walking Archives - Nadine Walks

A Race to the End; Day 5 on Hadrian’s Wall, Carlisle to Bowness-on-Solway (15-miles, 23km)

May 18, 2017

I wouldn’t recommend anyone do what Heather and I did for Day 5 of our Hadrian’s Wall walk.

The actual mileage of the day’s walk wasn’t that bad- a solid 15 miles- and the terrain was fairly (mostly? completely?) flat, with a mix of pavement and soft grass walking.

But if you read my last post, you’ll remember that I ended it with a bit of a conundrum. Due to time restraints, we only had five days to complete the 84-mile route, but the worst part about this plan was that we’d need to do the final 15-miles AND return to London all in the same day.

I knew it was going to be exhausting. We’d have to walk really fast, and then we’d have to take a bus, then a train, then the Underground, then a shuttle in order to get to our hotel by the airport.

Would it have made more sense to sleep in and enjoy a leisurely breakfast and explore the city of Carlisle before catching our train back to London?

Probably.

But I bet you can guess what Heather and I did… we walked. We walked really fast.

I can’t say that I enjoyed our last day of walking in the same way that I enjoyed the other days of our Hadrian’s Wall journey; there just wasn’t time to think, or slow down, or hesitate or pause. I took some photos, but I never lingered. And there was a lot to linger over.

The walk weaved through the same park that led us into Carlisle the day before, but due to a diversion we were rerouted out of the park and through the city. I actually enjoyed this diversion quite a bit (aside from the stress of wondering whether it was adding more mileage and time to our day’s walk); we got to pass by Carlisle’s castle, and in general got a much better sense of the city. There was a lot of countryside walking on this route, and that is wonderful, but something I’ve grown to love about these treks is that they’re not wilderness trails. We get to see it all: open countryside and wild moorland and busy towns and cities too.

We had good weather for the entire day: a mostly sunny morning, followed by a cloudy early afternoon. After Carlisle the path returns to the countryside, and passes through several small villages.

We took only one real break, 15 or 20 minutes sitting on a concrete slab in the Solway Estuary (tide was low, thankfully. You’ve got to check tide-times before walking this section, otherwise you may get stuck waiting until the tide recedes- the road is virtually impassable when the tide is high). We scarfed down food and just when I could begin to feel myself relaxing and enjoying the strange beauty of our resting spot, we needed to pack up and continue on.

The path here is all on tarmac, totally straight and it’s like that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (have I referenced this before? When I walk I feel like I think about it all the time…): Sir Lancelot is running through a field, ready to attack, but he keeps running and running and never gets any closer. Well, in any case, this is what the walk along the marsh felt like: walking and walking and nothing in the distance seems to be getting any closer and you think you might be walking down this road forever (maybe a bit like the Meseta on the Camino?).

This part was a little tough on the feet, as well, and even after we moved away from the marsh, the path seemed to continue on the road for a long time. So long that eventually Heather and I wondered if we’d done something wrong.

And this was the first time that both of us missed a turn and went off route. It ended up okay- we just followed the road rather than a dirt path, so we didn’t really veer off course- but I think we may have added a little distance. Plus, I’m sure our detour wasn’t nearly as beautiful and was certainly tougher on the feet.

But we powered on and I think we were both anxious to arrive in Bowness-on-Solway. As we got down to our last couple of miles, we knew we’d make it with plenty of time to spare (we had a 1:39 bus to catch out of the village), but we still kept up our fast pace because at that point we just wanted to arrive at the end with enough time to sit down, take off our shoes, and have a bite to eat.

About a mile before Bowness-on-Solway the route passes through Port of Carlisle and it was here that we ran into Roger. At first we only noticed an old man in a floppy hat, propped up on a bicycle. Then we saw a large signpost behind him, with an arrow pointing towards Bowness-on-Solway, but also one pointing back to Wallsend.

The man introduced himself to us, and we soon learned that Roger stations himself in this spot nearly every day of the Hadrian’s Wall walking season. He learns where walkers hail from, and adjusts the signpost accordingly. He changes the cities and mileage with every walker who passes by, and offers to take a photo (he also points out a small donation box, and we were happy to put in a few coins).

I thought Roger and his sign was an excellent way to mark the end of a long walk: what a souvenir, to have a photo of us at the end, with a sign of how far we’d walk and how far we’d traveled to get there!

Another mile to Bowness-on-Solway and then we were done! We found the official ‘end’ of the route, took a few photos, and then settled into a table at King’s Arm, the main pub in town.

We may not have had time to stop and smell the roses for this day’s walk, but I do have to say that there’s something satisfying and even exciting at attempting a physical challenge. At this point I know that I can walk long distances, but walking that fast for that long was something a bit new. When we set off we weren’t totally convinced that we could do it (which was a little nerve-wracking but worst case scenario was that we could have taken a taxi back to Carlisle if we missed the bus). But when we finished, it felt like a real victory.

We didn’t stroll up to the end- we marched there, we sailed there (some might even say that we were carried by the wind).

So that’s another walk in the books; time to set my sights on the next one!

(Did you miss the other daily recaps? Here they are: Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four)

Adventures in the rain; Day 4 on Hadrian’s Wall, Gilsland to Carlisle (20 miles, 31km)

May 10, 2017

It’s a cool and rainy day here in Philadelphia, the sort of day for organizing and baking a cake and writing a blog post. I want to get these last recaps of the Hadrian’s Wall trek out, because before I know it I’ll be headed off on my summer adventure! (Still a month to go, but I have a feeling that this time is going to go by in the blink of an eye).

So speaking of a rainy day, let’s talk about Day 4 on Hadrian’s Wall. When I woke up in the morning from my cozy bed at Slackhouse Organic Farm, I heard a pitter-patter on the window. Uh-oh.

I got dressed and shoved my things in my pack and then peered out the window for a closer look. The sky seemed to be spitting rain but it didn’t look too bad. Sort of like a mist. And a mist isn’t too bad to walk in, right?

Heather and I headed to the lounge and kitchen area, where we settled into the breakfasts that we had ordered the night before: I had a large french press full of good strong coffee, and fried eggs over toast. In addition to this, I’d also ordered toast and jam. The toast was all I was going to eat initially- bread and butter and coffee being my preferred breakfast on any given day- but Diane, our hostess, talked me into something heartier and so I added some eggs. And the eggs were good but the warm loaf of bread that was wrapped in a tea towel and served with homemade marmalade? I must have eaten half the loaf.

Diane gave us some advice about the weather, as she squinted into the gray morning. “Rain before 7, fine by 11.”

I liked how promising these words were, and so Heather and I suited up and headed out. Neither of us wore any of our rain gear because it seemed like the rain had mostly stopped, but what were we thinking? About five minutes into our walk I had to stop to put on my rain jacket, and a bit further on Heather did the same.

We separated once we got back to the route (Slackhouse Organic Farm was about a 10 minute walk off the path). I wanted to hunt for an inscription on a stone that was supposedly somewhere on the Wall close to Birdoswald (the remains of another fort), so Heather continued west while I backtracked a bit. I found myself wandering around an open field, staring at stones in the Wall hoping I would see something, while the rain started to come down harder.

I soon realized that it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, so I gave up and started walking. As I passed by Birdoswald- too early to be open- I considered finding a dry, tucked away spot under an awning to change into my rain pants. I hesitated, but then kept walking, convinced that the rain wasn’t actually that bad (once again- what was I thinking??).

But I didn’t really consider the effect of the wind. I suppose the rain was never really that bad, but the fact that the wind was blowing it straight into me as I walked meant that my clothes were becoming very wet. Most concerning were my pants. I’ve walked in a bit of rain on the Camino before, and my pants got wet, but because I walked in the summer it was never really a big deal. My legs would feel wet but once the rain stopped it was always warm enough that the pants would dry and it would all work out fine.

But I never thought about what wet legs might feel like in 40-something degree weather (which is what we started walking in that morning). Very quickly my legs got very cold. By this point I’d moved away from Birdoswald and was walking through fields and countryside, with a street running parallel to the track. There was no cover, no dry areas, nothing but grass and sheep for as far as the eye could see.

I continued to walk but as soon as I saw a cluster of trees tucked against a stone wall (not the wall, I don’t think), I ducked beneath it, took off my pack, and dug around. I couldn’t just put my rain pants on over my hiking pants because the hiking pants would still be wet and I’d still have cold legs. So I did the only thing I could think to do, after looking far down the road and assuring myself that there were no cars coming.

One foot and one leg at a time, I took off my shoes and then my pants and put on my long underwear layer and then my rain pants. This took some balance and there was a lot of hopping around a field in my underwear involved, but eventually I got myself redressed (oh what a show for all the sheep and lambs!).

My changing room on Hadrian’s Wall

This was my first time using rain pants and I have to sing their praises. My layering system was perfect for walking in the rain in cool springtime temperatures. My legs were dry and warm and the rain pants continued to keep everything dry and warm. Between those and my rain jacket (with a buff over my forehead to keep wet hair out of my eyes), I actually felt really comfortable walking in the rain, which is the first time that’s ever happened.

I think I could have kept walking in the rain for a few hours without too much complaint, but after only about 30 minutes the rain stopped (of course).

The skies stayed gray for another hour or two, but then they suddenly cleared and we were treated to sharp blue skies and fluffy white clouds for the rest of the day. And despite it being another long day, the walking felt good, with mostly flat terrain.

Aside from the rain, we had just a bit of more bad luck on this day. Both of the places where we planned to take breaks were closed! The first was a small tea shop in the village of Walton (this is also the last spot where the remains of the Wall are visible). Despite our guidebook advertising opening hours Tues-Sat, we arrived on a Wednesday to find it not open until Thursday. Grr. We hit the post office just before they shut their doors for the day (around noon), and a kind woman inside let us use their bathroom. We ate a snack at a picnic table in a park nearby, but then kept moving; in another 7-miles there would be an Inn where we could stop for a late lunch.

But when we arrived at the Stag Inn we discovered that this, too, was all closed up. Peering through the windows only led us to believe that- despite how pleasant the place looked from the outside- that maybe they had shuttered for good. (But later we found out that the place wouldn’t be open until sometime in the summer. We were mislead by our guidebooks once again, which promised opening hours all-year long).

I didn’t have much food left on me, and I suppose I could have made it all the way to Carlisle but we made a short detour about 3-miles before the end of our day for what felt like the first true break. There was a pub in a hotel just off route, and after refueling we continued on for the last leg of the day.

The walk into Carlisle was so pleasant: a sunny stroll through a big park, full of dog walkers and joggers and bikers.

And when we arrived at our B&B it felt like a little paradise: a spacious room with three beds, a tea tray with biscuits, a shower with hot water, a window with a view over the neighboring rooftops. We could have stayed in our room for hours, but after showering and washing our socks, we headed into the city for some dinner and some wandering.

Carlisle is a place I definitely could have spent more time in, and I was strongly considering axing our plan to walk the next day. Our final day of walking was going to be a difficult feat (hehe): we needed to walk 15 miles to Bowness-on-Solway in enough time to catch a 1:39pm bus back to Carlisle (where we would catch a 3pm train back to London). This basically meant that we would have to walk at a fast pace with very minimal break time for the entire 15-miles, and then turn around and go right back to where we started that morning. No time to stop and smell the roses, no coffee breaks, no lingering over photos.

This isn’t my preferred way to walk, but it was either end our trek short and enjoy the sights in Carlisle (which was so tempting), or attempt to do the entire Hadrian’s Wall route, from the very beginning to the very end.

Can you guess which one we picked? Stay tuned.

(If you missed them, here are recaps from Day 1, Day 2, Day 3)

Hold Onto Your Hat!; Day 3 on Hadrian’s Wall, Grindon to Gilsland (15 miles/24km)

May 9, 2017

My favorite part of Day 3 on Hadrian’s Wall was the wind.

That might seem a little strange, considering the wind was wild and since we were walking east to west, it was blowing strongly against us and made the walking 10 times more difficult than it should have been. All of this and yet- the wind was powerful, and dramatic. And considering that the bulk of our walk was on vast and open moorland, isolated and remote, our only company an ancient and crumbling wall… well, the wind felt like it was supposed to be part of the scene.

There were a couple times that I just laughed. I was standing up on a hilltop, my arms outstretched, leaning forward but propped up by that powerful wind, and laughing was about the only thing that I could do. I laughed out loud- thrilled and a little crazed- my voice grabbed up by that wind and carried swiftly away. Could Heather- just 10 paces ahead- hear me? Could the newborn lamb hear me? I could barely hear myself.

The wind knocked us around, sometimes throwing me several steps off the course of the path. It pushed my stick around, my hair flew in all directions.

It was great.

Excuse the expression on my face; I must have been reacting to the wind!

When we set off in the morning, I assumed that we’d have a somewhat easy day- only 15 miles, from Grindon into Gilsland. It was 8 miles less than the day before and yet, we didn’t arrive at our destination until nearly 7pm. Our start was slow and we lingered over ruins and forts and milecastles and turrets, but still, I blame the wind. I didn’t account for that wind.

There was no sun, either, but there was also no rain, and that was key. And like the wind, I thought the gray and cloudy skies added to the drama of the day. Because for nearly the entire stretch of our walk, we were just alongside the Wall. It stretched and curved, up and down a series of endless dips and crests.

We were in some wild country, indeed. Shortly after setting off we passed through Sewingshields Crags, the land of King Arthur and his knights. Next came Housesteads, the most preserved and intact fort on the Wall (there is a visitor’s center and a fee to enter the “grounds” of Housesteads; Heather and I lingered in the shop and read a few plaques but decided not to spend the money or take more time from our day. If you’re walking a short day I think the fort is well worth the visit, and there’s a nice selection of postcards and ice cream, as well as a small museum, inside the shop).

Further along, after we passed a couple of very newborn baby lambs (what a fun part of walking in the springtime!), we came upon Sycamore Gap. This is a rather famous spot, as there’s a large and imposing tree that appeared in the film Robin Hood. I’d read this in my guidebook before setting off that morning (and I just have to quote what the book has to say about the tree and Kevin Costner: “where, despite the distinct disadvantage of being a tree, it still managed to appear less wooden than its co-star”).

We made it to the hill just above Sycamore Gap, and as we’re descending, Heather said- “Here’s your tree!”

Confession time. Here’s something that happens to me when I walk: I get really into the actual walking part- the journey, the movement- and I just sort of glide through wherever I am and sometimes miss out on the details. And I wasn’t even gliding at this part of the day (there were too many hills for that), but I think that as I walk a long trek, I sort of begin to simplify things around me. I see things, but I don’t always fully process what I’m seeing. I just sort of take everything in, and the ground is the ground, a tree is a tree, a flower is a flower.

This happened a lot on the Camino; at the end of the day, people would say to me, “Did you see the plaque that marked the crossing between Spain and France? Did you see that castle over there? Did you see the ‘Santiago’ sign, just before entering the city? Did you see the first glimpses of the Atlantic Ocean?” These were big things that I just sort of missed, and I’m sure that I did, in fact, see them all, but they didn’t really register.

This happened at Sycamore Gap. We were clearly at the Robin Hood tree; it was this huge and solitary tree, and there were dozens of people all around this part of the route (because it’s the most scenic part of Hadrian’s Wall, many tourists and locals come here for a day-trip). When we got to the bottom of the hill we stood around awhile at the base of the tree, so Heather could take a photo. I started ahead of her, having had enough of the tree and the crowds, and it wasn’t until later in the day that I sort of said, “Oh, I must have missed the Robin Hood tree.” (not realizing that the tree at Sycamore Gap WAS the Robin Hood tree).

Heather, quite understandably, looked at me as though I was a little mad. (Maybe I am. Does this sort of thing happen to anyone else??). She’d even said- “That’s your tree!” and it all just went over my head.

Oh well. I actually sort of like that when I walk or hike, I can get into a zone where I can block things out and just focus on the essential. In any case, we had a good laugh about it over a late lunch, where we’d stopped at a pub called Twice Brewed Inn in the little hamlet of Once Brewed.

The rest of the day’s walk was full of more up and down, more wall, more sheep and lambs.

Our destination- Slack House Organic Farm- took a bit longer to get to than we expected, and we were a little unsure what the dinner situation would be like when we arrived (I realized, too late, that I was supposed to have called ahead to reserve dinner). But when we arrived, everything worked out: we were the only people staying there that night, so Diane- one of the owners- set us up in the large 3-bed ‘family room’. She whipped us up a hearty vegetable stew with pasta (there must have been a dozen different vegetables in the stew, and it was warm and so delicious). I’d definitely advise reserving dinner ahead (Heather and I were prepared to eat whatever scraps we had in our packs), but Diane was gracious and kind, and took care to make sure that we were well fed.

That night I got my best sleep of the entire journey. Between the hills, the wind, the miles and the satisfying stew, I slept deeply. Good thing, too, because we had another 20 mile day ahead!

Beware of Shortcuts; Day Two on Hadrian’s Wall (Heddon-on-the-Wall to Grindon, 23-miles/35km)

April 30, 2017

I had two main worries about the Hadrian’s Wall Trip.

Worry #1: Rain.

And Worry #2 was that I was fitting too many miles into too short of a time frame. Was 5 days going to feel too rushed? Would some of the days be too long to be enjoyable?

The border agent at Heathrow certainly thought so.

“Why are you here?” was her first question.

I explained my walking trip, and how I had loved my experience on the West Highland Way so much that I immediately started looking into Hadrian’s Wall.

“When are you starting your walk?” was her next question.

“Uh,” I hesitated for just a moment. “Tomorrow morning.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “So you’re catching a train today? From Kings Cross?”

I nodded, and she continued. “What about jet lag?”

I no longer felt as though she was assessing my intentions for being in the country, but rather critiquing my travel plans.

“I might be a little tired?” I offered, unsure of what else to say.

She then went on to ask when I was leaving, and how long I had to walk. Finally, she stamped my passport and as she handed it back to me, offered a quick smile (though her eyes betrayed her doubt). “Good luck,” she said.

Honestly, I didn’t think it was luck that I needed (other than some luck with the weather forecast). It was more determination, and persistence, and stamina. No, I didn’t need luck to do this walk in 5 days. I just needed to believe that I could do it.

I say all of this because Day 2 was a big one. On these long walks, I don’t normally plan a 23-mile/35km day at the very start of my journey, but for this particular trip, I didn’t have much of a choice. Our really long day was going to have be either our second or third day of walking, and I knew that the elevation and hills were going to be tougher on Day 3.

So Day 2 was our big day. My guess is that we set out around 8:30, following a cooked breakfast in the kitchen of our bunkhouse. Because most of the places where we stayed offered breakfast, we were a bit tied into whatever time all the guests agreed upon. This is one area where I’m still very much in the Camino mode- when the sun comes up, that’s when I want to be walking. On my very biggest Camino days, it was pretty easy to be up and walking by 6:00am (this is in the summertime, and just as the sun was rising). But along Hadrian’s Wall, the earliest I ever saw breakfast offered was 7:30, and I think 8:00 is an even more typical hour.

And I don’t want to skip out on the breakfasts! Houghton North Farm offered a great spread. It was mostly simple stuff: toast and cereal and juice and fruit. But our hostess stood at the griddle and cooked us up fried egg sandwiches with thick slices of bacon and oh man, was that a good sandwich. It was the perfect thing to fill my belly and give me energy to start my day, and almost enough to make up for the fact that there was no coffee. (This was alarming. There was a dusty coffee pot in the corner and when no one was making a move to brew some beans, I asked if I could make a pot. The answer I got was: “You don’t want to drink the coffee I have here. Seriously.”). I made myself a cup of black tea instead, and it was enough to keep away the caffeine headaches but I would probably say that the lack of coffee was the biggest drawback to our stay at Houghton North Farm.

The resident dogs gave us a warm and friendly send off and then we were back on the road, our long day of walking had begun.

For the first couple of hours I walked separately from Heather. I kept stopping to take photos and then finally waved her on ahead, and I was content to spend a little time walking alone. It was a different experience- a long trek with a friend- and already I was missing my solo time. And I got it back that morning, as I moved through the soft and quiet countryside. Despite the sunshine, the air was cool and chilly, and I pulled out my buff to wear around my neck for added warmth. As I walked through farmland, I passed groups of sheep who seemed utterly unconcerned about my presence.

Heather and I rejoined at a pub called The Robin Hood, where I finally got my cup of coffee. When we set off again we walked separately for awhile, and this seemed to be the rhythm for the day: walk apart, rejoin, walk together, take a break, walk apart, etc.

In fact, the entire day- despite its length- had a nice rhythm. Our breaks were spaced nicely: we found a beautiful spot in a little cut out on a hillside, where we stopped for some snacks. Later we hit a tea shop for some scones and pastries. And in between was a gorgeous day of walking. I had energy, for nearly the entire walk. In fact, I felt like I was coming alive after our snack break on the hillside, despite having just walked 12 miles. I never felt stronger! Maybe it was the return to that particular way of life: of spending all day in the fresh air, moving your body and eating well. The wind and the sun against my skin made me feel alive, and I felt mostly strong as I moved through all the miles of the day.

I was also energized because the Wall made its first real appearance! This would have been a beautiful walk in its own right, but knowing that the Wall was going to be sprouting up periodically throughout our days (not so much the first or last day, but the three days in the middle) made the trek extra thrilling. I kept pulling out my guidebook and looking for traces of the wall: “Those with eagle eyes may be able to make out the platform outline of Milecastle 13,” I read to myself, on the morning of Day 2. I searched and I searched but couldn’t find anything- only realizing later that there really hadn’t been much need, because there were much better and more distinct milecastle remains to come. (A milecastle is basically a mini-castle to house troops, and these were spaced 1000 paces apart (a Roman mile) for the length of the wall. By the end of the walk I could come upon a pile of ruins, and before reading the marker would exclaim: “Milecastle!” or “Turrett!”).

I was enthusiastic, yes, but it was also a long day of walking, and I was slowing down a bit by the end. For the last few hours of the walk Heather was up ahead of me, and usually I could spot her in the distance, her bright pink jacket an easy target to pick out on the route. But then, suddenly, she disappeared, and I assumed that she had powered on ahead.

I was trying to walk at a fast clip myself, because the place we were staying in that night- Old Repeater Station- was pretty much in the middle of nowhere and the owner would be serving us dinner. We’d called that morning before setting off, and when he asked what time we thought we might arrive, I hesitated. “Hmm, maybe 6:00?”

It was 6:30 by the time I made it to our lodging, and it wasn’t without a small mishap. My guidebook shows a shortcut to the B&B, one that cuts off some potentially dangerous road walking. I overshot my mark- where I was supposed to cut down through a field- and had to backtrack a bit. I couldn’t actually find a path or anything that looked like a marked shortcut, but I made my way down the hill well enough, cutting a diagonal line towards the only building in sight. I did have to slosh through a swampy area- causing both of my feet to sink completely into wet, cold mud- but luckily I was at the end of the day and wouldn’t have to spend much time walking in wet socks.

The door of the B&B was ajar and after knocking and waiting around for a minute, I pushed through.

“Hello?” I called out.

I couldn’t hear a thing. I wandered around the first floor, through a sitting room and into a kitchen area and then a dining room. The place was cozy- there was a small room with a woodstove and big leather couches and shelves filled with books. I kept looking around but there was no one in sight- no proprietor, and no Heather, either.

Finally I heard a door open somewhere above me and a man walked down the stairs. It was Les, the owner of the place, and after introductions I asked if anyone else had arrived.

“No,” he replied. “You’re the first one here.”

Heather, somehow, had gotten off track. I wasn’t too worried- she’s an experienced hiker with a good sense about distance, and I knew that even if she had gotten turned around, she’d be able to find her way here eventually. Les was a little more concerned, but I tried to wave it off. He showed me up to our room and it was perfect: two small beds with cozy comforters, a tray filled with coffee and tea and hot chocolate and biscuits, and the most beautiful bathroom with tiled floor and bottles of water and fluffy white towels.

“You can see the route from the window in here,” Les told me, and I peered out, looking into the now gray light of the evening. I squinted, and then smiled. Up on the ridge, walking at a fast pace, was someone wearing a pink jacket. It was Heather.

I went ahead and took a shower, figuring it would be perfect timing and that Heather would be here and could clean up as soon as I was finished. But when I came out of the bathroom the room was empty, and it was quiet downstairs.

I peered out the window again and saw two figures approaching on the road, and recognized the girls that Heather and I had met the night before. We’d been at Houghton North Farm together, and had learned that the girls would also be walking the really long day and staying at Old Repeater Station. I went downstairs to greet them, but also to ask if they’d seen Heather.

“No, we haven’t,” one of them said, looking a bit worried. “But there’s about an hour of light left to walk in, hopefully she’ll find her way here?”

I went outside then, unsure of what else to do, and after a few minutes saw a figure in a pink jacket coming down the hill. I was relieved, and Heather was laughing as she came up to me. She’d climbed over a stile not meant to be on the route, and had veered off track. Eventually she righted herself and it had been her I’d seen on the ridge, before I took my shower. Like me, she’d overshot the “shortcut”, but had a considerably harder time coming down the hill than I did (“There were locked gates,” she said, “and barbed wire!”).

We feasted that night, on fish pie with mashed potato, and salad with avocado and prawns, and a loaf of fresh bread, then tea and cookies up in our room. With a full belly and tired feet, curled up under my blanket, I was content. I was in a large stone house in the middle of an empty field, on a vast and open landscape. The sky was dark and the wind howled and the remains of a 2,000 year old wall sat just above me on a long ridge, stretching on for miles and miles ahead. I couldn’t wait to follow it.

A Walking Stick and a Loaf of Bread; Day One of walking Hadrian’s Wall (Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Heddon-on-the-Wall, 15 miles)

April 22, 2017

We’d arrived in Newcastle-upon-Tyne the day before, on a train from London. Newcastle wouldn’t be the start of our walk- not exactly- as the official beginning (or ending) of Hadrian’s Wall path is in Wallsend, a 15-minute metro ride east of the city. But it’s a great place to begin a long walk, with plenty of amenities, entertainment and transportation options.

I was exhausted when our train pulled into the station. I’d managed only 30-minutes of sleep on my overnight flight, along with just a bit of shut-eye on the train journey. But despite this fatigue, I managed to rebound after we dropped our packs in our hostel and set off to explore the city. I’d originally thought that maybe Heather and I could knock off the first 5-miles of our trek that Saturday afternoon; from Wallsend, the route passes directly back through Newcastle, and I thought this could be a nice introduction to the walk.

But I quickly realized that there was no way I could do a walk on so little sleep, so we meandered through the city instead, moving slowly and soaking up unexpected warm air and sunshine (Northern England was experiencing a bit of a heat wave at the beginning of our trip!). We wandered up to The Great North Museum: Hancock, a free museum with a large room dedicated to Hadrian’s Wall. There was an interactive model of the wall that snaked through the room, as well as lots of wall artifacts on display.

This would have been a great introduction to the walk IF the museum hadn’t decided to close an hour early that day. We only had about 10-minutes to look at the displays but maybe it was just as well: there’s something I like about a journey where I’m heading into the unknown. I didn’t want to see too much of the wall before I actually saw the wall itself.

We walked along the Quayside and ate an excellent dinner at a place called Red House. The only thing on the menu were their homemade butcher pies, mash and peas, and thank goodness for that. It was one of the best meals of the trip!

Sunday morning rolled around and we both agreed that staying in a hostel might not have been the best way to start a trek. The hostel itself was fine, but we were there on a Saturday night and most of the others staying in our room and down the hall weren’t trying to get a full night’s sleep before a long walk. So it was a long night of people coming and going, drunk bunk mates arriving back to the room at 4am, and generally just a lot of noise.

But, that’s nothing that a good cup of coffee can’t fix! We left the hostel early and grabbed drinks and pastries from the only open shop in sight, then jumped on the metro for the quick ride out to Wallsend.

Now, a note about the direction of this walk. Heather and I were walking east to west, starting in Wallsend and ending in Bowness-on-Solway. People do walk in this direction, but the more I learned about the path (and the more we heard as we encountered people on our journey), the preferred direction seems to be west to east. Supposedly, views of the wall are better in this direction, plus the wind will be at your back, pushing you forward as you walk. (Oh, just wait until I write about Day 3 of our journey… the wind was mighty. Really mighty).

And I’d read all of this while I was planning the trip, but something made me choose to go east to west. Honestly, I think some of this has to do with the Camino. Or my long-held dreams about my east-to-west road trip across the United States. “Go west, young man.” Somehow, walking east just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

So beginning in the east it was. Despite studying two different guide books, we had some trouble finding the start of the walk, but eventually we found ourselves on a path, snapped a photo of the first Hadrian’s Wall sign we saw, and began walking.

The day was glorious. Soon, our layers were peeled off and we were walking in t-shirts. Within an hour I found a suitable walking stick, and before long the path wound down to Walker Riverside Park, where we were able to walk along the Tyne for several miles as it lead us back into Newcastle.

And once we were in Newcastle- still walking along the Tyne- we passed through a large, bustling outdoor market. It was like a slice of heaven for a walker! The sun was shining, families were out and about, and there were what seemed like hundreds of stalls filled with crafts and mementos and food and treats. There was ice cream and crepes and baked goods and tacos and pulled-pork sandwiches and coffee. We saw several little carts or trucks that were converted into moveable cafes, an espresso machine fitted into the trunk space.

Heather and I lamented the fact that we were passing through around 10am, too early for lunch. But we lingered there anyway, and I bought a little package of coffee beans to bring home, as well as a large loaf of artisan bread. (It was a really, really large loaf of bread. I struggled a bit to fit it into my pack, and once I started walking I began to wonder why I would buy such a large thing… but it turns out that the bread came in handy over the course of my walk. Lesson #1: Never pass up the opportunity to buy a loaf of fresh bread).

The walk carried us out of Newcastle, continuing along the River Tyne but eventually meandering off. It continues for a stretch through the Tyne Riverside Country Park, which was crowded on such a warm and sunny day. I could only find two drawbacks to this first day of walking. For starters, there’s very little evidence of Hadrian’s Wall along this stretch (aside from a bit of wall at the very beginning of the route in Wallsend, but Heather and I didn’t exactly know what we were looking for so it’s anyone’s guess as to whether we actually saw the Wall here or not). And the second is that the entire day- all 15 miles- was on pavement. This is a tough way to begin a walk, and my feet were aching by the end of the day.

But overall, what a beautiful start! Riverside paths and parks, sunshine and outdoor markets, coffee and bread, a classic Sunday roast for lunch, and a wonderful spot to rest our heads at the end of the day. We stayed at Houghton North Farm in Heddon-on-the-Wall; some of the farm’s buildings were made with stone from Hadrian’s Wall! (This is typical in the villages and towns close to the route of the wall; once the Romans left, much of the wall was dismantled and the stone was used for other purposes by local landowners). I suppose that our lodging at Houghton North Farm could be considered a hostel or a bunkhouse, but with a twin room and only a few other people staying there, it felt both spacious and cozy.

Overall, it was a very satisfying and great start to the journey. By the end of the day, I could feel that I was back in the walking groove, and it was a good thing, too. Because the next day, we’d be tackling a 23-mile/35km stage!

5-days, 84-miles, Millions of Stones: A Walk along Hadrian’s Wall

April 18, 2017

A few days ago I returned from a week in Northern England, where I walked coast to coast: from Wallsend in the east to Bowness-on-Solway in the west. My route followed the length of Hadrian’s Wall, an 84-mile path that stretches across the most northern regions of England; at some parts of the trail and on clear days, you can see over to Scotland.

There was wind, there was rain, there was abundant sunshine and there were sheep. So many sheep.

All in all, the walk was a resounding success.

I thought, and hoped, to blog while I was there, but managing a blog post after a full day of walking on a solo-trip is hard enough, but it proved to be next-to impossible while traveling with a friend. I suppose I could have crept off to a quiet corner and dashed off some words, but given that the biggest draw of doing a walking adventure with a friend was to have some companionship in the evenings, I decided that the blogging would have to wait until I returned.

I’ll write in more detail about each day of the walk, but for now, I want to start with more general thoughts.

I can’t remember the first time I heard about this route, but I’m fairly certain it was from someone in my Philadelphia Camino group. That group is full of avid walkers (did I even need to say that?), and their jaunts aren’t confined to just Camino routes. Lately, members have been talking about the Via Francigena (pilgrimage trail from Canterbury to Rome), and Hadrian’s Wall Path, raving about each route. Then, when I was in Scotland last year for the West Highland Way, I heard more about Hadrian’s Wall. “It was stunning,” said a girl in my Glasgow hostel. “The wall was incredible.”

What is the Wall, exactly? Built by Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century, it’s northern Europe’s largest surviving Roman monument, a fortification that stretches for 84-miles in the border country between England and Scotland. It is punctuated by the remains of milecastles and turrets and forts, and while only about 10 miles of the actual wall remain (and what is left doesn’t rise to even half of its original height), the remains are stunning and the path of this trail was so well designed that walkers rarely stray from the course of the wall.

The trail opened in 2003 and the waymarking is good (look for acorns), with plenty of lodging options along the route. The scenery is diverse; the walk passes through the cities of Newcastle and Carlisle, through moorland and dale, and over undulating countryside. While one of the stages has a lot of ups and downs, overall the path isn’t considered too difficult (and, in fact, is the easiest of the UK National Trails).

My spring break is just a week long, but I knew I wanted to squeeze in some sort of trip. I have ample time to travel in the summer and I haven’t stopped appreciating that for a second, but the 10-months in-between my travels can be long ones, especially those cold winter days. I needed something to look forward to, I needed a new adventure.

With just a week, would I be able to complete a walk across England? Would early April be too cold, too wet, too muddy? A friend contacted me after she heard that I was planning this trip, and asked if she could come along. I agreed, excited to spend time with a friend that I don’t get to see enough, but also just a bit worried. What would it be like to walk and plan with someone else? Would I miss my solo adventuring?

I found a few itineraries for 5-days along Hadrian’s Wall, and I began to research hostels and bunkhouses and B&B’s. Despite being early in the season (the “real” Hadrian’s Wall season runs from the 1st of May until October), I decided to book lodging in advance. I worried that because we were early, some places might not be open, and with little flexibility in our tight time-frame, I didn’t want to have to scramble or skip sections of the route because we couldn’t find a place to stay.

I began tracking the weather a month before we left, and was heartened to see that the weeks preceding our walk weren’t getting much rain. Maybe this means there won’t be much mud! I wrote to my travel companion, Heather.

Walking in the cooler spring temperatures meant a couple of new additions to my “Camino” pack: a pair of rain pants, Crocs, a long-sleeved Merino wool shirt, a base-layer for my legs. I swapped my sleeping bag for a sleeping bag liner, since we’d be staying in bunkhouses and B&B’s that provided bedding.

With two weeks to go, I began to hike in earnest, managing all the miles that I could. My longest training hike was 12-miles but without a full pack, and I worried that I was a bit out of shape.

Do you think I’ll ever head into a trip without a head full of worries? Probably not. I’ve done this walking thing several times now, and while I am more confident, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to shake the nerves that come before one of these journeys. And maybe that’s best, because if these trips ever become too normal, too second-nature, then I’m afraid they’ll have lost some of their appeal. No, I hope that I always hold onto a bit of those pre-trip nerves: the questions about my gear and my pack, the panic about whether I’ve trained enough, the uneasy dreams (nightmares?) about blisters and rain. It adds to the adventure of it all.

And this was, indeed, another adventure, even if it might have felt a little different because it wasn’t a solo trek. I could feel my excitement mounting as I boarded my flight, as I touched down in London, as I dug an old Oyster card from my bag, as I traveled the length of the Piccadilly line, as I met my friend at Kings Cross (by Platform 9 3/4, because where else would you meet a friend before a journey?).

I chugged a coffee and we boarded our train, and as we left London to head north, I stared out the window and thought, “It’s good to be on the road again.”

Things that surprised me about the Camino de Santiago

March 28, 2017

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

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

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

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

The Camino Shuffle

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

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

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

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

Or, you know, maybe this is just me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hotel room in the middle of nowhere

They Really Do Give You An Entire Bottle of Wine

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

But it is.

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

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

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

I Got to Santiago and Felt Underwhelmed

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

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

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

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

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

I Thought the Route Was Beautiful

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

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

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

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

My favorite albergues on the Camino del Norte, Part Two

March 15, 2017

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

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

Albergue San Martin, Orio, Camino del Norte

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blog Post: No Stones in My Pack

Location, location, location.

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

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

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

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

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

Blog Post: The Camino Magic is Back

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

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

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

Albergue San Martin, Miraz, Camino del Norte

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

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

Blog Post: The Last, Perfect Camino Day

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

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

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

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

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

Do you have any favorites from the Camino del Norte?

Called Back to the Camino: Why I Keep Returning to Spain, and Why I Keep Returning to the Camino de Santiago

March 13, 2017

“I was called to the Camino.”

This is something you hear a lot, when talking to people about the Camino.

Something else I’ve heard is this: “Once you’re called to the Camino, you can never un-hear it. That call will sit with you- maybe for years- and not go away until you answer it.”

Was I called to do the Camino? Maybe. I’m not sure. I suppose I was, because the Camino wasn’t some random trip that I happened to show up on; it was purposeful and planned and I was really, really excited for it. But my purpose for walking the first Camino wasn’t necessarily about the Camino, not exactly. It was more about doing something big to move myself forward and out of the sad place I’d been in.

But when it comes to feeling called, I can say with certainty that I felt called back to the Camino. And not just once, but twice. Well, three times now, if you count my upcoming plans to spend a few weeks on a Camino route in France this summer.

What’s this all about, the call to return again, and again? Why do I love the Camino so much?

Longtime readers of the blog will have already caught onto the answer- maybe never explicitly stated- but the one that has come through all of my writings and ramblings and notes from the road. And that answer is… I love to walk.

And more than that: I love the people on the Camino. I love the community. I love the coffee and the wine. I love spending all day outside, moving.

This stuff all seems fairly simple and straightforward but there’s something important in here. The combination of all of this- the walking and the community and the coffee and the wine and the wind and the sunshine and the movement- it all comes together and when I’m on the Camino I feel like I’m the best version of myself.

I didn’t realize this would happen when I took my first steps out of St Jean Pied de Port, and it wasn’t the goal of my walk. My goal was simply (or, maybe, not so simply) to get to Santiago, and- more loosely- to begin to rewrite the future I had envisioned for myself at that time. To do this, I thought it would be good to have a direction to move in, and the Camino provided over 800 kilometers of just that: a clear direction.

But as I walked, I discovered something, and it happened quickly. Within only a few days I became so comfortable on the Camino that I felt almost at home there. I was sleeping in a different village or town every night so it surprised me how strong this feeling of belonging was, but it was undeniable. I felt like I belonged there, walking straight through Spain under a hot and heavy sun. I felt like I belonged.

Who knew I would love to walk so much? There have been hints throughout my life: hours spent riding my bike as a kid, all alone, pedaling in loops through my neighborhood, daydreaming and staring up at the trees. Later, long walks through my neighborhood, long walks on the beach, a curiosity about hiking.

But still, I’m not exactly an outdoorsy sort of person, and I’m absolutely not a risk-taker. Now, there’s a small amount of risk associated with the idea of walking 500-miles across a country, but the Camino isn’t exactly for thrill-seekers. We’re on a pilgrimage and it’s amazing and soul-searching and spiritual and inspiring and energizing and sometimes very difficult but, at the end of the day, we’re walking.

We’re walking. All day, every day. Sometimes a section of the path or a day’s route could be described as hiking, and when I’m of mind to try to impress someone I might call it ‘trekking’ but honestly, what we’re doing is walking.

And I’m good at it. I laugh because I’ve discovered that one of my strongest skills is something I mastered shortly after turning 1. Sometimes I wish what I were doing was a little more exciting, like: I run marathons! I go rock-climbing! White water rafting! I surf! I sing in front of rooms full of people! I do stand-up comedy!

But no, I walk. And it’s exactly, perfectly, the thing that I want to be doing. I learned on my first Camino that I didn’t tire easily, that I could just keep going and going. I’ve had bad days, days that were a struggle, but on the majority of my days on the Camino, I was in love with the simple act of walking.

So I return to the Camino because I feel alive being outside all day, moving my body. But it’s not just the movement and the walking, because I can do that easily enough at home, can’t I?

It’s the community of the Camino.

This is important for me, because in order to be the best version of myself, I need to be around people. And not just any people, but people who light me up and inspire me, people I connect with. I have a lot of these people in my life but they’re not in my day-to-day life, and I crave that. So maybe that’s another reason I keep returning to the Camino- to meet these people, day in and day out. To find that connection of the soul. To find my people, my community. It’s an ever shifting and changing community but it’s there: I’m walking alone one minute and then the next I find myself sharing ideas and hopes and dreams over a glass of wine with a fellow pilgrim. It’s kind of neat how that works.

And the thing is, in my real life, I’m kind of shy and very much an introvert. I’m this way on the Camino, too, but I get my introvert time by walking mostly alone, and the shyness? It gets snuffed out after several days of meeting new people and having conversations and being out of my comfort zone. At my core, I’m a really friendly person who loves knowing people- it’s just that the trick is, I have to go through the process of getting to know someone. The befriending. And right now, in my life, that feels like such a long and daunting process for a shy introvert. But on the Camino, it all happens so fast and maybe it’s because of the nature of the walk, or maybe because I’m feeling like I’m one of the best versions of ‘Nadine’ I can be but whatever it is, it all comes together. I make friends, I meet people whose souls connect with my own. (To this point, I sometimes wonder if the best shot I have at meeting a man I might think to marry would be to find him on a Camino. But that’s another post for another time).

So this combination- the walking and the connection (not to mention being able to sleep on a bed at the end of the day, all of the great coffee and wine and fresh fruit, the experience of another culture and a different place, plus the spiritual aspect of the walk)- this combination keeps me coming back for more. It calls to me, again and again. It tells me that I belong out there, I belong there in ways that I haven’t fully belonged in many of the other places of my life. Something keeps pulling me back- it’s happiness and discovery and love and life and feeling so fully alive.

I know that a lot of pilgrims have felt this after their Camino, and I know a lot struggle with this upon coming back home. How to keep these feelings alive? How to continue to live your Camino even after the Camino ends? But that, too, is another post for another time. Right now, I just want to think about the reasons I love that dusty path through Spain, all of those paths that lead to Santiago, all of those people walking those paths, everyone moving in the same direction and me, right in the fold of it all. Maybe I still have a lifetime to keep returning to the Camino. Maybe I’ll just never stop walking.

Walking through the Pyrenees, Camino de Santiago

First day on the Camino, walking through the Pyrenees.

Secret Passageways and Hidden Trails; New Adventures in Hiking (and upcoming travel news!)

February 27, 2017

Last week, I discovered a secret passageway in my park.

Well, that’s not exactly true, this “secret passageway” was actually just a short stretch of trail that led off of the main trail that I was already on. But it felt like a secret.

Had it always been there? Probably. I’ve been hiking in Ridley Creek State Park for a solid three years now, ever since I was preparing for my first Camino. I hiked in the park before that, too, but not as consistently. I love that I have a park only 20 minutes from where I live that offers up a nice selection of wooded trails. I can mix and match them so that I’m often walking a slightly different variation than my last hike. There are some hills, there are flat stretches, there’s a creek, there are lots of deer and sometimes I even see fox cubs (well, that only happened once, but it was great).

Lately though, something has been happening on my hikes: I’m getting a little bored. It was bound to happen after three years of steady hiking. I know the park like the back of my hand, I know where I am at any given moment, and I often help people who are stopped on the trail with their heads bent over a map. I like that my hikes are known and predictable, that I can glide along and let my mind wander without worrying that I’m getting off course.

But that feeling of curiosity and exploration has been lacking for awhile now. Often, I’ll be about halfway through my hike and mentally run through the rest of the trail, trying to guess how long it will take me until I arrive back at my car. My eyes aren’t picking up on all of the details because I’ve been walking on the same path a hundred times, maybe more. I’m starting to feel like I’m on auto-pilot when I hike.

This isn’t a problem, exactly, and hiking is still one of my favorite things to do, even if it’s on a trail that I could hike in my sleep. But this is precisely the wrong time to be getting a little bored with my hikes, because I need to get out to that park now more than ever.

And that’s because I’m in training mode again, for a quick springtime trip to England! I’ll be walking along Hadrian’s Wall, an 84-mile trail that runs from the east coast of England across to the west coast. (Something that delighted me about walking the Camino de Santiago was that I could say I walked across an entire country. If I complete Hadrian’s Way, I’ll be able to say it again).

I’ll write more about this trip in upcoming posts- and certainly when I’m on the trip or just after I return- but for now I just have to say that I’m excited. I really went back and forth over whether I wanted to plan a trip like this: squeeze a walk across a country into my spring break week, at a time of the year when the north of England has lots of potential for cold temperatures and constant rain.

But flight deals were good and one of the deciding factors was that a friend of mine was interested in joining me. This makes it a different kind of experience for me- to not be entirely on my own- but it has its benefits. My friend is an experienced hiker and she mentioned that she likes walking alone, so it’s possible that we might be a good match for something like this.

We’re going to try to fit the walk into 5-days, which should be doable but I suspect that I might go into this thing a little out of shape. The winter hasn’t been a hard one, but I always slow down when the days are short and cold, and I just haven’t been getting outside much.

And this brings us back to hiking in my park, and the secret passageway I discovered last week.

It was a brilliantly warm and sunny day. Everyone had the same idea: to soak up the good weather and go out for a hike. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the trails as crowded as I did last weekend, and I was missing the normal solitude and quiet of my hikes through Ridley Creek. I was walking along on the yellow trail when I turned a corner and saw a family of four ahead of me on the path: parents and two young children and they were laughing and squealing and running around and waving sticks.

“I wish I could put a little distance between us,” I thought to myself.

I slowed down, debating on whether to walk quickly to overtake them, or to stop for a break and let them move ahead. And this was when I glanced down and saw the secret path.

It was clearly a path- small and narrow but leading sharply to the right, away from the yellow trail.

“Maybe I’ll just take this to see where it goes,” I said. I thought that maybe I’d seen this side trail before, but I always figured that it didn’t really lead anywhere. I was in an area of the park that was right at the edge of the trail map, right at the edge of Ridley Creek State Park. There wasn’t supposed to be anything much beyond the boundary of the yellow trail, right?

The side trail was short, maybe only 30 feet, but as soon I cleared a few tall trees I was spit out onto another trail that ran parallel to the one I had just been on. Cleanly painted red and white blazes marked the trees, and the path was wide and well-maintained.

What had I stumbled into? It was like another world over there, some kind of fantasy: a secret garden, a door at the back of a wardrobe that opens onto a magical land.

I wandered down the quiet trail, not another person in sight, and soon the trail split and I saw blue blazes, orange blazes.

For a few minutes I did wonder if I might be going a little crazy, if this alternate-park really did, in fact, exist, if I hadn’t just conjured it up. But then I passed a woman with a dog, and a little white later I saw a faded sign that told me I was hiking on the trails in Tyler Arboretum.

Ahh. The Arboretum has 650-acres of grounds that includes- unbeknownst to me until that day- a network of hiking trails. I’d known that the Arboretum was close to the park, but I never realized that I could get from one into the other. I’m still not sure that I’m supposed to be crossing over to the Arboretum from the park (there’s a fee to get into the grounds of the Arboretum, but I should probably hike down to the Visitor’s Center to find out more), and I’m still learning the lay of the land, how many trails there are, how they all connect.

But I have to tell you, discovering this passageway was just what I needed. It’s new and unknown and there’s so much to see and explore. One of the trails is 8-miles long, twice the length of the longest in Ridley Creek, so this is the perfect spot to do some training for my upcoming trip. I have renewed excitement about going out for a hike, it’s a reminder of how important it is to go to new places, discover new paths.

Oh, I can’t wait to discover new paths. Paths close to home, and paths further from home. I have a feeling that this year will be full of them.

Taking Pictures in Spain: How I Capture my #VantagePoint

January 14, 2017

This is going to be a post entirely about photography. I suppose it’s been a long time coming; even though the whole idea behind this blog was to write, I have always considered the photographs I include here to be a big part of the stories I tell.

I walk, a lot. I also take a lot of photos. And this blog gets all the best photographs. Well, it gets a few of the not-so-great ones as well, but I’m careful to pick my favorites to showcase here. And picking the favorites means sorting through dozens and dozens of not-so-great photos. For every one great photo, there are probably 50 mediocre ones behind it. And this is how I take photos as I travel, as I walk across Spain: dozens of okay shots, and then one that’s a cut above the rest.

But I love taking the photos, the good ones and the bad ones. Pictures are so much a part of the routine of my travels, and a lot of the time, they are such a big part of the routine of my life. I’ve been holding a camera in my hands for a steady 20 years now, and somewhere along the way, I developed a photographer’s eye. This can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people but here’s what it means to me: dozens of times a day (every single day), I will pause for a fraction of a second and say to myself- “Snap.” I take mental pictures all day long, as if I were holding a camera up to my eye. I sit in an office and talk to teenagers and sometimes I notice the way they are leaning on the arm of a couch and how a gray light is coming in through the window and touching the sleeve of their shirt and the tips of their ears and I think, “Oh, this would be a beautiful photograph.”

I do this all the time. My eyes have become trained to see photographs in the world around me, I see these photographs automatically. I notice light and shade and lines and perspective and shadow and color.

So on all these travels I’ve been doing lately, I have the freedom to whip out a camera whenever I see one of these “mental” pictures. The photos move out of my mind and onto the lens of my camera and I can capture them, just about whenever I want. And how lucky to be walking through some very beautiful places, too! If a day’s walk has taken me longer than it normally does, it is probably not because of a blister or tired legs; more than not, it is because I’ve stopped to take so many photographs.

Walking a Camino in Spain or trekking through Scotland on the West Highland Way means, of course, that I’m carrying all of my things on my back. As I was planning for my first Camino, I seriously considered lugging along my old Pentax SLR and taking dozens of rolls of black and white shots along the way. I love that camera, I’ve had it since I was 15 and it was probably the most difficult packing decision I had to make, to decide to leave it behind.

That’s me, taking photos in France!

What did I bring instead? My iPhone. On the Camino Frances and the Camino del Norte, I also brought along a small digital point-and-shoot that a friend let me borrow, but I rarely used it. The iPhone was just too convenient; it sat in my pocket all day long, and I could easily pull it out, swipe the screen and snap a photo all with one hand. Sometimes I didn’t even need to break my stride!

So the majority of the photos you’ve seen on this blog have been taken with an iPhone, and so far, it’s worked really well for me. But every year as I plan a new trip, I dream about the camera equipment that could be part of my pack. What if I did bring along that old SLR? What if I bought myself a brand new DSLR? What if I researched one of the mirrorless cameras I’ve been hearing so much about? And then, there’s this: cutting-edge technology that’s creating DSLR-like images from a camera the size of a small point-and-shoot. The very best of both worlds!

The camera I’m talking about comes from a company called Light, and if you’re at all interested in photography it’s worth checking out their site. This post I’m writing now, in fact, is part of their #VantagePoint project, where bloggers talk about their favorite locations to shoot and the steps they take to create their best photographs from those locations.

I have to say, I jumped at the chance to write about how I take photographs, and more than bringing awareness to the L16 camera that Light is developing (though I’m always a fan of spreading information that I care about), I’m excited to share some tips with you guys, my readers.

I thought about my favorite places to take photographs and of course my summer treks through Spain were the first things to come to mind. And more specifically, I thought about how I’ve tried to capture shots of ‘the path’. Here is one of my very favorite photos:

I adore this photo. And I never would have captured it if I didn’t take the time to stop walking, turn around, and look behind me. So this is one of my best tips, actually, when taking photographs: don’t forget to look behind you. Don’t forget to look up or down, either, swing to your right and to your left, turn in circles and keep your eyes opened.

On this particular morning, I was walking through the mountains on the Camino Primitivo, a route that runs through the north of Spain. The morning was a little misty and foggy, a thin layer of dew coated the grass. The air was soft and cool but I could feel the rising sun warming my back and I think it was when I could feel the sun’s warmth that I decided to turn around. The sun was like a fireball in the sky, a giant orb that glowed and burned. I’m sure this was the effect of the clouds and the fog, maybe how the sun was rising over the top of a mountain in the distance. But whatever was happening seemed magical.

I didn’t know if I would be able to get a good photo of it all, however. You know how sometimes you see a beautiful moon in the sky, or a rainbow, or an incredible sunset and you know that no matter what you do, the photo won’t be as good as what you’re seeing with your eye? I worried that this was the case.

I took a string of photographs anyway, to see what I could do. It’s tricky, shooting into the sun, but in this case the fog and the tree were obscuring the sunlight enough that it worked. And lets talk about that tree. I moved down the path, away from the tree, until it was positioned just right in my frame. I took a few steps to the side and then I crouched down until the tree was in the distance, the lines of the fence glinted in the light and I had just enough blue sky for balance. I didn’t want the tree in the exact center of the frame although I suppose that could have worked; but instead, I used both the tree and the glowing sun as my center point.

This was my #VantagePoint. The steps to getting this photograph were, all in all, fairly simple. Keep your eyes open. Turn around and look behind you. Try out different angles and positions. Take several photographs until you get one that works.

I can’t wait to keep traveling and to keep taking photographs. On one of these trips, I may add a new camera and see if I can get even better shots (I have so much to learn) or maybe I’ll just keep using an iPhone but in either case, I know that I’ll continue to take pictures. Lots and lots of pictures.

What kind of camera do you use on your travels? Would you add the L16 to your wishlist? Do you have a favorite place to take photographs?

In the Footsteps of Pilgrims; an Overview of the Camino de San Salvador

January 9, 2017

Quien va a Santiago y no a San Salvador, sirve al criado y deja al Senor.

He who goes to Santiago and not to San Salvador, honors the servant and forsakes the Lord.

I saw these words painted onto the wall of the albergue in La Robla. It was the end of my first day walking the Camino de San Salvador, and I knew remarkably little about what to expect of the 120km route, and I was walking it alone. What did the words mean? I snapped a photo but quickly I pushed them to the back of my mind; all I could focus on was my hunger, the strain in my legs, the eerie quiet of the albergue.

I walked the San Salvador in late July 2016, with little knowledge of the route. I knew where it would begin and where it would end, I had a 13-page guide written in 2010 saved onto my phone. The route began in Leon, and like I’d done on past Camino’s, I found my first yellow arrow and just started walking.

It all worked out in the end; I made it through the mountains, I found things to eat, I found beds to lay my head on at night, and I made it to Oviedo. But it was not an easy Camino, it was not without struggles. The thought of pulling together a short guide for this route came to me as I was walking my final day. I would have loved some tips on how to get into the albergues when I arrived to find them locked, I would have loved some general advice about the trail, I would have loved to know what the waymarking was really like.

So this is that post, a collection of general thoughts and specific advice and information about the Camino de San Salvador. I’m including several links which will be immeasurably helpful for anyone undertaking this particular journey, and I will be more than happy to try to answer any of your questions, if you think of something that is not included here.

If you’d like to read about my journey before looking through this post, here are those entries:

Solitude and Cheap Red Wine; Day One of the Camino de San Salvador (Leon to La Robla; 27km)

The Things We Carry; Day Two on the San Salvador (La Robla to Poladura; 25km)

The Only Peregrina on the Trail; Day Three on the San Salvador (Poladura to Pajares, 15km)

Walking Each Other Home; Day Four on the San Salvador (Pajares to Pola de Lena, 28ish km)

Sick in Spain; Day Five on the San Salvador (Pola de Lena to Oviedo, 34km)

Why Does This Route Matter?

Here’s a quick history lesson (and it makes me wish that I had been more fully aware of the history of this route while I was walking it!): The 120km Camino de San Salvador connects two major cities in the north of Spain- Leon and Oviedo. Back in the 7th century, King Alfonso II made a pilgrimage to Santiago, beginning in Oviedo. At the time, Oviedo was the capital of Spain, and King Alfonso had a holy chamber built in Oviedo’s cathedral to guard all the relics that had been moved there, to be kept safe from the invading Moors. When political power shifted and the new capital moved to Leon, the main pilgrimage trail also shifted: away from the Norte and Primitivo routes, and to the Frances (which remains the most popular to this day). But the relics stayed in the cathedral in Oviedo, and because pilgrims were encouraged to pay devotion here, it became necessary to develop a route between the cities of Leon and Oviedo. Enter, the Camino de San Salvador.

I may have been hazy on the details while I walked the San Salvador, but I knew enough to visit the cathedral in Oviedo when my trek was finally complete. Pilgrims receive a discount on the audio tour and, I believe, don’t have to pay anything if they only want to visit the statue of San Salvador. (My memory about that could be incorrect; in any case, it’s worth it to pay a few euros and see the cathedral). Make sure to stop at the statue! You can pick up a Salvadorana (like a compostela), a document that certifies your completion of the route, in the gift shop of the cathedral as well as in the Oviedo albergue.

Why Should I Walk This Route?

I wouldn’t recommend the San Salvador as your first Camino, unless you are an experienced trekker/hiker and prefer solitude while you hike. Otherwise, I’d encourage you to begin with the Frances, or even the Norte or the Primitivo. I’ve heard that the Camino Portugues is another good option. There were many times on the San Salvador when I forgot that I was on a Camino; instead, it felt like a good, hard trek through beautiful mountain country in the north of Spain. This isn’t a bad thing, but if you’re interested in the social aspect of a Camino, then this route may be a little too ‘off the beaten path’ for you.

But, there are so many reasons to tackle this Camino. I think it’s the perfect second or even third Camino, especially if you’ve already done the Frances and/or the Norte. The San Salvador is about a 4 or 5 or 6 day trek, and then it easily links up with the Primitivo, which begins in Oviedo. The Primitivo averages about 11 days, giving you a solid 2+ week Camino into Santiago.

The route is beautiful. It is well-waymarked. There are just enough albergues and towns with accommodation to allow you to plan a route to your fitness level/liking. You get to hit both Leon AND Oviedo. The locals, when you encounter them, are friendly and curious. And you earn a little Camino cred when you can tick this route off of your list. “The San Salvador?” people who’ve heard mention of it will say. “Isn’t that the most difficult, most beautiful route of them all?”

So How Hard Is It, Really?

It’s no walk in the park. My experience may not be the best measuring stick; I’m a strong and fit walker who once did a 50+ km day, but for almost my entire San Salvador trek I was feeling under the weather (and was very sick on my last day of walking). So overall, I found the route to be rather difficult, but I wasn’t at my best. And, surprisingly, I didn’t think the most difficult section was as difficult as I’d feared. It wasn’t easy, but just take it slow and you’ll be fine. You’re going to climb, but is it any more difficult than the trek through the Pyrenees on the first day of the Frances? Or more difficult than the Hospitales route on the Primitivo? Or the first several days of the Norte? A lot depends on how you split up your days, and I (wisely) chose to keep one of the most difficult stretches to a short, 14km day. I think that helped a lot.

The route can sort of be described by three sections: the first is in the province of Leon, and for about 40km follows the east bank of the Rio Benesga. This walking is fairly flat, there is some minor road walking but it’s mostly on dirt paths. The second section crosses the Cordillera mountain range (part of the Picos de Europa) to Pajares, a village in Asturias, and there are some hefty ascents and descents here. Guides claim that the last section of the trail is relatively flat (though all I can remember from my last day of walking was a very long, never-ending uphill stretch and I thought I would never make it to the top. So in this case, ‘mostly flat’ must have meant ‘no mountains to cross’. Basically, expect some hills in this last section).

How Long Does it Take to Walk the San Salvador?

There are many ways to break up this route, and I’ll list a few of them for you based on my own experience and what I’ve found in other guides. I intended to walk the route in 4 days: I consider myself an experienced pilgrim and before coming to Spain I had been doing some light hiking in the mountains in France, so I thought I might be able to tackle some long days. But after my first day of walking I decided that I needed to slow down and tack on a extra day to the walk, splitting the 120km into 5 stages. This worked for me; some will use 7 or 8 days to complete the trek, and I met a woman who did the San Salvador in 3 days (HOW????). So think about your comfort level and experience and how much time you have, and plan accordingly. (Note: the distances are approximate; sometimes my phone showed me very different totals, but these are what the guides I found report).

My route (5 days):
Day 1: Leon – La Robla, 27 km
Day 2: La Robla – Poladura, 26km
Day 3: Poladura – Pajares, 14km
Day 4: Pajares – Pola de Lena, 26km
Day 5: Pola de Lena – Oviedo, 34km

4 days:
Day 1: Leon – Buiza, 40km
Day 2: Buiza – Pajares, 28km
Day 3: Pajares – Pola de Lena, 26km
Day 4: Pola de Lena – Oviedo, 34km

5 days (another option):
Day 1: Leon – La Robla, 27km
Day 2: La Robla – Poladura, 26km
Day 3: Poladura – Campomanes, 28km
Day 4: Campomanes – Mieres, 27km
Day 5: Mieres – Oviedo, 19km

6 days:
Day 1: Leon – La Robla, 27km
Day 2: La Robla – Poladura, 26km
Day 3: Poladura – Pajares, 14km
Day 4: Pajares – Pola de Lena, 26km
Day 5: Pola de Lena – Mieres, 15km
Day 6: Mieres – Oviedo, 19km

7 days:
Day 1: Leon- Cabanillas, 16km
Day 2: Cabanillas – La Robla, 11km
Day 3: La Robla – Poladura, 26km
Day 4: Poladura – Pajares, 14km
Day 5: Pajares – Pola de Lena, 26km
Day 6: Pola de Lena – Mieres, 15km
Day 7: Mieres – Oviedo, 19km

8 days:

Day 1: Leon- Cabanillas, 16km
Day 2: Cabanillas – La Robla, 11km
Day 3: La Robla – Buiza, 15km
Day 4: Buiza – Poladura, 10km
Day 5: Poladura – Pajares, 14km
Day 6: Pajares – Pola de Lena, 26km
Day 7: Pola de Lena – Mieres, 15km
Day 8: Mieres – Oviedo, 19km

I’ve Heard the Route is Very Isolated; Am I Going to Get Lost?

I was a little worried about this after walking my first day on the San Salvador. That first day was well-marked, but I knew that soon I’d be heading into the mountains, and the guide I had warned of several confusing sections ahead. In the albergue on that first night I found another guide on the bookshelf, this one was a thick booklet, compiled by a man named Ender, filled with pages of photos and descriptions in Spanish (here’s the link, this one has been translated to English, and I’ll reference it again later on). I snapped a photo of every single page and kept these stored on my phone in case I’d need to use them. This guide, as well, showed several areas in great detail, as if to warn pilgrims of the possibility of losing the path. So I was worried when I headed off into the mountains, but I hadn’t needed to be: the waymarking on the entire route was exceptional. Sometime in the years between when I walked (2016) and when my guide was published (2010), someone came through and carefully put markings all along the path, especially in the confusing sections.

Now, I want to add that I was very careful to read through my guide and study the photos from Ender’s guide before I set off each morning, and typically checked them again on my breaks. I wanted to have a visual of the areas I’d be walking through, and to read up on anything about the trail in case it would be helpful. Maybe I didn’t need to be this careful because I remember lots and lots of arrows along the route, but I still think my preparation helped. I was alone, so this extra vigilance gave me some confidence as I walked through the isolated mountain paths.

The Camino markings changed with each section of the route; the first 50km are marked with brown posts, the middle section with yellow metal scallop shells (welded and painted by Ender, author of that wonderful guide!), and the last 50km have the concrete posts with the blue and yellow shell (like those you’d find in Galicia). All along the way are yellow arrows, as well.

You’ve Mentioned Wandering Alone Through the Mountains. Am I Going to Meet Any Other Pilgrims?

Maybe. On the route, possibly not, but almost certainly a few in the albergues (unless, perhaps, you walk in the winter but I wouldn’t recommend it because of bad weather on the mountain passes. Be careful in the spring, as well). You will most likely meet at least a few other pilgrims, but they won’t be many. All of the Camino routes are becoming more popular (and I’m writing this guide with hopes to encourage others to try this route, so I suppose I’m adding to this trend), but I suspect that the San Salvador is never going to become overwhelmingly crowded. It’s a little too unknown, and to those who’ve heard of it, it has a reputation of being difficult.

That being said, more are walking than a few years ago, and I suppose that some days can feel ‘crowded’. Rumor had it that a week prior to when I walked, there were 18 people (!) staying in the albergue in La Robla (where I spent my first night). On my trip, I was the only one in that albergue until 7:30pm, and then was joined by a few bikers and one other walker. On my second night I was all alone in the albergue, the third night I’d needed to take a room in a pension because the albergue was closed (bed bugs, I suspect), though 4 pilgrims were also staying in that pension. Then, on the last night before Oviedo, there were 5 other pilgrims in the albergue with me. But this was in July! And in all of my walking, I only passed that group of 4 pilgrims once on the 4th day of walking. Otherwise, I never saw another pilgrim actually on the path of the Camino. For someone like me, who loves solo-walking, this was incredible, and I felt like I had the mountains all to myself. But an isolated route like this one might not be to everyone’s taste (or, if you’re worried about being alone, bring a friend!).

San Salvador winding path

What Other Tips Do You Have For Me?

#1: This is the biggest one: have a working cell phone with you. There are a few reasons this could come in handy: for one, you’re on a rugged, sometimes difficult trail through the mountains and there are not many people on it with you. If anything goes wrong, it would be good to have a way to get help. I need to follow my own advice because my US cell does not have an international calling plan, and I neglected to set up a SIM card in my phone that would allow me to make local calls. Luckily, I never needed the phone because of injury or danger (and to be honest, this didn’t occur to me as I walked but I promise I’ll be smarter about this in the future), however, I did need a phone for a different reason: the albergues.

Twice on this route, I arrived to an albergue to find it empty, and locked. There was always a sign on the door with a phone number- problem was, I had no way to make the phone call. But in both instances the albergues were in small towns and in the first I was able to have a woman in the tourism office help me, and in the second I was able to find a pay phone. At another point on the route, I’d needed to call ahead to a town to reserve dinner for the night, so I needed to track down another pay phone to make this happen. You could always ask another pilgrim to use their phone- but it’s hard when you’re in an albergue alone and have no one to ask.

Click here to be taken to a link on the Camino forum about how to set up a SIM card on your phone, once in Spain.

Welcome to the Albergue, Camino de San Salvador

#2: My second tip is this: learn a bit of Spanish before you go. I’ve been on a few Camino’s in Spain and have picked up just a tiny bit of Spanish (which means I can sometimes understand a few words of what is being spoken around me, and have learned the basic pilgrim lingo). But on this Camino, I really wished I could have spoken at least conversational Spanish. I got by without it, but I think I met three people in those 5 days who could speak a little English, and it was frustrating to have questions about the route and the albergues and how to find food in the next town and not be able to easily ask them (or understand the answers when I could). Plus, how nice would it be to chat with the locals, rather than only wave and smile?

#3: Take your time walking the middle-ish section through the mountains, which could possibly mean stretching your planned walk from 4 days to 5, or 5 days to 6 (and more specifically, I recommend doing a 14km day from Poladura to Pajares). This section is difficult, so it may take you longer than anticipated anyway, but you will appreciate having extra time to go slow and enjoy the stunning scenery.

Rising sunlight on San Salvador

Tell Me About a Favorite Moment from Your Camino:

I wrote about this on my blog, but I’ll tell it again, here. On my second day of walking I was about to head into a long, isolated stretch that wouldn’t pass by any towns or villages for a long time. I had a decent amount of food in my pack but I wanted to stock up a bit more, so I set off to find a grocery store. It was early in the morning and neither store I found was opened. Rather than wait around, I decided to head into a bar and buy a pastry; it would be my treat once I got to the top of the mountain. But when I asked for a croissant ‘to-go’, the man behind the counter just looked at me in confusion, then disappeared to the kitchen for about 10 minutes. When he finally emerged, he handed me a beautiful package: a croissant on a plate, wrapped in tissue paper and tied up with brown string. He placed it in my hands and I thanked him over and over but all I could think was- how in the world am I going to fit this into my pack? I couldn’t. So I walked up that mountain with my walking stick in one hand, my croissant in the other. And when I finally made it to the top and found a place to rest on a large, flat rock in the sunshine, I finally opened my package. That croissant was maybe the best thing I’d ever tasted.

Croissant package on San Salvador
My beautiful croissant, San Salvador

Here are some resources to help with your planning:

Link to Ender’s guide, translated into English
San Salvador page on the Camino forum (with tons of helpful threads)
CSJ Guide (this is the more updated version of the one I had)
Piers Nicholson’s Picture Website (300 photos of San Salvador)

There is so much more I could describe and share in this Camino de San Salvador guide, but this is a good start. If you’re interested in this route, please write a comment or send me a message- I would love to answer any questions you might have.

Buen Camino!

Nadine at start of Camino de San Salvador

My Travel Plans for 2017

January 2, 2017

2017 is already shaping up to be a good year, and it’s only just begun. Somehow, incredibly, I’ve already got my summer plans figured out.

This is unprecedented.

Last year, in particular, I had such a hard time figuring out what I wanted to do, and I became frustrated by my indecision. I have this somewhat unique opportunity to spend two months of my year doing whatever I like, and I was letting myself become stressed over the decision. I felt ridiculous. And yet, I went back and forth a dozen times, wanting to do it all: wanting to return to my favorite places and experiences, and wanting to try something brand new. I wondered if I should travel to some place other than Europe, I wondered if I should stick closer to home.

You already know what I decided (England, France, Spain, Scotland), and it ended up being the perfect balance of all the things I was craving out of my summertime adventure.

This time around? A few weeks ago I decided to see what flight prices to Paris might be like for June/July. And what I discovered nearly took my breath away: the cheapest prices I’ve ever seen on round-trip, direct flights from Philly to Paris in the summertime. (Well, that’s not entirely true, I got an even cheaper flight back in 2003 but that was a long time ago).

So I did something a bit out of character- I ran into my bedroom, grabbed my wallet from my purse, and before I knew it I had purchased the flight.

Then, I shot off an email to the owners of La Muse (the writer’s and artist’s retreat I visited last summer), and asked about availability. There’s been talk of a few of us from last year reuniting again in July, plus there was an attractive holiday discount being dangled around. The next day I got an email back- “We’d love to have you return!!” and before I knew it, I had myself booked in a room for three weeks.

And then, after a week of browsing through Airbnb apartments in Paris (which was way more fun than I ever expected!), I found a tiny little space on the 7th floor of an old building in St Germain, that has a balcony with views to the Eiffel Tower.

This year, there was very little of the indecision that I’ve had in the past. There are still so many things I want to do and so many places I want to travel to, but for whatever reason, this year’s choice felt easy. I’m going back to France, and I’m going to spend the entire summer there.

I love France, you already know that. Each of my trips to Europe these past four summers have included some time in France (and a mandatory jaunt through Paris, even if only for a day, like this past year). I can speak French- not well, but I improve the more I have the chance to speak. I studied abroad in Toulouse back in 2000-2001, and at the end of that year I said to myself: “This could be a problem. Whenever I have the opportunity to travel, I have a feeling that instead of going to new places, I’m always going to want to come back to France.”

And it could almost drive me mad, the thought that I was existing in the world and Paris was existing too but that I was not there.

Some people, when they travel, will always want to go somewhere new, and I can understand that. “Why return to the same place when you’ve already been there? There are so many places in the world to explore!” they say. I think I will continue to travel to new places throughout my life, but I’m finally coming to terms with the fact that I’m a creature of habit. When I find something I love, I don’t often get tired of it. I can go back- again and again- to the same things and places and learn to love them more fully. And I experience so much happiness when I return to a place that I love.

And so, I’m going back to France.

The trip is going to have three parts- La Muse and Paris, but what would a summer trip be without some walking? You knew this was coming. But instead of squeezing in a trip to Spain, I’m going to stay settled in France, and try a couple weeks on one of the Camino trails through this country. My plan, for now, is to walk the Le Puy route, which cuts a sloping line, east to west, sort of through the southern half of France. I’ll begin at the start- in Le Puy-en-Velay- and walk as far as I can in two weeks. I’ve heard that this is the most beautiful and popular Camino route in France, and that some parts may be challenging but I suspect that it’s nothing I can’t handle.

A walk in France isn’t a walk in Spain; there will be some big differences. France is more expensive, I’ll need to make reservations each night, there won’t be nearly as many people on the trails (though I sure had a large dose of isolation on the San Salvador!), and most of the people walking will be French.

The walking will kick off my trip, then I’ll take a train to La Muse and continue work on my writing and my memoir. The summer journey ends with a week in Paris, and this feels just right. It’s my favorite city in the world, and I certainly have more exploring that I need to do there. But settling into an apartment in the heart of a city that I’m already familiar with gives me the chance to just… be. To drink coffee on the little balcony and stare at the magical views. To make my way to a different café every day and scribble away in a notebook. To keep writing in a city where so many greats have gone to write. To wander, to roam.

It’s going to be a very French summer, and I have to tell you, I’m so excited for it. 2017 already feels like it’s going to be a big, incredible year, and having this trip half-planned sure helps. So as they say in France: Bonne Année! Let’s all make it a good one.

Memorable Moments of 2016

December 30, 2016

I always get reflective at this time of the year. For years I would journal on the very last day of the calendar year, looking back and reminding myself of all that I’d done (or hadn’t done), what went well in the year, what hadn’t. And then I’d set my sights forward, making lists of goals and resolutions and plans. A new year has always had a touch of magic to it: I still love the idea that I’m starting from a blank slate, that I hold the pen that writes in the story of my next 12 months.

But before we can get to the future, lets look back at the past! I’ve never written a ‘best of’ post, have I? In any case, I’ve been thinking about all that I’ve done this year, and I thought it could be fun to do a round-up here on this blog, going month to month. There were some things that went wrong, maybe some months where it felt like I didn’t do too much, but I’m going to keep this post happy and positive. These are my memorable moments of 2016, along with some of my favorite photos. (And, in case you don’t make it to the end of this post: a great big thank you to all of you. I’m still astounded that there is anyone at all who reads this blog, much less people who have been coming back for years now. My blogging slowed down this year, but I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon. If anything, I want to make blogging a more regular part of my routine for 2017, so I hope you’ll stick around).

January

I kicked off the year in Washington DC, a place I visited multiple times in 2016. I have several very good friends who live in or around the city and so I find myself there a lot: for art museums, baseball games, concerts. And I ended the month in Fort Royal, Virginia, where I met up with a friend for a winter weekend of wine tasting. But aside from these trips, the month was cold, and quiet. I made a few trips into Philly to hunt down the city’s best coffee shops, but otherwise I was tucked into my apartment and doing the tough, but gratifying work of writing my memoir.

February

Another cold, winter month and the few photos I took reveal simple activities: I wrote, I hit more coffee shops, I baked bread, I went on a few long walks when the sun came out.

March

More walks! More coffee! Art museums in Philly are pay what you wish on the first Sunday of the month, and at least once I year I get into the city to see my favorite works at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This year I waited in a long line to get free tickets into the Barnes Foundation, a museum that holds an extensive collection of post-impressionist and early modern paintings. It’s an outstanding collection, and I can’t think of a better way to spend a winter Sunday than in the gallery of an art museum.

This month also held my first big trip of the year: a four-day camping excursion on Cumberland Island in the state of Georgia. It was an adventure, to be sure: I’d never been camping on my own before, and never for more than one night. I bought myself a new sleeping bag, a little camp stove, and loaded up my car and drove 12 hours down to Georgia. I took a ferry out to the island and crossed my fingers that this camping thing would work out. And it did. The weather was stunning, I explored all over the island, saw wild horses and armadillos and the ruins of old mansions.

April

The weather began to get nicer this month, so I took advantage and was outside as much as possible. I went on a far-too-long walk along the Delaware & Raritan Canal (I think it was about 18 miles? My feet were throbbing at the end and I had a small blister forming on the ball of my foot but it was a good to get back outside), spent a weekend in Frederick, MD with good friends, spent time with my family and kept chipping away at my writing.

May

I usually love the month of May but this year it seemed like it rained constantly. Did the sun come out at all? My pictures show beautiful days only at the end of the month, when I drove out to Cleveland over Memorial Day weekend to visit my sister. When it wasn’t raining I spent as much time as I could at my local park, hiking on the trails and getting ready for my summer adventures.

June

The end of work, baseball games, beach trips, hiking, a bridal shower for a good friend. And at the very end of the month, I set off for my 7-week summer in Europe, which I kicked off in Bath, England. I spent a day wandering through the city, finding my travel legs, and hanging out with Jane Austen.

July

It’s hard to pick the highlights from the month of July: on the 1st of the month I was at Stonehenge, on the 31st of the month I was dragging myself into Oviedo to finish the Camino de San Salvador. In between I had three mostly glorious weeks at La Muse, the writer’s and artist’s retreat in the south of France. If I had to pick a favorite moment from the month it would probably be sitting up at Le Roc with Homer, looking out over the mountains surrounding Labastide.

August

Look how dirty my leg is!!

Lots more walking to do this month! I started things off with 9 days on the Camino del Norte, then spent a week in Scotland, hiking the West Highland Way. Both trips were incredible, but by the end I felt ready to come home and spend the last month of summer with family and friends.

September

I checked an item off my bucket list this month: I officiated the wedding of two good friends! Afterwards I joked that I might make this officiating-weddings-thing a side-gig (anyone need someone to marry them?), but all joking aside, it was an incredible experience. The rest of the month was about transitioning back into work and enjoying the fading days of summer with long hikes and a couple trips to DC.

October

My mom and I took a little trip up to Concord, Massachusetts to see Walden Pond and (most importantly) Orchard House, which is the long-time home of Louisa May Alcott. I wasn’t supposed to take any photos inside but when no one was looking I snapped a photo of the desk where Alcott wrote Little Women. It’s my favorite book of all time, and after the trip I felt re-energized and excited about getting back into my own writing.

November

November had a couple weekend trips: one down to Maryland and Virginia and West Virginia- with a quick hike in Shenandoah National Park and a visit to Harper’s Ferry, and a day trip up to NYC to reunite with a couple friends from my summer at La Muse. There was election day madness and a relaxing trip home for Thanksgiving, and lots of walks and hiking as I took advantage of some mild fall weather.

December

This has been a quiet month. I’ve seen friends, baked lots of cookies, and spent the holidays with my family. Since my summer travels I’ve really struggled to get back into my writing, but I think I’ve set myself up with a good plan for the next few months. I’m ready to get into a new year, and I’m ready to see what I can accomplish in 2017. 2016 was, overall, a fine year, but now it’s time for something even bigger and greater.

Happy New Year, my friends, and I will see you all soon!

The End of a Long Walk; Day Five on the West Highland Way, Kinlochleven to Glen Nevis, 24km

December 17, 2016

August 17th was my last day of walking on the West Highland Way, which was exactly 4 months ago. 4 months! This is absolutely the most delayed post I’ve ever written.

I was just looking through my photos from those last days in Scotland, and in some ways I feel like I was just there, but in other ways… it feels like those memories are from another life. This tends to happen, especially in these cold, winter months (I’m currently sitting on my couch under a heavy comforter listening to the ping of freezing rain against my window). In the Scotland photos I’m tan, my hair is lighter, the world is green and the sun is shining brightly. Everything is warm and light and free and fun- very much the opposite of the time of life I’m in now.

There are moments of fun in these months- indeed- so maybe it’s just this transition to winter that always gets me a bit down. These are short, dark days- we are in the very shortest days of the year right now, and I can feel it. The cold has blown in too, and I can feel myself resisting all of this. I still want to be outside in a t-shirt, hiking loops on the trails in my park, driving with my windows down, making smoothies and planning camping trips.

I’ve resisted settling into these dark, cold winter days, because this time of the year, for me, is synonymous with work and discipline and routine. The end of my summer travels was so much fun, and I found that for months afterwards I wanted to hold onto that feeling. I still want to hold on to that feeling, but just as equally, I want to begin again with my writing.

So here’s what happening, over here: I’m missing summertime. I’m dreaming of travel plans for 2017. But more than either of those, I’m finally beginning to accept that winter is here. And that it’s time to write- to really write again.

And what better place to begin than at the end? My last day on the West Highland Way was, by all accounts, the ‘easy’ one. It was the shortest distance of the trip, clocking in at only 24 kilometers (which, following days of 30, 32, 31, 35km, felt like a breeze).

But maybe I was a bit too confident heading into the day: I felt so relaxed that I didn’t prepare as I normally would, by meticulously examining my guidebook and planning stops and lunch breaks. So, an hour into my walk, when I stopped for a moment and paged through the guidebook to see where I was, I realized that I wouldn’t be passing through any villages, the path wouldn’t take me by an Inn, there would be absolutely no places to buy food.

Whoops. I’d eaten another hearty breakfast that morning- a huge bowl of porridge, two slices of toast, a container of yogurt and a lot of coffee- so I didn’t need to worry about my food situation right away. I was totally stocked up on water and I had some leftover snacks tucked away in my pack so I just kept walking, because, well, it was the only thing I could do.

It was another stunning day: bright sunlight and a clear blue sky. The walk started with a steady climb out of Kinlochleven, but soon the path leveled out and the walking was mostly even, with only short ascents and descents for the rest of the way.

I walked steadily for hours, stopping a few times for short breaks, or to examine old stone ruins, or to take off my socks and air out my feet. After about 20km (and a mere 4km from the end of the day), I was too hungry to continue so I hopped up on a large rock and dug through my bag, searching for any bit of food that I could find. I had one apple, three Oreo cookies, a small and rather stale packaged croissant, and half a bag of dried cherries that I’d bought in Santiago. I ate it all, and then continued walking.

Even though the walking that day wasn’t too difficult, I felt ready to be done. I walked swiftly through the last kilometers, ready to find my hostel, ready to take a shower, ready to sit down for a large meal. 100 miles (many of them difficult) in 5 days wasn’t easy. I don’t wish that I’d done it any other way: I loved the challenge, I loved those really long days of walking, I loved how strong I felt.

But I was also tired. And I was at the very end of my trip- not just the Scotland part, but the whole thing: Bath, London, Paris, Labastide, Madrid, Leon, the San Salvador, the Norte, Santiago, Glasgow, the West Highland Way. It was almost time to go home, and I was ready for the comforts of my apartment, the ease of daily life, the familiar faces of my family and friends.

My hostel wasn’t technically at the very end of the West Highland Way- it was in Glen Nevis, a small hamlet in open countryside, about a 45-minute walk from Fort William. The official end of the West Highland Way used to be in Glen Nevis- just off the side of the road by a round-about (and there is still a sign to mark this), but in recent years the “end” was moved into Fort William, so walkers would have to pass directly through the bustling commerce and tourist shops of the main street in town.

In any case, when I arrived at my hostel, I felt as though I had arrived at the end. The next day I would walk into Fort William but for now I was happy to find my bunk, wash my clothes, and eat a good meal. I was happy that I’d decided to stay in the Glen Nevis Youth Hostel- it sits directly across from the entrance to the path that leads up Ben Nevis, Britain’s highest mountain. The hostel building was old and quirky but the rooms were clean, the bunks seemed new, and I found a private bathroom down one of the hallways that had a lock on the door and a pristine shower.

This was the first time that I had to share sleeping quarters with other people on the West Highland Way, but I found the people staying in the hostel to be an interesting mix. After eating dinner at restaurant down the road, I came back to the hostel and settled into the lounge area, to try to do some writing. I only got a few sentences in when Tony, a wiry Londoner in his 50’s, began talking to me. He was in Glen Nevis with a few of his buddies- his friends were taking on the challenge of climbing three mountains in 24-hours and Tony explained that they were currently climbing to the top of Ben Nevis. “I’m their driver,” he explained. “See this radio here? They’ll signal me when they get to the top, and then I’ve got to be ready with the car as soon as they descend. Then we drive off to the next one.”

While he waited, he made me a cup of tea, saying that I had to have it prepared in the proper, British way (with cream and lots of sugar). Sitting with us in the lounge was a Norwegian man who was trying to convince me to climb Ben Nevis the next day (a lot of people staying at the hostel were there to climb the mountain), and an American woman who was tired of driving on the “crazy Scottish roads”.

This felt like the most I’d spoken to anyone in days, and it was nice to be surrounded by friendly people. But, strangely, I was the only one there who had walked the West Highland Way. This cinched it- most people on the West Highland Way were campers. If I were to do it again (and be guaranteed to have stunning weather), I would love to try camping. But as it is, having a roof over my head and a mattress to sleep on is still a very nice luxury at the end of the day.

My original plan had been to walk the West Highland Way in six days. I’d needed to change that because of availability of places to stay along the way, so I cut the walk down to 5 days. This left me an extra day in Glen Nevis/Fort William, and before beginning the walk I thought that I might like to climb Ben Nevis. But sitting in my hostel that night, sipping my sweet tea and listening to tales from the other travelers, I knew that I was done. My body was tired. I could summit that mountain another time- and besides, I hadn’t come to Scotland to climb a mountain. I’d come to walk the West Highland Way, and I’d done a good job of it.

Tony’s radio buzzed and he leaped into action. Before running out the door he raced over and gave me a big hug. The Norwegian man asked if he could have my walking stick. An American girl from Arizona asked what the West Highland Way had been like. I smiled at her. “It was an adventure,” I said.

Wild and Remote; Day 4 on the West Highland Way, Bridge of Orchy to Kinlochleven, 35km

November 7, 2016

Day 4 on the West Highland Way had me walking out of the tiny hamlet of Bridge of Orchy with nearly all my clothing hanging in rather wet clumps from the back of my pack. Two pairs of underwear, a sports bra, two pairs of socks, two tshirts, and a towel. In fact, I’m sure I hadn’t managed to strap all of this to the outside of my pack so some of it was rolled up into a plastic bag inside my pack, something I’ve never had to do before.

I was wearing dirty hiking shorts but this was fine, because my shorts were often dirty. But both of my hiking shirts were wet so I had to wear the only other shirt I had- a black tank top that I’d been using to sleep in.

I knew I was going to run into this trouble two days before, when I’d walked all day and didn’t feel like washing my clothes at 8:30pm. And the day before, despite getting to my train station hostel around 5, I still didn’t have enough time to sufficiently dry my clothing. The evening was cool, my room at the station was chilly, and my clothing was still almost dripping wet in the morning when I set off.

This has not been an uncommon experience for me on these long walks, but usually I only need to pin a pair of socks from the back of my pack, maybe a pair of underwear. At first I felt strange doing it, but I quickly got used to it. After a few hours of walking in the sunshine, the clothes dry nicely.

And this fourth day was no exception- after a few hours of hiking the sun was brightly shining and my clothes were drying and I was feeling good.

I was feeling really good. It was another beautiful day on the West Highland Way- a long, challenging day, where I would walk over 20 miles, some of them very difficult miles (the miles at the end, of course). At first I was daunted by the elevation profiles in my guidebook, but after an initial sharp ascent and descent out of Bridge of Orchy, the next 8 miles were a very gradual ascent. It was the kind of climbing that I barely noticed, and by this point in the summer, my legs were strong.

I may not have noticed the climbing, but I did notice what was surrounding me. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the landscape, and every five minutes I realized that I was turning in a full circle, and sometimes even walking backwards for a few steps because the landscape- every bit of it- was stunning.

I’m going to post a bunch of photos but it was really difficult for my camera to capture what I was seeing with my eyes. I couldn’t capture it, and maybe that’s a good thing, because my memory of that morning’s walk is one of my favorites from the entire summer.

I was walking through open moorland, in the wildest and most remote section of the West Highland Way. Every once in awhile I would pass another hiker or two, but mostly I was totally alone. These miles are desolate and isolated- there are no roads, no buildings, no shelter, no way out. If the weather is bad this could be a very difficult section of the walk, but since I had clear skies and sunshine, the walk was just… incredible. Land and sky, land and sky, stretching out as far as I could see.

From what I can remember, there are no fun stories from this day, no unique interactions, no good anecdotes. Just beautiful walking. I stopped for lunch at a climber’s bar in the back of an Inn- the only place to stop for miles and miles- and then I kept walking.

I have found my future home.

The last part of the day’s hike included the dreaded Devil’s Staircase. My guidebook promised that it wasn’t as bad as the name would suggest, and locals I’d encountered in the past few days said the same thing.

And certainly, from where I stood at the bottom, the “staircase” (or long and winding path) didn’t look impossible. But then I started climbing. And my legs burned. And I was tired. I had been walking great distances day after day and a difficult climb to cap off what would be 35 kilometers was simply not appreciated. But I remembered what the woman in the bar the night before had told me- “It’s only walking”, and so I just put one foot in front of the other and kept going.

Climbing the Devil's Staircase, West Highland Way, Scotland

Looking back on the Devil’s Staircase (it was harder than it looks!)

At the top was a large pile of rocks and lots of day-hikers posing for photos and selfies. I paused for a moment but after spending the entire day pretty much alone, this little summit felt crowded.

So I kept walking, and walking, and walking. I thought Kinlochleven would never arrive, the descent was longer and harder than I thought and I got a bit confused when I finally arrived in town and was unable to find my campsite. But eventually I did find it after asking for directions, and I was once again directed to a cabin which I had all to myself. And it was beautiful- a line of small wooden cabins and a lawn filled with tents, all set against a backdrop of rugged green mountains.

Campsite at MacDonald's Hotel and Cabins, Kinlochleven, Scotland

Can you spot my walking stick in this photo?

Dinner was in the pub next to the Inn, and I feasted on a large bowl of cullen skink (which is basically a delicious Scottish fish chowder), a hunk of bread, and a big glass of red wine. Hearty and warm and satisfying.

My cabin had a toasty little heater and a door that wouldn’t stay latched, and it banged open and shut throughout the night but I barely noticed. I slept soundly and comfortably. Day 4 on the West Highland Way was in the books, and now only one more day of walking remained.