Category Archives: Camino pilgrim stories

Camino del Norte, Camino pilgrim stories

Everything has a time and place …

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Yet again the camino calls. ‘Come’ she whispers. ‘It’s warm and sunny, your toes can sink into the sand as you walk alongside the ocean that awaits where you last left off. There will time for you to ponder, people for you to meet, delicacies for you to enjoy and all manner of surprises for you to uncover.’

Yes. Yes, I will go. I will answer the call. The pull this time is strong. The camino is magic like that. I am curious for what I will find along this next section of the camino. Once again I feel ready to hop on where I last left off to simply walk. To walk a long walk. Although if I am honest this pull, coupled an excitement that is growing is somewhat surprising to me given that last time I wan’t sure I’d ever be back on the camino again.

It was July last year when I last set off on along the camino del norte. A camino that lasted three days instead of the ten I had planned. I was done with the camino when I left. So done. I didn’t want to be sharing rooms, I was frustrated at being injured (through stupidity) and I didn’t love the realisation that was revealing itself to me, that in this time of my life I’d given away my power. I’d completely lost myself. I had no idea how to use my voice anymore.

But in those three days of walking and the three days of stopping I met some incredible women. Women who each gave me something to ponder throughout this past year. Women who I’m sure without realising gave me what I needed. I needed a place to begin and some questions to ask myself. When I left I knew I needed to go home. It was the first time I’d ever stopped for a day along a camino and surprisingly I was completely ok with it. This time the camino was not about distance, days walked or reaching a destination it was about stopping and the women who walked into my life. Women I would never see again but who would always be a part of me.

Of course you haven’t yet met these characters, these women and what they inspired me to go and learn about myself because I came home and let these stories and this blog sit on the sidelines. It didn’t quite fit. The stories I thought I was going to write didn’t come home with me. I came home different. I needed to take what each of these women had provoked in me and to go and be with that in my life. To take those questions and go on a long walk, to live with them. Life is a camino! I’ve been walking almost a year with some of these thoughts.

Everything has a time and place. When I started writing this blog it was with good intention, to create something for and with women. But there was also perhaps an egotistical intention and the desire to create what others expected I should do – to build a camino something. As the call came this week to walk again, so did the call to write here. As I started writing, the title changed from ‘your camino’ to ‘camino tales’. I can’t tell you how to walk your camino, that’s not really me. I can however share my camino tales with you and connect with you through my camino stories. That is me. Ph-ew, this feels peaceful, now this blog is synchronous with how and what I want to write. Flow.

These women, these characters you’re yet to meet them in my writing and what they inspired in me during my last camino. Oh and the preventable injury, that’s a doozy! It’s going to be embarrassing to write up that one. I’m excited to answer the call to walk the camino again and with that excitement I feel hopeful for this space. I think I get how to use my voice now. Just be me. It sounds simple enough but I feel this will be my challenge. One I am looking forward to actually. One I will be thinking about as I reread ‘Big Magic’ while I walk in a few weeks. There are still things I want to change and learn from about how I’ve blogged in the past. I hope these changes will see this blog grow into something beautiful.

Ho hum … the first challenge in the next 10 days or so is to enter a writing cocoon to catch up on all my camino del norte posts. If I can do this I can blog live from the camino. I find live blogs from the camino such a joy to read. I would love to extend myself to do that, to get in amongst that joy. I don’t love typing on an iPhone when travelling so much but the connection with fellow adventure lovers – that’s fun! And fun is good, fun is definitely worth investing time in. So, if you’ll have me I look forward to sharing this space with you over the next few weeks to share some camino tales.

Fran x

“Say yes to every single tiny clue of curiosity that you notice around you. That’s big magic too. It’s big magic on a quieter scale and on a slower scale, you just have to learn how to trust it. It’s all about the yes.”

– Elizabeth Gilbert

All Camino routes (resources), Camino pilgrim stories

Which Camino Route, Which Section? Endless Options!

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If you’ve started your camino research, it’s likely you’ve realised that your camino options are endless. You can find almost 300 listed caminos criss crossing countless countries. You can choose from any one of these routes, walk the entire route, choose a section of a route, bus some or even come back next time to where you left off. Mountains, oceans, forests, inland, coastal and urban trails, wine regions, tapa regions, quaint villages, farmscapes, popular or more desolate paths. The options are endless. Traditionally, a pilgrim began their camino from home, some pilgrims still do!

While walking the Camino Frances I met Miriam from Amsterdam. For the past 14 years she has set off for two weeks in April to walk her camino. Each year she picks up where she last left off, each time getting a little closer towards Santiago and to gaining her compostella. Funny story, she also lived most of her life in the same village we currently live in. We had trained walking in the same forests. A classic camino/travel coincidence! This was back in 2018 in Cirauqui, one of the quaint hilltop Spanish villages along way to Santiago de Compostella. I guess she has walked into Santiago by now.

Perhaps Miriam will even walk back to Amsterdam from Santiago!?! This is also not completely uncommon. Last year along the way I met John, an American who had learnt Spanish during the covid lockdowns. When the camino opened again he decided to walk it to practice his Spanish. John, a retiree with time on his hands, decided upon his arrival in Santiago to turnaround and walk back to St Jean Pied de Port (SJPDP). Naturally, he is fluent now. Clever John, I did not learn a language during lockdowns! I am trying again now though John. Meeting these characters and hearing their interesting stories is one of the reasons I keep going back. You never know who you will meet and who will inspire your life along the camino.

The most popular camino with its brilliant pilgrim infrastructure is the Camino Frances and the most beautiful is thought to be the Camino del Norte, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Camino Primitivo is the most challenging and the Camino Ingles is where the English and Irish pilgrims would traditionally begin after crossing the channel into Spain. Or, perhaps walking the Portugese coast interests you. Walking your camino is now more popular than ever with 2022 recording the highest number of pilgrims in the past decade. A camino, it seems is high on many people’s ‘wish to experience in life’ list.

Of course, it isn’t doable or even desirable for many to start from home like Miriam, or to walk to and from SJPDP like John. So it’s a choice of which route, or which section along the camino. When you come from a long way, like OZ or the Americas it isn’t always easy to dedicate the 4-5 weeks required to walk the entire length of the camino. Depending on time available or distance desired many choose to start at Sarria. This is the last 100kms point and is the distance required to gain a compostella certificate. Some, like sweet Al (above) from Canada choose to walk from a bigger city such as Leon. Or, like my mates Jenny and Piet (below) from Sydney, whom I met last year when I was walking the first section of the Camino Frances with my son, a combination is better. They started in SJPDP, walked a few weeks, took a bus through a few sections and hoped back on the trail later. Your camino is a real life ‘choose your own adventure’ story.

Personally, I have competed a full Camino Frances, the shorter Camino Finisterre and Muxia and have four other caminos on the go. Yes, four! (There’s apparently a term for that … a camino tragic.) I am nearly ready to complete the third section of the Camino del Norte. I am one section into the Camino Frances with my son. We will return later this year for the next one. Also, later this year my bestie from Oz is coming to do the last couple of hundred kms of the Camino Frances with me, or more I am going with her! And like Miriam, I also began walking from my home. My from home camino is to Rome and it follows European camino paths. lt’s a slow boiler this one, I seem to struggle to fit this camino in! I am looking forward to sharing these caminos with you in these pages.

Basically! Your camino begins wherever you choose to start! The one you plan and travel to or simply when you put your shoes on and walk outside.

Camino pilgrim stories

The First of Your Camino Pilgrim Stories, Mine!

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During April and May of 2018 I hiked my first camino. As this was my first camino I chose the popular French way known as The Camino Frances. Yep, Frances walked the Frances! Ha ha see what I did there. Actually, I jumped on my sister’s camino plan. Luckily, she was happy for me to join her along the 800km ancient pilgrimage route that begins at the base of the French Pyrenees and meanders its way through the regions of Navarre, La Rioja, Castille and Leon and Galicia in Northern Spain. I walked across a country! Literally. It was a 28 day adventure with a backpack and a really cool story of how together with a swag of armchair followers we were able to send a whole class of girls in Sierra Leone to school for a year. To this day it continues to impact my life. I continue to return to the camino to walk and here I am creating a new something with all my camino experiences.

Why did I walk my first camino?

After having returned to ‘normal’ life after a six month sabbatical with my husband and four kids travelling through Southern Europe in a campervan during 2017/18 I was a bit disenchanted with the online travel space. It seemed loud and without boundaries. I was also in need of some post adventure purpose. I love an adventure and the lure of a long hike with a backpack, along this trail they call the camino seemed to be calling me.

Inspired by my 10 year old daughter, who before we had left for our sabbatical together with her friends become ambassadors for girls of the same age. Girls, who by birth were denied the same privilege. They fearlessly set about creating events to raise money to educate girls. In the words of Morgan Koegal, who, at the time was the CEO of One Girl Australia …

” … when something feels wrong in your gut – do something about it.”

and those 10 year old girls did exactly that! They fundraised by among other things raffling sustainable donated prizes to be able to create educational opportunities for girls in Sierre Leone.

Now, a year later it felt like my turn. I wanted to find a way share a different story about travel and to contribute to that space creatively and sustainably. I wanted to combine my love of adventure with charity and to get ‘busy’ fighting a good fight. Girls being denied an opportunity to go to school, simply by being born a girl – that’s not right. So I began a story in which I would find a positive way to share travel. An epic adventure. And hopefully, I would also contribute positively to the online travel space as well as get people out hiking!

My experience along The French Way …

My camino was an incredible experience on so many levels. I walked this ancient path that dates back to the 9th century in a year that 327,378 fellow pilgrims also received a compostella walking the various caminos. Together with my sister. We laughed (hard), cried (also hard), we groaned (primally), moaned (and laughed again), bantered and joked. We made friends for life and for the day and looking back mostly we loved our time doing this together. What a gift that time together was. I can honestly say I did not for one moment wish to be somewhere else. Sorry kids! Ha no there was no need for me to worry, they were well taken care of at home. I do have an incredibly supportive husband.

Physically, it was doable for me, although of course not without challenges. I pushed through sore feet, fatigue and ended my walk in tears with shin splints, both shins. Joy. For me the biggest learning along this camino was about people and how I relate. It constantly met me in the face. I spent time with fellow pilgrims from all over the world and all walks of life, it challenged so many of the preconceptions (read judgements) good and bad that I was often so quick to form about people. The camino taught me a new kind of humility. It also taught me I needed to connect with people more that I thought I did. I was perhaps a more extroverted introverted than I had believed myself to be.

As we experienced the absolute privilege of living this experience, the beautiful time together, the camaraderie, the meditative beauty of motion that is walking, the simplicity of living from our backpacks, the awe of the Northern Spanish landscape, historical hamlets and culturally infused cities there was another, perhaps bigger story in the making. The story of the walk for one girl. That story ended as a walk for 30 girls. Along the way I was supported by so many people. People who read my daily bog posts and donated to the charity. People I knew and many I’d never met. It was an absolute momentous experience to share with people, mostly women from around the globe.

Along the way and towards the end I met Andrew from Germany. His sister had walked the camino years before. Something he told me has always stuck with me. His sister had said to him…

“… you won’t understand your camino until you come home. It will take some time.”

I think I’m getting that now. Walking a camino has a different meaning to each of the pilgrims who walk it. Some people articulate it directly but it has taken me some time. Perhaps, it also changes and evolves with time. Now, whenever I am at a party someone corners me about the camino, more and more people are asking me about walking a camino. It feels like an invitation. An invitation to find myself again off the camino by sharing my stories from the camino. A way of tying the wisdom gained from such an experience with how I live my daily camino, the camino that is my life. Ok, we’re getting deep now. That’s the camino experience. It is a profound journey and for some of us it keeps giving. In fact, there is a saying along the camino and that is ‘the camino provides’. That is whatever your need, it will be provided. It is an invitation to trust.

Have I been back?

Yes! I’ve been back a few times, solo, with a friend, most recently I walked with one of my children. In fact, I have three caminos currently in progress. A solo camino towards Rome, via Francigena. I started this one from my front door and currently I’ve walked out of The Netherlands and into Belgian for this one. The northern camino which I started in Irun and am currently in Santander for this one. The Camino Frances with one of my sons, we started in St Jean Pied de Port and are ready to pick up where we left off in Puente la Reina in a few months. One of my best friends is coming to do section of the camino Frances later this year and it will be a hoot. It is very possible to do a camino section by section.

Should you walk a camino?

Only you can answer this, but if you’ve been called … you probably will. Start with walking everyday. There are so many ways to walk a camino. It can be done with all kinds of budgets, ailments and at any age. The more I walk the more I know this to be true. Traditionally, pilgrims took the route for religious reasons, many still do but now as Leslie Gilmour (pilgrim and writer) says …

“… modern Pilgrimages seem to be a lot less about religion and more about peace, finding something in life, a time to think, and for some a challenge”.

I think in this modern world many of us are craving more of this! And we’re figuring out how this can be the ‘normal’ in our daily lives. To me the camino gives you a handbook for this. Get up, leave yesterday behind, travel with just what you need, walk through the day, walk towards somewhere, at the same time being right where you are, smell the fresh air, move your body, see yourself, be in awe of yourself and what you’re capable of, experience challenges, figure things out, do what needs to be done, enjoy the company of others, enjoy food, sleep. Repeat.