyway, but every time I passed a fountain I would fill my water bottle. Even if the bottle was nearly full, it didn’t matter. I’d make sure it was filled to the very top (and often, the water from a fountain is cooler than what’s been sitting in your bottle, so it helps to refresh). You’re going to sweat a lot while walking in hot temperatures, so that makes it extra important to stay hydrated. Many people carry electrolyte tablets or some equivalent, and I think this is a good idea, especially if you’re walking in the summer. (There are lots of different kinds you can buy: I’ve tried these, and these).

Finally, the shade. If you’re on a forested path or walking in an area with lots of trees, the air will be a little cooler and the shade will be a relief. But on the Camino, it’s often difficult to find shade. So much of the path is out in the open, and my walk on the Aragonés during the heatwave was no different. There was a long stretch when I could see the path winding far ahead of me, the heat shimmering up from the ground, the path was a blaring white and there wasn’t a spot to hide in the shade for what felt like miles. In a case like this, there’s not much that you can do. But if you do pass a tree, even just a tiny section of the trail that has just a bit of shade, my best advice is to make a beeline to that spot and stand there for a few minutes. Small breaks are good for your body during a heatwave, and a chance to escape a relentless sun is important. I actually learned this from a dog that I hiked with a few years ago in France: on hot afternoons, he would criss-cross the road to walk in shade as much as possible. At first I thought it was funny, but then I realized that this dog was really smart. He knew what he had to do to stay cool.

I now look back at those days of walking in the heat and I wonder- “Was it really that hot?” Then I remember the last day in Puente La Reina, sitting around a table in the albergue with a group of pilgrims: from Italy and France and Japan. Most of us had just met and we were eating and laughing and toasting to the Camino and even while sitting still at the table, sweat dripped from all of us. There was no escape.

Walking in the heat isn’t always fun and it’s important to be really careful, and the smartest thing might be to change plans and avoid walking during the hottest days. I’m curious if others have had experience walking the Camino in a heatwave: what did you do? Do you have any other tips or tricks?

Repeating a Camino

September 8, 2019

I don’t think I wrote quite as much about my pre-Camino planning this year as I normally do, or what my process was like deciding how I wanted to spend my summer, but I was, in a word, conflicted.

I’ve been feeling both a pull to do something new and to go some place totally new, as well as a small tug to spend a little more time at home. So there was all this pulling and tugging when I’d been thinking about Summer 2019 plans, and I kept thinking: “Is this the year for another Camino? And if it is, which Camino do I want to walk?”

There wasn’t a clear answer, and that’s the first time this has happened. I’d felt really certain about each of my previous walks. That’s not to say that I don’t spend time researching and flipping back and forth between various options, but I usually have a feeling in my gut about where I want to walk. But I just didn’t this year.

And yet, it had been several years since I’d been in Spain. Without any obvious answers coming to me, I wondered if maybe it was time to go back to the Camino. I planned a 10-day walk on a new-to-me route (the Aragonés, read more about that here and here), but I’d still have more time to walk. I wanted to walk for a month. I didn’t want a route that was too crowded, I didn’t want a route that was too isolated. I wanted the Goldilocks of Camino routes, and there was one I couldn’t get out of my mind: the Camino del Norte.

I’d walked the first nearly 500km of the Norte in 2015 and most of the remaining 300km in 2016 and I loved it, especially the first half. It’s not a perfect Camino, and there are a few things I wish could be different or “better”, like maybe a stronger ‘Camino’ feel, a few more albergues especially in some key places. Walking in the summer can be tricky as tourists as well as pilgrims flock to the beach towns, and lodging tends to fill up. Prices are a touch higher than in other parts of Spain. There’s a lot of asphalt walking.

But there was also so, so much that I loved. When I first walked I thought that it had nearly the perfect amount of people for me: just enough so that I could form my own little Camino community, but not too many that I would constantly see other pilgrims throughout the day. I loved how solo it felt, and I also loved the friends that I made. The food was really great. While at times I may have wished for more of a Camino feel, it was also nice to walk through parts of Spain that didn’t feel dominated or defined by the Camino. More locals tried to have conversations with me, curious about why I was walking alone, making sure that I was okay and having a good time.

And, most importantly, the scenery. Another caveat: just as the Camino del Norte isn’t perfect, it’s not 100% beautiful views either. Every time the path dips away from the coast, my heart sinks. Sometimes the Camino runs nearly parallel to the coast but also frustratingly just out of view. Sometimes it rains. But the rest of the time, it is just so, so beautiful. I’m not sure I’ve found anything on any walk that I enjoy more than rounding a corner and arriving at a small, pristine beach with perfectly worn sea glass and gentle waves and not a person in sight. And it happens over and over.

When I walked the Camino del Norte in 2015, I learned how to truly be independent on a long-distance walk. I learned how to ask myself what I both needed and wanted, and I learned how to give that to myself. I learned when I needed to show up for others, and when I needed to go my own way. I sort of figured out that I loved the freedom of being alone on the Camino Francés, but I gave myself that freedom on the Camino del Norte, and I’ll never, ever forget what that felt like.

So the Norte has had this special role in all of my Camino-ing, and for the past several years I’d been adding to a document on my desktop, making notes for my next walk on the Norte, knowing that someday I’d return.

All of this and yet, even though I’d sort of decided that I would probably walk the Norte after I finished the Aragonés this summer, I wasn’t totally convinced. In fact, I didn’t make a final decision until the day before. I hesitated and hesitated because I didn’t quite feel ready to repeat a walk that I’ve already done.

There are so many other walks out there! There are so many other experiences to have! Despite sometimes feeling like I could live forever, I know that I won’t. Despite feeling young and strong, I know that I’m aging out of my youth (maybe already have). And what if my situation, having 8-weeks of freedom every summer, what if it changes? Because surely, one day, it will. Maybe soon. And all of these thoughts made it really difficult to say with any certainty: “Yes, I’m going to walk the Norte again.”

So I hemmed and hawed and honestly one thing that made the decision kind of easy was that, as I was finishing the Aragonés, I was walking through a heatwave. It was intense. Sitting at a table surrounded by pilgrims in the albergue in Puente La Reina, I could feel the sweat rolling down my back, my legs. I wasn’t even moving or exerting any energy, it was just that hot. I looked at the weather app on my phone and checked the temperature in Irun and it was significantly cooler and my decision was made. Go north. Go to Irun, start walking.

This has been a long introduction to a post where I wanted to talk about what it was like to repeat a Camino, so here we go:

It wasn’t what I expected.

It felt nearly like a totally new experience.

And I guess that makes sense, though I certainly didn’t anticipate that I would feel that way. But maybe I should know better: I don’t have the greatest memory, and I marvel at people who can remember specific details about their long-distance walks, especially details of the landscape. I think back on my walks and I can certainly remember the bigger picture, and the memorable moments are etched into my brain, and I take photos and write in my journal (and blog!) to try to remember the details, but so much of the daily walking just gets lost.

I just didn’t realize how much of it escapes my memory, I didn’t realize it until I went back to the Norte. Because once I started walking, there was so much I didn’t remember. In fact, there was a point where I was convinced that the path had been altered considerably since I’d last been there, like they’d rerouted big portions, because I just had no memory of it! I arrived at an overlook over the beach of a sizable town and… nope, nothing. Had this part of the Camino even existed in 2015? Had this beach even been there at all??

But, also there were other parts I remembered, some things were so clear. One day, I was walking on the path and rounded a bend and looked up at a slight hill and thought- ‘This is where I saw that white horse.’ And then I looked to my left down the field and there was a white horse, hanging out by the trees! And it dawned on me that it was probably the same exact horse, and something about that made me really happy.

And that kind of thing happened a few times, when I’d be walking and not really remembering the specific part of the trail but then be suddenly hit with an intense feeling of familiarity, and remember all at once exactly where I was.

So it was this interesting mix, of things I’d completely forgotten but also things I’d remembered. But there was another layer too, and that was that most of the things that were familiar were also different. It’s because I was often walking different stages than the first time, staying in different albergues, passing things at different times of the day, in different weather, with different people, and it all adds up to a new experience.

Sometimes, I recreated an experience. I love a good tradition, and walking a Camino twice is enough for me to start up traditions. And so, I took the detour down to the little beach in Onton to look for sea glass, like I did in 2015. I had the really good tortilla in Liendo. I got ice cream before the long walk along the boardwalk in Laredo. I ordered tostada con tomate at the beachside café in Noja. And I took a lot of the same photos. Sometimes this was intentional- I remembered a photo from my first walk on the Norte and came to the same place and couldn’t resist snapping another. But now that I’m home and reviewing all my pictures, from both 2015 and 2019, it’s shocking to see how many times I took the same photo in the same place, unintentionally (ahh, that photographer’s eye!).

Then there were other times when I purposefully set out to do something different. And this, I think, is the beauty of returning to walk a Camino for a second time. There were a couple towns and albergues that I wanted to revisit, but mostly I tried to stay in different places. I discovered new and wonderful albergues (I have a post that lists my favorite albergues on the Norte, which I’m going to update soon), and I discovered new villages and towns too.

I also hit the beach more. Last time, in 2015, I walked on the beach when it intersected with the path of the Camino, and sometimes during the walk I made little detours to small beaches along the way. But I never really took the time to go down to a beach in the afternoons or evenings, and I didn’t plan my stages to end in towns by a beach. This time was different. I love the feeling of my feet in the sand and the sound of the waves and I wanted more of it. I stayed in villages that were on the coast, and after finding a bed in the albergue, I went down to the beach and lounged on the sand. After much hesitation, I went swimming at a little secluded beach in Pendueles (there are two things of note: 1. To access the beach you practically have to rappel down the trail with a provided rope; I was in flip flops but I made it. 2. I’d decided not to pack a bathing suit and it turns out that there’s another handy use for the buff I always bring!). That little swim in the sea was one of the highlights of my Camino. I also went for several evening walks on the beach, after everyone had packed up and left for the day and I had the stretch of sand all to myself.

Another goal for my return to the Norte was to take more coastal alternatives. As mentioned above, the route of the Norte sometimes veers away from the coast, and while often it’s not very far, it’s far enough that you can’t actually see the coast. After some searching on the Camino forum, I discovered a great document that lists out a bunch of coastal alternatives; some I’d already explored when I walked in 2015, but there were more I wanted to find for my second time around. One very fun day was when I walked the 36km coastal route from Santander to Boo. It wasn’t an official “Camino variant”, but with some detailed instructions I’d found online, I was mostly able to find my way, and so much of the route was stunning.

I had a thought as I was walking the Norte this summer, I wondered if I could try to come back every 5 years to walk. Wouldn’t that be fun? To see how the route has changed, to see what has remained the same. To return to my favorite albergues and to find new favorites. To take the same photos, again and again, to sink into my traditions. To find that white horse. To walk more of the coast, to brave the chilly waters, to meet new friends, to remember who I was when I last walked.

It would take a lot, to return to a place and commit time to repeat a long walk and to do this continuously throughout my life. I may never walk the Norte again; to walk most of it twice was a gift. To walk like this at all is a gift, and I wonder how long I can make this last. I dream of having enough time and enough health to walk all the long walks on my list, to walk the walks I haven’t yet discovered, to return to walk the paths I’ve already been down.

Maybe all of it will happen and maybe none of it will, but I know this: I’m happy I returned to the Norte.

Camino Aragonés Guide: Essential Info to help plan your walk

September 1, 2019

I can’t remember when I first heard of the Camino Aragonés, or when it became a walk that I added to my “list”, or even when it moved to priority status. I just know that at some point, somewhere, I must have read more about it and thought, “Huh. Sounds like a pretty good Camino.”

I’ve already written about why I found the Aragonés to be a nearly perfect Camino, and if you haven’t already read that post, I think it makes a good companion piece to this one, especially if you’re considering planning a walk. But for now I’ll say that yes, indeed, it was a pretty good Camino.

This Camino Aragonés guide post will attempt to delve into some of the more practical considerations, and I hope it will give you a sense of what the walk is like, useful tips, and some inspiration to add it to your list. (Otherwise, sit back and enjoy more photos!)

First of all, the basics

I love taking a good alternate route, and it turns out that the Camino Aragonés (or, the Aragonese Way) can be considered one long alternate to the beginning of the Camino Francés. Rather than starting in St Jean Pied de Port and crossing the Pyrenees into Spain by ending in Roncesvalles (as you would on the Camino Francés), the Aragonés begins at the pass in Somport- which sits on the border of France and Spain- and continues for 170km until it rejoins the Frances at Puente La Reina.

But this is a route that has a long history, a route that was popular in the Middle Ages and served pilgrims who were walking the Via Tolosana (the Arles Route), which begins in Arles and continues to Somport (and the Via Tolosana was one of the four major pilgrimage routes cited in the Codez Calixtinus, a sort of first “guidebook” to the Camino written in the 12th century).

The Aragonés, beginning in Somport (border between France and Spain) and ending in Puente La Reina (Spain) is typically divided into 6 stages (more on that below). It is possible to extend this Camino by beginning in France somewhere on the Arles route, or continuing on the Camino Francés once you reach Puenta La Reina.

A great Camino map; look towards the top right for the path of the Aragonés (dark gray)

Why would someone choose to walk this route, rather than begin where everyone else does, in St Jean Pied de Port?

This is a great question. The Camino Francés is typically the first Camino for most pilgrims, and for those who choose to cross the Pyrenees, they do so by starting in St Jean. I did this too, when I first walked in 2014. At the time, while I vaguely knew that there were other Camino routes, I had no idea that there was an alternate Pyrenees crossing that would eventually lead me back to the Francés.

So I think for most pilgrims who find their way to the Aragonés, it is not their first Camino. It is often a pilgrim who has already walked the Francés and is coming back for more- and has maybe returned to the Camino a second, or third, or fourth time- who discovers the Aragonés and decides to see what it is all about.

On the other hand, during my walk on the Aragonés this summer, I met pilgrims who were embarking on their first Camino. One had chosen the Aragonés because he’d studied Spanish history and wanted to walk through Jaca (a city along the route). Another because she’d heard that the Camino Francés could be very crowded, so preferred to have a quiet experience to start.

I think the Aragonés could be a great option in either case: whether you’re returning for a second, or third, of fourth (or more!) Camino, or if you’re walking your very first. For a first Camino it may take some additional planning, and beginning in Somport won’t give you the same sort of Camino fanfare as beginning St Jean would, but it would make for a special and very unique experience.

In a nutshell, what is so great about this route?

You can refer to my last post, where I go into more detail of why I loved the Camino Aragonés. But to sum it up: the scenery is varied and beautiful. The route is quiet but you probably won’t be totally alone, and you’ll build a nice pilgrim community with others on the path. There are well-spaced albergues that provide just enough infrastructure to make you feel like you’re truly on a Camino (unless you want to make shorter stages, there is no need to stay in hotels or pensions. Although you certainly could opt to stay in other lodging!). Locals aren’t used to seeing crowds of pilgrims, so you’ll experience kindness and openness and maybe even some curiosity.

What is the way marking like, am I going to get lost?

I thought the waymarking was very, very good on this route. If you begin in France you’ll want to follow the white and red stripes of the GR-653, and in Spain there are the traditional yellow arrows and scallop shells (though you may also continue to see the white and red stripe markings).

Overall the signs and arrows are plentiful, and I honestly can’t remember a time when I got confused. Well, aside from when I walked for an hour in the dark (due to a heatwave), but that’s no fault of whoever painted the arrows along that section of the path. They were there, I just couldn’t find them with my flashlight.

And speaking of finding your way, is there a guide to this Camino?

That’s another good question. I didn’t use a guide for my walk, and instead just referred to the Gronze stages (a Spanish website that gives information for various Camino routes, including basic maps of each stage, an elevation profile, and albergue information, as well as where to find food and other services). I thought that the Gronze stages- even without knowing Spanish- were sufficient, and along with some prior browsing and note-taking on the Camino forum, I never needed a guidebook.

However, there are a few guidebook options out there. I can’t speak to either of them, but I’d imagine they’d only give you more information than what you’ll find online. The first, The Confraternity of St James’ guide, Arles to Puente La Reina, is in English. You’ll want Part 2, which is ‘Toulouse to Puente La Reina‘ (this will include the Aragonés). There is also the Miam Miam Dodo guide (in French), which includes the Aragonés. I used a Miam Miam Dodo when I walked the Chemin du Puy and while I can somewhat understand French, I found that you don’t really need a grasp of the language to get what you need from the guide. The maps are easy to read, and icons will show you where there are albergues and restaurants/bars.

I keep hearing mention of the Pyrenees; how difficult is this route?

If you begin in Somport- also referred to as the Col du Somport or the Canfranc Pass, and sits at an elevation of 1632m- the most difficult part of the entire route will probably be the walk down to Canfranc Estación. The path drops over 400 meters in about 7km, and some parts can feel steep and may be tough on the knees. I didn’t think it was particularly challenging, and just went real slow at times (then again, climbing hills has always been more difficult for me than descending them), but if this descent is a concern you would always have the option to begin the pilgrimage in Canfranc Estación, or Jaca. Otherwise, the path of the Aragonés is often flat, or else has you climbing relatively small hills- not unlike anything you would find on the Camino Francés.

If you begin back in France, and decide to walk up to Somport, then be advised that you will be ascending quite a bit on the final stage from Borce to Somport (the final 6km of the 17km stage have you ascending approximately 600 meters, and the total elevation gain for the stage is nearly 1000 meters). This basically means that you’ll be climbing, and climbing through the Pyrenees. I was pretty intimidated heading into the day’s walk: I’d been alone in the albergue (gîte) in Borce, didn’t pass another pilgrim for the entire day, and walked mostly in the rain with sometimes poor visibility. Aside from snow, those were probably the least ideal conditions, and yet, despite all of that, it wasn’t as bad as I feared. It helped that 17km isn’t a huge distance, so I had plenty of time. There was one point when I was only a few kilometers from Somport (and high in the mountains) when I worried a bit because I hadn’t seen a way marker in awhile, but as soon as I started to worry I found one. The rain wasn’t fun, but then again it never is, and I can only imagine how wonderful that stage would be in clear conditions.

And the bonus of the day was finding some Camino magic: someone had set up a little pilgrim rest area under some pine trees by their home. There were tree stumps to sit on, a tin with biscuits and tea bags, a stack of mugs, and a thermos with hot water. I had what might have been the best cup of tea in my life, huddled there under the dripping trees, chilled from the rain, all alone in the middle of a long climb. The tea warmed me up, the notebook where I signed my name reminded me that I wasn’t totally alone.

What time of year should I walk?

I’d say spring, summer or fall; winter will likely have snow up at the pass and what I can imagine would be dangerous conditions down to Jaca. I’d also be careful in late fall and early spring, where there would also be a chance of walking through snow.

Are there any special sights along this Camino?

Yes!! Here are what I consider the ‘Big 5’:

1. Canfranc Estación. 7km into the Aragonés you will enter Canfranc village, where it is hard to miss the ruins of an enormous old railway station. It’s been abandoned since 1970 but recently there has been renovation work and a plan to restore the building to its former glory (and, I believe, restore the railway line). It was officially opened in 1928 and serviced the Pau-Canfranc line, which crossed under the Pyrenees, and had quite an interesting history during World War II. I believe it’s possible to take tours of the station, though I’ve read that they need to be booked online and in advance, and that the tours will only be in Spanish (and possibly French). I didn’t take a tour, and it seemed like the station was only accessible if you had that magic tour ticket, but it was still such an impressive sight.

2. Detour to Monasterio de San Juan de la Peña (Saint John of the Cliff). There are two monasteries here: old (10th century) and new (17th century), and while the new monastery is worth a visit, it’s the old one that’s the real reason to detour from the Camino. The incredible building is camouflaged against the cliffside, some rooms carved directly into the stone. There’s an impressive Romanesque cloister and even a legend that the Holy Grail was sent here for protection!

A note on getting here: Don’t do what I did. This was the thought continuously running through my head as I climbed a series of mountains on narrow, steep, extremely rocky trails. It took me a long time to reach the monasteries after some pretty challenging hiking, and once I did, I was told that the old monastery would be closed between 2:00 and 3:00 (I arrived at 1:40, and I still had a 1/2 mile walk to reach the old monastery). I had still had a fair amount of walking to to do after I finally toured both monasteries (in order to reach Santa Cilia), and overall it was a long day. Worth it, but long. There’s a detour that’s listed in Gronze’s stage that I followed, and there’s a sign along the path of the Camino that points out the detour 5.2km from Jaca. DO NOT FOLLOW THIS UNLESS YOU WANT SOME LONG AND STRENUOUS HIKING, UP AND DOWN AND UP AND DOWN THE MOUNTAINS. I walked 36km and some of that was very slow going. Instead, there are a few other options.

-After leaving Jaca, you can continue along the Camino (past the sign for the turnoff to the monasteries) to a turnoff on the left about 10km in, just before the Hotel Aragon. From here it’s about 6km to Santa Cruz de la Seros, which is a beautiful little village. I’m not sure what this path is like and I suspect it may be a bit challenging, but it’s got to be better than the 12.5km of mountains that I went through. There’s no albergue here (oh, if only!) and the only accommodation was a hotel- Hosteleria Santa Cruz de la Seros- that was a little too expensive for me (45 euros in high season for an individual in a double room. It’s still quite reasonable but when compared with the 10 euros or less I was paying for the albergues, it becomes a significant difference. However, I heard it’s great). But if you want to splurge this would be a great place to stay: you can drop off your bags at the hostal and then continue up to the monasteries, the old monastery is 3.5km up a rather steep path (or you could follow the road for 7km; because of the difficulty of the path the time distance is roughly the same). Tour the monasteries and then return back down the path or by road to Santa Cruz. It would be a long day, but I think a bit easier than what I attempted.

-The other option is what the hospitalero in my albergue in Jaca told me to do, but I didn’t listen to him. And that would be to stay in Jaca for an extra night and take a bus (or taxi) to the monasteries and then back down to Jaca. I suppose you could take the bus up to the monasteries and then just walk the rest of the way down to either Santa Cruz or further to Santa Cilia too. The albergue in Jaca had information and time tables for the bus, as well as the tourism office.

This all sounds really complicated and I tried to think of an easy way to explain it, but it’s tough. There’s simply not an easy way to walk to the monasteries AND to stay at an albergue, unless you want a very long day (I didn’t arrive to the albergue in Santa Cilia until 7pm, which is very late for the Camino). But it’s an incredible place and despite the effort it took for me to walk there, it was kind of magical to arrive on foot.

3. Detour to the Foz de Lumbier gorge. This is a detour that’s just a few kilometers after leaving Sangüesa (2.4 km into the walk, you’ll want to bear right off the path of the Camino. If you’ve reached Rocaforte, you’ve gone too far). I intended to take this detour but because of a heatwave had left early and was walking in the dark, and completely missed the detour. But I’ve heard that this is a beautiful part of the Camino, taking you to a narrow gorge that’s cut by the river Irati, and the footpath leads you between steep rock outcrops and through a tunnel where a headlamp or flashlight could come in handy.

4. Church of Santa Maria de Eunate. I wrote about this in my last post, but the 12th century Romanesque church with a unique octagonal plan is not to be missed! (It’s right on the path of the Aragones, and a 4km detour from the Frances).

5. Puente La Reina bridge. In the 11th century, Queen Doña Mayor (wife of King Sancho the Great) had this bridge built in order to help pilgrims cross the River Arga on their way to Santiago. (Puente la Reina means ‘Bridge of the Queen’). 1000 years later the bridge is still being used, and is one of the iconic images of the Camino.

Any advice on how to get to the start of the Aragonés?

Travel to the Somport pass isn’t simple, but it’s certainly not impossible. If traveling through Paris, your best option is to take a train down to Pau, and then transfer to another train to Oloron Ste-Marie, then a bus to Somport. (Or, if you have the time, I’d recommend starting the walk in Oloron; it’s three days up through the Pyrenees to Somport, a really beautiful walk! You can even begin walking in Pau if you have more time).

Coming from Barcelona, you’ll take a bus or train to Zaragoza, then a bus (from the same station) to Jaca, and from here another bus or taxi to Somport.

These are some links to bus and trains that may help you plan your journey:

ALSA (Spanish bus company)
http://www.alsa.es/en/

Renfe (Spanish train)
http://www.renfe.com/

TER (French regional rail)
www.ter.sncf.com/aquitaine

Typical Stages for the Aragonés:

This walk is usually completed in 6-days, though pilgrims who detour to the monasteries of San Juan de la Peña will likely add an extra day. If you want to walk shorter distances (for instance, the first stage from Somport to Jaca is 32km!) it is often possible to find additional albergues, hotels or pensions. *Note, some of the albergues between the typical stages aren’t exclusively for pilgrims, but you will often find other pilgrims staying there.

Day 1: Somport to Jaca, 32km.
Day 2: Jaca to Arrés, 25.4km
Day 3: Arrés to Ruesta, 28.4km
Day 4: Ruesta to Sangüesa, 22km
Day 5: Sangüesa to Monreal, 27.2km
Day 6: Monreal to Puente La Reina, 30.6km

Below are my stages, including where I stayed. The first three stages were on the Voie d’Arles, and beginning in Somport I crossed to the Camino Aragonés. My detour to the monasteries of San Juan de la Peña added a day to my itinerary, so with 3-days on the Arles route and 7 on the Aragonés, I walked for 10-days total.

Day 1: Oloron Ste-Marie to Sarrance, 20.6km
Accueil Pèlerins Le Relais du Bastet (*where I stayed in Oloron… very good)

Accueil Pèlerin Communauté des Prémontrés (*where I stayed in Sarrance… must-stay!)

Day 2: Sarrance to Borce, 22km
Gîte communal de Borce

Day 3: Borce to Somport, 17km
Albergue Aysa

Day 4: Somport to Jaca, 32km
Albergue de peregrinos de Jaca

Day 5: Jaca to Santa Cilia, 36km (with detour to monasteries)
Albergue de peregrinos de Santa Cilia (*very good albergue)

Day 6: Santa Cilia to Arrés, 10.2km
Albergue de peregrinos de Arrés (*this is a must-stay albergue!)

Day 7: Arrés to Ruesta, 28.4km
Albergue de Ruesta. (*very good albergue)

Day 8: Ruesta to Sangüesa, 22km
Albergue de peregrinos de Sangüesa

Day 9: Sangüesa to Monreal, 27.2km
Albergue de peregrinos de Monreal

Day 10: Monreal to Puente La Reina, 30.6km
Albergue de los Padres Reparadores

What is your packing list like?

I brought the same things on this Camino that I have on my others, and you can find my pretty comprehensive packing list here. For this Camino I’d definitely recommend walking poles or a walking stick, particularly for the stretch between Somport and Jaca. A wide brimmed hat to protect your face and neck from the sun would also be helpful; much of the route was open and without tree-cover.

Tips for the Camino Aragonés:

-Be prepared for solo walking. If you’re looking for a Camino where you’ll meet a lot of people and always have someone to walk with, then this may not be the Camino for you. I nearly always walked alone during the day, and rarely saw other pilgrims. In the afternoons and evenings, however, I always met up with the same 10-15 pilgrims, staying in the same albergues. This lent a beautiful and small community feel to the Aragonés, but it will certainly not be the boisterous and sometimes party-like atmosphere that you can find on the Francés. It is possible that you may not encounter many pilgrims in the evenings, either, so be prepared for a quiet Camino.

-I’d recommend loading your phone with a local SIM card, if you’re traveling from the States or a country outside of the EU. There isn’t always wi-fi in all of the albergues, and because there were days when I didn’t encounter another pilgrim on my walk, I felt secure in having a working phone on me. I never needed to use the phone to call the albergues when I arrived (which I’d been worried about), though I think the first pilgrim who arrived in Sangüesa needed to call a number on the door to notify the hospitalera that we were there. I don’t think a SIM card is necessary, but I was glad to have one. Especially because I was able to help a fellow pilgrim when she dropped and broke her phone; she was able to use mine to communicate with her parents and figure out some transportation options (this was at the monastery in Sarrance, where the monk in charge didn’t have a smartphone).

This link takes you to a thread on the Camino forum that has good advice about setting up a SIM in Spain. The Orange Holiday SIM (which I’ve bought at Charles de Gaulle in Paris) has always worked well for me.

-On the stage from Arrés to Ruesta (28.4km), the only services available are in Artieda. If you’re not sleeping in Artieda and walking all the way to Ruesta, there’s a shortcut that avoids the climb up the hill to Artieda. You might be tempted to take this- and certainly could (because that hill looks big!)- but this will be your only stop for food and it might be the only fountain on the day’s stage as well. I’d recommend walking up there, filling up your water, and finding the Casa Rural that has also has a restaurant/bar. I had one of the best sandwiches of my Camino there.

-If you stay at the albergue in Arrés, you’ll probably get a village tour from the hospitalero/as. Take them up on this offer, and if they don’t mention the best spot in the village to view the sunset, ask them. And then go see the sunset. I had a mostly cloudy evening but still got such a peaceful and beautiful view.

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I hope this little Camino Aragonés guide helped show you more of what the route is like, and that it could be useful to you in planning your own walk. Let me know in the comment section below if you have any questions, or email me at nadinewalksblog @ gmail.com. I’d be happy to tell you more about my experience! In the meantime, I’m going to be dreaming about when I might be able to return to walk the Aragonés again.

Why I think the Camino Aragonés is the Perfect Camino

August 19, 2019

What is a perfect Camino? Can such a thing even exist? In late June I walked the Camino Aragonés, a 10-day pilgrimage from Oloron-Ste-Marie, France, to Puente la Reina, Spain. Technically, the first three days of my walk were on the Voie d’Arles, a route in France that runs from Arles to Somport, but for the sake of simplicity I’m including those three days when I say I walked the Camino Aragonés.

First, some basic info. The Camino Aragonés is a 160km route that begins on the border between France and Spain in the Pyrenees, and continues down through the Aragón region of Spain, crossing into Navarra where it joins with the Camino Francés just east of Puente la Reina. This distance is typically walked in 6 stages. If you begin in Somport- the beginning of the route- you are at an elevation of 1600m and the initial descent on the first day can give your knees a pounding. Some prefer to begin in Canfranc Estación or Jaca (end of the first stage and 32km from Somport), to avoid the initial descent (or because transport to Somport can add some extra steps). Others, like me, choose to begin walking a little further back, in France, where you have the chance to walk up and into the Pyrenees.

The Pyrenees at Somport pass, Camino Aragones

And this brings me to my first point on why the Camino Aragonés is the perfect Camino. The scenery! Even if you don’t choose to tack on a few extra days in France, you will still get to experience the Pyrenees mountains if you begin in Somport or even Canfranc Estación. I had one day of bad weather walking up to Somport, and one day of beautiful and clear weather walking down to Jaca, and each of the days were stunning. And I found both to be a very different experience to walking through the Pyrenees on the Camino Francés. The terrain isn’t so different- it’s the same mountain range, after all- and that makes it difficult to articulate why I found it different. I didn’t encounter a single other pilgrim or hiker on the day when I walked up to Somport, so maybe that was part of it; the mountains felt a little more wild and raw, the peaks higher, more jagged. It was just me, taking on the mountains, and that was exciting and adventurous in a different kind of way than I’d experienced on the Francés.

But then, very quickly, the landscape changes. All that saturated mountain green is replaced with colors more subdued, bleached and faded by the sun: dusty whites and deep golden yellows and soft browns with tinges of orange. The terrain evens out, flattens, and you can see a white road stretching and curving until it fades into the horizon. Fields of wheat, dotted with red poppies, wave in the wind.

Red poppy in a wheat field, Camino Aragones

This is similar landscape to what you see on the Camino Francés, and so for me, this is classic Camino. In fact, you might be thinking that what I’ve described so far is very similar to the Camino Francés, and you would be right! I think this is one reason why I’m calling the Aragonés a perfect Camino. Ever since I first walked the Camino Francés in 2014, I’ve been chasing after that elusive “Camino feeling” that I experienced on that route. Other Camino paths- the Norte, the Primitivo, the San Salvador, the Chemin du Puy- certainly were wonderful and unique in their own ways, but each felt very different than the Francés. I think I was searching for some particular combination of landscape and community and Camino magic, something that I felt on the Francés. It’s hard to articulate or define, I just know I felt it again on the Aragonés.

It was the landscape, but it was the community too. Sometimes other routes can feel too crowded or too isolated, but the Camino Aragonés felt just right. There was a sort of core group of about 10-15 of us, the numbers shifting a bit each day but mostly everyone walked the same stages. 15 pilgrims on any given stage is certainly not a lot, and unsurprisingly, I often didn’t see other pilgrims during the day’s walk. But in the afternoons, we’d all arrive at the same albergue, and so after only a few days you got to know everyone else. This is certainly the experience on other Caminos as well, but it was so easy and natural on the Aragonés. Because there weren’t so many albergues, it was difficult to walk different stages from the other pilgrims. And because there were only ever about 15 others walking the same stages as you, you got to know the group fairly quickly.

And for me this was perfect. I think the numbers can certainly fluctuate- in Arrés, the hospitalera told us that there had only been two pilgrims the night before!- and I suppose the time of year can influence the number of pilgrims walking, as well. So maybe I lucked out, though from reading through posts on the Camino forum, it seems that others tended to meet up with at least several pilgrims each night. But it’s this: the combination of quiet and solo walking during the day, with a known and comfortable little community in the evenings, that make a Camino so special to me. I worry that if I walked the Francés again, it would feel too crowded. Even the Norte, a route much less populated than the Francés, felt a little crowded when I walked it again this summer. So a combination of solo days and social nights on the Aragonés was just right.

There was an ease that developed among my Camino Aragonés cohort; for a few days we were walking through an intense heatwave, and everyone checked up on each other. We ran into each other during café con leche breaks. I gave some shampoo to the two young Spanish girls. I went grocery shopping with Micky, from Japan. One night, Javier cooked his famous tortilla for the whole group. In Sangüesa, we propped our cameras against an old stone wall and set the self-timer and gathered together for a photo. But there was a looseness, too, it wasn’t like we had purposefully picked each other to be part of a “Camino family”. We were just all walking the Aragonés at the same time. That was enough. That made us family.

The fact that the Aragonés isn’t a popular route may lend a little extra “Camino spirit” to the experience. Sometimes I wonder if, on more populated routes, there can be this sort of monotonous feeling, like it’s one more day and one more big group of pilgrims, and towns and villages are used to it, they absorb the pilgrims, it’s all sort of normal and automatic.

Maybe it’s like this on the Aragonés too, but it didn’t feel like it. It all felt special. Like the route was a secret, one that had been around for a long time, and those of us who walked were lucky to find ourselves on it. There was a sense in many of the villages that I was popping in to very local spaces. In one town, I’d arrived just at 9am, and was walking through the quiet streets looking for an open bar. I ran into a man who started asking me about my pilgrimage, and then he walked me to the bar and said that we were arriving just at opening time. He waited with me until it opened, then went in and had his usual: a café solo and a croissant. He drank his coffee at the bar while I sat at a table, but when he left he nodded and smiled and wished me a Buen Camino and it all made me feel- even though I was just passing through- that I was welcome there. Even, maybe, that I belonged there.

And then there are the albergues. There are just enough on this route that you never have to stay in a hotel or pension, and while there aren’t so many that you can stop whenever you feel like it, I think there are enough that you can walk reasonable distances. There are other Camino routes in Spain that I’m interested in walking- in particular the Invierno– but the lack of albergues on that route have made me hesitate. I’ve heard that it’s a wonderful Camino and I’m sure I’ll check it off my list at some point, but being able to stay in albergues has always been a huge draw of walking a Camino.

Some of the albergues on the Aragonés are really special. At the albergue in Santa Cilia, there were two clean and small bunk rooms: one for peregrinos, one for peregrinas. I was the only female pilgrim that night, and so I had the room to myself! In Arrés, the two hospitalerars were volunteering on a two-week stint, and they took us on a tour of the village before preparing a big dinner. We ate outside, crammed around two long tables: there was wine and water and juice for the kids, and a big green salad and pasta salad and soup and bread and melon for dessert. We toasted, one of the French pilgrims sang “Ultreïa!”. In Ruesta, the albergue is part of a crumbling, abandoned village; if there weren’t signs pointing the way, you might walk right by. There was a communal meal here, too. In Sangüesa, the albergue was simple and the kitchen was small, and while there was no organized communal meal, we made our own.

What else makes this a perfect Camino? After the descent to Jaca, the majority of which is during the first 7km on the first stage, the path mostly evens out and the walking isn’t very difficult. The way-marking is thorough and the only time I got a little confused was when I was walking in the dark at 5am (this was during the heatwave), and I had to wait for others to catch up with me to figure out where to go, because it was hard to find the arrows in the dark.

There are a couple of alternate route options that lead to incredible sights: the detour to the Monasterio de San Juan de la Pena, and the detour to Foz de Lumbier gorge. I’d intended to take the Foz de Lumbier variant but that was the morning I began walking at 5am, and I completely missed the turnoff. Other pilgrims who walked showed me their photos, and it looked stunning. But I did take the variant to the monasteries and it was probably my toughest day on the route- I went the long and difficult way, not paying close enough attention to notes I’d made from pilgrims who’d done this before. I plan to write more about this in a future post, outlining what I recommend and do not recommend in terms of getting to the monasteries. But in the end the effort was worth it: the old monastery is tucked away deep and high in the mountains, carved into a cliffside. You almost can’t believe it’s real.

And then, just before the Aragonés ends by joining up with the Francés before Puente La Reina, the path runs right by the fabulous Church of Santa Maria of Eunate. I’d been here before, back in 2014 when I walked the Francés, and that little detour was one of my favorite parts of the entire walk. I turned away from the other pilgrims, heading left into the fields of Navarra, and in a remote location with seemingly nothing else around, out of the fields rose the 12th century Romanesque church. Its octagonal design and free-standing cloister, along with its remote location, make this a truly unique sight. It had been closed the day I detoured there in 2014 (a Monday), but this year I passed by when it was open. This felt really special to me- not just seeing the church again, but walking the path that leads straight to it. When I first walked the Camino and detoured to Eunate, I’d been vaguely aware that I’d crossed onto another Camino route, but it was something I’d just pushed from my mind. Back then, the Camino Francés was the Camino, nothing else seemed to matter much.

But now, having walked all over northern Spain and through parts of France, I have a different perspective. Pilgrims walked to Santiago from all over Spain but from all over Europe, as well. The Francés is just the most popular route today; in the Middle Ages and over history, it was a different story. And by walking the Aragonés and stopping again at Eunate- where scallop shells have been discovered among the remains of what are believed to be pilgrims, lying beneath the church- I felt even more connected to the history of the Camino.

Finally, the Camino Aragonés ends in Puente La Reina, which is a wonderful town on the Camino Francés, with storks in their nests high in the church towers, and an iconic 11th century bridge. With daily buses to Pamplona and beyond, this is a convenient stopping point. Or, if you have more time, you could continue walking on the Francés, as some pilgrims do.

There’s so much more about the Camino Aragonés that I want to share, and I anticipate writing a round-up post of planning and walking tips, to help future pilgrims. But for now I’ll end by saying what I’ve said at least a dozen times: this felt like a nearly perfect Camino. I’m not sure why more people aren’t walking this Camino. Maybe, at just 6 stages, it feels too short (although by starting a few stages back in France, or continuing on the Francés past Puente La Reina, you could make this into a longer Camino). Maybe it’s because it doesn’t end in Santiago. Maybe it’s just that not enough people know about it, or are uncertain of what they’re about to walk into.

I hope that I can help spread the word about the Aragonés. Yet, even with an increased awareness, I don’t anticipate flocks of pilgrims suddenly descending and flooding the path. But I do hope more come to walk this way. The infrastructure is there, the beds are waiting to be filled, the locals are ready to greet you with a ‘Buen Camino’ and a great big smile.

Add this perfect Camino to your list. I’m so glad that I did.