A quick disclaimer: all information in this post is anecdotal, either my own or offered to me by some random stranger somewhere in Spain – nothing has been fact checked. Enjoy. X
It was 40 minutes into the morning of Wednesday the 7th of June 2023 and my bus from Madrid airport to Burgos, a city in the east of Spain, was due to leave in five minutes. Unfortunately, I was sat looking of out of a window of an EasyJet plane as it taxied into the airport an hour and a half behind schedule. With passive acceptance, I felt my meticulously planned trip (booked 48 hours previously) begin to fall apart. It seemed I was not destined to sleep on the floor of Burgos’s bus station that night. By two or maybe three am I found the only corner of Madrid airport that wasn’t flooded by overhead florescent lighting and prepared to settle down for the night. Besides me, several unmoving bodies had clearly also found themselves a little stranded. After an incredible night of rest, I arose at five to investigate when the first tram was running.
Why was I running around Madrid airport at five? A good question – three days prior I had been scrolling Instagram when I came across a photo of Selin (famous Selin who has featured many times on this blog) posted by her mother. Apparently Selin was walking the Camino de Santiago, a medieval pilgrimage, and she’d forgotten to invite me. Three days later she had remedied her mistake and I was on a tram to Burgos.
The Camino has pretty sturdy PR based on its history as a medieval pilgrimage to see the bones of St Frances. When they arrived in Santiago de Compostela, God would grant the monks a free pass into heaven. Nowadays, your pass is conveniently printed out for you at the tourist office – something probably to hang on to.
The walkers are referred to as pilgrims which is a little grating when you first hear it, but you get used to it. Along the way there were Airbnbs, hotels, hostels and albergues to stay at; whilst ‘albergue’ is just Spanish for ‘hostel,’ generally the former referred to pilgrim-only places whilst the latter were open to anyone. Pilgrims all have a passport containing stamps of everywhere they have stayed along the way, both to prove they have done the miles when they arrive in Santiago and to verify them as a pilgrim, enabling them to stay in albergues. Because they only host pilgrims, the albergues are a very social aspect of the culture, typically involving a shared meal and many bottles of red wine (“No vino, no Camino” apparently).
The very flat meseta 
A Suffering Pilgrim
By the time I had caught up with Selin on that first day of walking, it was past ten o’clock. This was a very late start apparently and I quickly understood why when we were only 10km in and under the midday sun. We didn’t see many people that first day until we arrived at our final destination at around 4pm where a cohort of people sat on a bench ahead suddenly began calling Selin’s name. They turned out to be some people Selin had met a few weeks ago. After a few cheese sandwiches and some red wine, I was in bed by eight.
On my second day of walking, I started to understand what it was all about. I walked with a bunch of different people – probably meeting more Americans on this day than in my previous 22 years. Meeting people on the Camino is very straightforward. With everyone walking east to west and the majority of pilgrims staying in albergues, the same people will keep cropping up. One of the nicest parts was finishing your day only to run into someone who you had met two weeks ago and assumed you’d never seen again at a bar or a dorm. Equally, most people are up for a chat whilst walking and if either of you wants to tap out, you just say ‘Buen Camino’ and speed up or slow down. By the end, there was quite the eclectic cast of familiar faces. I finished the day walking through an eerily quiet town with an American guy, Josh. As we were thinking of going on, a man rushed out a bar and invited us to stay at his albergue – so we did. Luckily, the only other people staying in this town turned out to be Selin and an American girl named Hill (yes, like a hill and yes, it was a funny joke every time).
On a typical day, we left between six and seven and stopped walking around two or three with plenty of rests in between. On the third day however, Selin, Hill, Josh, and I were out and walking by 5:30am. Hill had convinced us that is would be a good idea to let us cover more distance. We questioned her on this plan as we left the quiet town and walked into a very dark forest decorated with child-sized hanging dolls. A little before eight, we arrived in the first town of the day, 10km down and ready for breakfast. The town was silent. Unperturbed, we ventured in. The group split up in the search for food, eventually running into one another outside a café promising ‘The Best Pancakes on the Camino! Open 11am everyday!’ Not ideal. Demoralised, the four of us sat in front of the pancake house sharing what rations we had between us: some pretzels, meat sticks (don’t ask – they are exactly what they sound like), and an out-of-date cereal bar. Without any other option, we continued 7km to the next town where, thank God, a café was awaiting us: Spanish tortilla – the food of gods.
To be fair to Hill, she had been right. Getting up at five had let us cover a long distance (37km by the end of the day) however, walking 17km to breakfast seemed a bit excessive at the time. By evening, the famine of the morning had been forgotten. A Mexican man, Luis, who had fallen behind the group a few days before caught up having walked over 50km that day. Unfortunately, he was greeted by a disgrace to his national cuisine (guacamole does not need yoghurt in it Selin). After some karaoke with the nuns running the albergue and with sandwiches in the fridge for the next day (note our learning from the mistakes of the morning), we all collapsed into bed, aided of course by red wine.
A Year in Nepal 