At present, this page is just a collection of notes!

Introduction

In September and October 2024, I hiked a total of 405 km on three Spanish Camino routes. I hiked all of the Camino San Salvador, all but two stages of the Camino Primitivo (including the last 100 km from Lugo) and the last 15 km of the Camino Finisterre. Also did about 5kms of the Lighthouse Route.

Camino is just the Spanish word for a path. It also means “I walk.” Usually, when people talk about “doing the Camino,” they mean the very popular Camino Frances, which starts in St John Pied de Port in France, crosses the Pyrenees, and then heads across the Spanish plains to Santiago, about 800 km away.

There are many other Camino routes, most of which end in Santiago. They are usually well-marked routes with cheap dormitory-style accommodations called albergues where the walkers, who are called pilgrims or peregrinos, can spend the night. The routes are popular with people who want to do a long-distance walk on a budget, regardless of any religious affiliation. Many people start the hike alone and join groups of fellow pilgrims along the route, forming a temporary community.

There are many options, including routes from Portugal and Spain’s north coast. On September 12, 2024, I left the Spanish city of Leon, heading north on the Camino del Salvador for Oviedo, 121 km away. When I got to Oviedo, I turned west on the Camino Primitivo towards Santiago de Compostela, 321 km away. So Why did I choose the Salvador and Primitivo? Perversely, because they are the hardest of the routes, with the most hills to climb, the furthest distance between villages, and the fewest options for food, drink and accommodation along the way. This means the routes are much more beautiful, include more mountain trails, and require fewer kilometres of trudging along the side of a paved road. They are also much less travelled.

I flew to Madrid on September 9th by myself. I got a bus to Leon, rested for the night and then started a six-day hike north over the Cantabrian Mountains to Oviedo. I spent a rest day in Oviedo; then I intended to about two weeks to walk to Santiago, including a rest day in Lugo. However, two days before Lugo, I got a flu bug, and it was raining, so I took a bus to Lugo, missing out on one stop in O Cavado and taking three rest days in Lugo. I then walked the last 100 km into Santiago After a couple of rest days I took a bus to Cee and walked the rest of the way to Finisterre. The next day, I walked to the lighthouse, then turned north on the Lighthouse trail before joining the Camino Finisterre-Muxia and heading back to Finisterre and the bus to Santiago. I had hoped to walk all the way from Lugo via Oviedo and Santiago to the coast at Finisterre, but it was a sensible decision to take a break when I felt unwell. The weather was also bad, and the continuing rain discouraged me from hiking all the way from Santiago to the coast.

In the end, I walked 405 km. All of the Camino Primitivo, all but two stages of the Primitivo, including the last 100 km from Lugo, and I sampled sections of the Lighthouse Route and the Camino Finisterre-Muxia. That was a respectable distance, but only half of the length of the Camino Frances.

Packing for the Camino

Three days before departure, my backpack was already pretty much fully loaded, weighing about 25 lbs (10kg). It contained a couple of changes of clothing, a sleeping bag, a puffy jacket for warmth, rain gear, electronics, a decent medical kit. I also packed some food, as there are few places to buy food on the second and third days of San Salvador.

I had the route programmed into several apps on my phone, and I also took a tablet, a spare battery, and a whistle and compass, just in case.

Packing is tricky, as you need to keep the weight down as much as possible while staying warm. On the San Salvador, there are no places where you can buy additional clothing. You work on the assumption that you will wash some clothes most nights and hope that they will be dry in the morning. Most people wear clean, dry street clothes, not pyjamas at night. In fact, some people wear their hiking clothes for the next day so they can leap out of bed and leave the albergue quickly and without disturbing people.

I initially hoped to get everything into my 32l Deuter Futura backpack, which is small enough to be cabin luggage. However, I was advised that in the routes I planned at this time of year, a puffy jacket and a lightweight sleeping bag (rather than a sleeping bag liner) would be needed. This meant I had to upgrade to my larger Osprey Atmos AG 50 backpack. This pack has excellent hip support, and I have used it on many big hikes. It was bigger than I needed, so I made sure not to fill it up.

I put a large waterproof bag inside the pack for everything I needed to keep dry and used a separate smaller waterproof bag for damp clothes. This was a big issue as I had several days of rain when nothing would dry. Most albergues have a place to hang up wet clothes but they only dry properly if the weather is dry

Issues

BOOKING ACCOMMODATION – or not

This is a topic of much debate and concern on Camino Facebook groups. On the one hand there are people who book a package that includes all their hotels and luggage transfer, and sometimes even a guide. Other people just hop on a flight and make everything up as they go along. It’s your Camino, and you do you! However, these are my thoughts:

Unless you are actually ill or disabled, you do not need luggage transfer. Pack a change of clothing and some rainwear, a phone and a charger. Carry a half litre of water and a granola bar. Bring a sleeping bag liner and a pullover or sweatshirt for the evenings. Add toothpaste and a toothbrush. If you cannot carry that much, you should really think if the Camino is for you.

If you stay in a hotel, you will get a good night’s sleep in a private room. But you can have that experience at home. It is really hard to mix with and eat with other pilgrims if you do not hang out in alburgues.

There are three types of alburgues.

Municipal: Run by communities. Often fairly basic but clean, and with everything you will need. They CANNOT be booked in advance. They are strictly “first come, first served”. Unless you are ill, you can only stay one night.

Donativos: This is the essence of the Camino. I would happily walk an extra 5km to get to a well-run donativo. They provide a bed and communal meals. There is much more of a “meet and greet” atmosphere than in the other alburgues. The “hospitaleros” – hosts – go out of their way to make people feel welcome, for example, by doing laundry or arranging a taxi. I stayed in three. None of them even mentioned making donations; there was just a discreet donation box by the door on the way out. The polite thing to do is to calculate what the food and accommodation would have cost and give a bit extra, in case the next pilgrim is poor and cannot afford to cover the full cost of their stay.

Private: These are businesses. They can usually be booked in advance. Some even require an email with credit card information; they will provide a bed in a dormitory, showers, and washing facilities. Some of them have private rooms for rent. Some of them have communal kitchens. Many of them will serve a meal. Some are attached to a hotel or restaurant.

How to choose? I would look up my options in the Gronze app. If a donativo was available with a good reputation, I would book it the night before or before lunch on the day. I only stayed at one municipal alburgue, on my very first night, in Grado. I knew this town had several alburgues and hotels, so I was not worried about a lack of accommodation. I arrived about 4 pm and it was less than half d+full, no-one got turned away. It was quite basic, but I had met a Canadian couple. Over drinks in the town square, they offered to cook dinner for me, so we went into the supermarket to buy a trout, which they cooked at the alburgue.

Mostly I used private alburgues, often booked the night before, but if there were several options in town I sometimes just showed up, and never had a problem.

The easiest way to book is with Booking.com, if the alburgue is listed there. If not, try sending a “Whats App” message. I was using an e-sim card in my phone so I could use data but not make phone calls, so sometimes I had another pilgrim book my room, especially if we were staying in the same place.

In major cities, especially if you want to stay more than one night, it is better to book a hotel or even an apartment using Booking.com. Strangely, a two-bedroom apartment with a full kitchen, bathroom and washing machine was often cheaper than a single hotel bed.

One reason to book in advance is that as you form hiking buddies, they will tell you where they are staying the next night, so it is nice to accept their recommendation and stay at the same place. Also, there are some stretches (like the hospitals section of the Primitivo) where everyone wants to stay in the same small town that has limited facilities.

SLEEPING IN DORMITORIES

In many ways, I found this enjoyable and comforting, like a sleepover. It was nice to sleep in the same room as the people you had just eaten dinner with, and with whom you would be hiking the next day. It is like being part of a herd of animals. One evening, I had a great conversation about what it is like to work for Microsoft with the woman who was on the next top bunk to mine. Many people complain about the noise and the snoring, but I found most people were considerate. I brought earplugs but I never used them. There are worse ways to be woken up than hearing people stuff their packs for their hiking day. No need to set an alarm (in fact, please do not, as that is very annoying to other people). Just get up when daylight enters the room, and everyone else is getting up.

Buit you may have noticed I often paid extra for a private room. It is also nice to get changed or dressed without worrying about what other people might see. It is nice to be able to spread your things out without worrying that you will annoy someone. In most alburgues, there was a very small bedside shelf with a power outlet and a bedside light. There was just enough room for a phone, glasses and maybe some small items from your pocket. Many places also had a locker with a key. But if you wanted to spread out your clothes to see what to wash and what to wear tomorrow, or if you want to sort out your maps guides and travel notes, the only place was on your bed.

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WALKING BEFORE DAWN

This was on my Camino bucket list. On the Frances route in summer, some people get up at 5 am to start hiking before the sun makes things too hot. Also, it means they get to the Alburgue first! I was not into that, but a couple of days I got up at 7 am and was on the road before 7:30. Spain is in the wrong time zone, so in September dawn is 8:15 a.m. It was a neat experience to leave town when the streets were deserted and walk through fields with only the light of my headlight, slowly watching the mist clear and the daylight coming back to the world.

SPEAKING SPANISH

I have been working on my Spanish, but it has not progressed much past “Una cervesa per favor.” This might be interesting because, unlike the more popular routes, this one is mainly used by Spaniards and English is not spoken much in the small villages. Thank goodness for Google Translate!

I never learned Spanish in school, but I frequently travel in Spanish-speaking countries so I have tried quite hard to learn the language. I have spent hours on Duolingo, worked through textbooks, taken classes and hired a private tutor

It was nice to have enough Spanish that I could order food without pointing, but beyond that, my Spanish was useless. Everywhere I stayed, the staff spoke much better English than I spoke Spanish. I would sometimes begin in Spanish, but it would rapidly become obvious that explaining things to me in English was more efficient.

Most of the pilgrims I met spoke excellent English. However, for a couple of nights I was in small alburgues where all the other guests were speaking Spanish. Sometimes, someone would take pity on me and offer a translation. I had hoped that I would be able to participate in a simple conversation about where I had come from, where I was going to, and what the weather forecast was, but even this was too hard for me.

I encourage you to learn enough Spanish to say Hello, Please and Thank You, one of those, please, and to ask for the bill., just to be polite, but you could probably get by without any Spanish at all. Google Translate does a pretty good job when all else fails.

THE BOTAFUEIRO

A final defining moment of my Camino took place in the Cathedral de Santiago as the botafumeiro swung wildly across the church and then slowly came to rest. This is the highlight of the “Pilgrims’ Mass”. It does not happen every time. The first occasion I lined up for an hour in the rain and it did not happen, but one morning after I had been to Finisterre I realised I had time to get tot he Cathedral for the 10 am mass, and I was lucky then.

ore pics of the ceremony are on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/p/DA0c5ePtIiR/?igsh=MWI0c2MzMW50ZG5tZg==along with many other highlights of the trip.

WHAT I LEARNED ON THE CAMINO

I do not have to be in charge all the time.

In my regular life, I often feel that most things are my responsibility. This applies to my roles as a parent, as “the man of the house”, Chief of Anesthesiology, hike leader and Lead Steward for Toronto Nature Stewards. To a certain extent I enjoy taking a leadership role, and I think that I am often good at organizing things. But on the Camino, I was just one more pilgrim. Its not my job to decide where a group of us should stay the night, to arrange a table at a restaurant, to catch the waiter’s eye, to work out how to split the bill. I can just sit back and see what happens,let other people offer suggestions and make decisions. Things may not work out the way I would have planned them. They might be better, they might be worse, but in the end it does not really matter very much.

Problems do not need to be solved right now.

I tend to be quite driven and goal-orientated. As soon as I am aware of a problem, I start thinking of possible solutions and weighing up the options. On the Camino I realized that this was not always necessary. The fact that I do not have anywhere booked to sleep tonight is an issue, if not really a problem. But it is one that can wait. I can put it to one side and hike for another hour or two, then think about it. Maybe I can make a reservation after lunch. Maybe I will just walk into the next town and see what happens. The Camino will provide.

I will never be famous or even important

Don’t mock me for this one, I am just being honest and open….

I took the audio tour of the Cathedral in L+Oviedo. The guide pointed out that several niches around the cathedral are empty, with no statue or decoration. This is apparently a deliberate policy, to remind people that we still need more good people to do major and important things, to win victories that will merit their statue being placed in these vacant spots. That will not be me. There will be no blue plaque outside my house saying “John Oyston” lived here. there will not even be a Wikipedia page about my life. No-one will play me in a movie.

There was a time when I thought that my life could be important, that I might do something that would justify some form of immortal fame. I don’t think that Is normal, or that many other people think that way or have that expectation. In my defence, I did have perhaps overly supportive parents, and I did do very well in school. But [perhaps I should have abandoned this conceit when I got to medical school and struggled to keep a place on the middle of the class list.

No-one needs to walk to Santiago

Walking to Santiago is a selfish activity that people do for their own amusement. Perhaps it might make them a better person, but it will not make the world a better place. As I took the bus from Madrid to Leon to start the San Salvador, I noticed that if I stayed on the same bus for an extra hour it would take me all the way to Oviedo, saving me six days and 121 km of hiking. Of course, that would be absurd; the whole point of my trip to Spain was to walk the Camino. But somehow that highlighted the notion that we walk for pleasure, for our own amusement. And that is entirely OK. In fact there is a plaque along the route announcing that rest and relaxation is a human right. Walking can just be something we do because we enjoy doing it. It does not have to have any greater purpose. If we set ourselves a goal, such as walking 100 km, that is our own personal goal. Whether we succeed or not only matters to us personally. No-one needs to walk to Santiago.

APPENDIX

APPS

Booking.com for accommodation

Whats App for communicatingwith alburgues and other pilgrims

E-sim from Airalo for data – I used 6 GB over 30 days. This means you cannot send or receive text messages or make voice calls, which was sometimes inconvenient. Worked very well for email, WhatsApp, weather forecasts etc.

Google Translate – download the Spanish package.

Google Maps – for finding cafes and alburgues in town. Download the appropriate area in advance.

I used Gronze as my main guide, automatically translated from Spanish There are many other options. Wise Pilgrim seemed popular.

Mapy.cz was my main mapping app. Downloaded all of Asturias and Galicia in advance. Gronze also has an excellent map but I could not get it to work on my Android phone.

Rome to Rio for working out how to get between cities. Omio for booking buses, Trainline for trains. However the bus to Cee I bought at the Santiago bus station and I bought my ticket on the bus to get to Lugo.

The Camino de Santiago Facebook page is a helpful place to search for information, but please check the resources above before asking a question that could be answered with a simple Google search.

Conclusions

The hiking was not hard, its really just a matter of persistence.

 It was an honour and a privilege to be able to spend a month in rural Northern Spain and to take part in a unique cultural phenomenon. I will remember the Camino and the people I shared it with for the rest of my life.