Our Camino Journey: Discovery

It was September of 2022 when I first heard of The Camino.  Our pastor was taking a sabbatical, and for a portion he talked of walking The Camino.  After a fierce Googling session and learning of this ancient pilgramige, I was obsessed.  We watched YouTube movies and  bought and watched The Way (at the time it was not available to stream anywhere, oh and it stars Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez).  There are several official routes, the more traditional one is the French Way, which is about 500 miles and takes an estimated 35 days to complete.  As you can see, all routes lead to Santiago de Compostela.

Each official route of the Camino passes through different points of the Spanish geography and all have only one destination: Santiago de Compostela

I started researching how we could do this in a shorter period of time. I found a service where we could rent bikes, and taking the Portuguese route it might only take 8 days.  After debating back and forth between options, and there are many, we decided to walk the route, from Porto, and take 12 days to do it, walking about 150 miles. Going a bit against a 'traditional pilgrim' experience of hiking and carrying your own pack and staying at albergues or hostels, we opted to have a pre-planned, self-guided experience, where our private accomodations are planned and our luggage transported daily.  Once we added the cost of flights to the self-guided package, we realized we should make the most of our time in Spain, and opted to tack on three days in Madrid.

With plans in place, we started researching how to best prepare for this trek.  While we are both fairly healthy and try to walk, bike and hike as much as we can, we really weren't that diligent about it.  Starting this spring, we started stretching our 2.5 mile walks to 3, then 4 then 5 miles, as well as worked in some 7-8 mile walks with breaks for lunch.  I tried two different hiking shoes, with the first set just a bit too small.  For the last 6 weeks or so we've walked with our backpacks with water, and I started carrying a poncho just for the weight.  Just once I was caught in the rain and was able to road test the poncho as well!

We also tried to learn more about the history of Spain and Portugal which was really interesting.  Here's the best video I found that crams all of this rich history into 13 minutes.  There's a reason most of South America speaks either Spanish or Portuguese.  We hope to learn more during our trip!  Oh and I started Duolingo in the summer of 2023 and have continued my daily lessons for over a year.  Then I realized half the time we're in Portugal...oh well Google Translate will be our friend.

While we are both interested in the adventure of this walk with a goal of fully immersing ourselves, we have varying levels of interest in the spiritual aspect of this experience.  I hope to be open to the joy of the Camino and renew some of the more rusty corners of my faith.  After Mass yesterday we had Fr. Kevin bless us on our journey with special attention to our knees and feet!  

We'll follow up once we have a moment to collect our photos, thoughts and reflections.  

Bom Caminho!

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Have you heard of The Camino before?  Ever done an adventure vacation like this?  Leave your comments below!  Enjoyed this post? Never miss out on future posts by following us.