Camino Week 4 -> Highs and Lows

May 22, 2022 by libertatemamo 25 Comments

Another solid week has passed on the Camino, the rush of days just merging one into the other like a old movie reel.

I’m further along and now, having walked (for the most part) around 570km (~350 miles) meaning theres only 200km (~125 miles) or so until I finish my pilgrimage.

At this point I’m both ready for it to be over and yet surprised that’s it’s going by so fast. This feeling of time being both short and long is one I carry daily on the trail these days, no doubt linked to the simplicity of my life here.

We walk, eat, sleep and repeat and the little downtime we have is spent resting our aching feet or sniffing our clothes to decide if we really need to hand wash that day. The hours we spend walking on the trail are long (7-9 hours per day) and sometimes monotonous, yet there’s not much time to think or do anything else.

Our days are truly full.

It’s plain, it’s simple, and so very different from regular life. Yet like regular life there are up and downs, and this past week has seen more of them than I expected in both a good and an {{ahem}} less good way.

I’m On Another Forced Rest Day

I honestly didn’t expect to write this, but today is another down day for me after yet another Nina incident.

When I left you in the last blog I was on a few days of forced rest thanks to a Nina-classic-fall from the death-bunk beds of an Albergue along the Meseta. I did the right thing and rested my back, taking a taxi for 2 stretches of walk to keep up with my hiking buddies while allowing my body to heal.

Since then I’ve been super careful, using the snazzy backpack-shipping services that are available all along the Camino Francés to ship the majority of my pack weight ahead (it only costs EUR 5 each time I do it) while carrying my comfortable bigger pack with water, a few essentials and of course Olaf.

My back has been sore, but it’s managed (yeah!) and I’ve been able to keep walking.

Until today….

Its The Heat That Has Me Beat

This particular incident started two days ago where we all got off to a later start than usual, thanks to the distraction of some fabulous tourist attractions in Astorga.

It’s a lovely city with an incredible baroque-facade 15th century cathedral and a bishops residence designed by the geometric-modernist-wonder-architect Antoni Gaudi. Two attractions that were too good to miss and completely absorbed us that morning, so much so that we didn’t get properly hiking until 11AM.

This was fine and dandy until we started up a pretty, but shadeless and breeze-free trail which continued for several hours while the heat built until it felt like the ground itself was radiating back at us. I deployed Olaf of course, but as valiant as he is even he couldn’t save me from this extreme.

By the time we reached a cafeteria at around 3PM three out of the four of us were totally spent. So we taxi’d the last 6km rather than walk in the heat. Good thing too because when I arrived at the albergue I felt rather faint and dizzy.

This was my first warning….

Then Came Day Two

I ignored all this of course, as one does, rehydrated and felt ok the next morning which was one of our hardest, but also prettiest stretches yet.

We started at sunrise, hiking up and over the Léon mountains at 1510m (higher than our hike over the Pyrenees!), through fields of insane wildflowers and outstanding views.

It was a day that passed by the Iron Cross (an ancient monument where pilgrims usually leave a stone as a momento, which our group of 4 did too), followed a ridgeline for many km and then descended rather brutally via a steep knee-busting trail on the other side.

It was just incredible.

I was super careful on the trail, deployed Olaf early, inched my way down the steep rocky descent and thoroughly enjoyed the day. But once again I felt rather woozy from the heat when we arrived in town that afternoon

Second warning…

The final straw was a hot night at the Albergue where everyone sweated, but flies from the open windows meant we had to cover up.

Early the next AM I woke suddenly to severe stomach cramps and nausea, and couldn’t keep anything down. I managed 6km of trail to the next town, but only barely and knew at that point that I needed urgent medical care.

Third and final warning…

The Hospital Was Fabulous 

Thankfully we were near the bigger city of Ponferrada (famous for its incredible Templar Castle, amongst other things) which has a huge University Hospital that I can’t say enough good things about.

They took me in, did all kinds of tests and scans, put me on 3 drips and observed me all afternoon.

The whole experience was actually quite interesting, if you ignore the whole being-in-the-ER thing. There was a priest who came by with a pack of cards which turned out to be bible verses and blessings (apparently a thing in Spanish hospitals), three nurses who cared for me and the rather good-looking young doctor who checked in on me no less than three times. Incredible care and all for the grand sum of zero cost to me thanks to my French EU-wide health care card (CEAM).

The good news was that all my tests came back clear, so it was likely just a case of good ol’ heat exhaustion. Three hours on the drip later they discharged me with a stern warning to rest and drink plenty of soup. I spent the remainder of the day napping (we were in a lovely private room, thankfully) and re-introducing food and water very, very slowly.

Lesson learned. Get hiking early!

Its Likely To Get Hotter Too

The heat we’ve seen is just the start of what’s coming.

On Friday Spain warned of a heatwave of “extraordinary intensity” that saw May blast through record temperatures over the weekend. The south of Spain was the hardest hit with temps in some cities exceeding 40C (104F!!), but sections of the north were impacted too.

Its no wonder it’s felt so hot these past days!

Thankfully we are about to enter Galicia in the northeast corner of Spain, known for its rain and cooler temps (so fingers crossed we get spared the worst), but what of pilgrims starting the Camino now?

According to a local Albergue owner over 1000 people arrived in SJPDP a few days ago, so many that not all could be accommodated in town (the city had to hire buses to take them elsewhere for the night).

I simply cannot imagine, not only the craziness of all those thousands of pilgrims trying to find beds in June and July, but also the absolutely insane heat they’re likely to encounter.

It’s going to be a very challenging summer for the Camino.

I’ve Walked A Good Way

I can’t deny it’s been mentally hard to have another setback. The first one (my back incident) was relatively easy, but this second one bummed me out a bit. Thank goodness for my hiking buddies, the awesome Second Breakfast Club…they’ve kept my morale up.

I’m also not the only hiker going through this. Many pilgrims encounter challenges on the Camino (even much more difficult ones) so I have to try and focus on what I have achieved, which in the space of a mere week and a few taxi rides has actually been quite a lot.

This past week saw us finish the Meseta (the long, high, arid plain that stretches through the entire middle potion of Spain), complete our longest walk yet (28km in one day!), pass through two major towns (Léon and Astorga) and re-enter the highs of the Western edge of the Cantabrian Mountains (also known as the Léon Mountains).

In that space we saw both some of the most monotonous and also some of the most astonishing landscape we’ve seen so far.

The end parts of the Meseta, as you approach the big cities of Léon (at 461km) and Astorga (at 510km) are perhaps some of the most boring hiking of the entire Camino (I have to admit I wasn’t overly sad to miss a few portions of it via taxi due to my back issue), and there were full days where we simply walked flat stretches by the side of the road.

The long stretches of asphalt and concrete walking out of the big cities on the other side are no more exciting (although Léon and Astorga themselves are fabulous). Plus they’re really hard on the feet.

But then past Astorga the landscape changes slowly but surely. A smidgen of humidity comes back into the air, more greenery and trees and the welcome view of rolling hills to break the monotony of the flats. The hike up and over the mountains thereafter is an absolute treat (as you now already know).

In some ways you could say the hardness of our last days on the Meseta made the sweetness of the mountains even more so.

The Camino, despite its ups and downs, always surprises you.

Only One Week (Or So) To Go

While others start, we are almost done and it still astonishes me that despite a month of doing this, I’m still actually here.

I sleep nightly with a bunch of strangers in teenager-like dorm rooms, get up each morning and lug a backpack on my back, then walk for many km despite aches and pains and everything else. The entire idea of it seems insane when you really think about it, yet somehow it’s still enjoyable.

And now I know exactly when it will all end.

Several days ago we booked out the rest of our trip, taking the stress out of the “bed run” that we’d seen happening more and more often (at one Albergue this past week we got in line an hour before it opened, and the beds sold out 30 mins later. Insanity!) So now we know that we’ll be in Santiago de Compostella on May 30th…feet, back and body willing.

That’s a mere 8 days away!

Like everything this week it seems like a date that’s very far away, yet also very close. Between here and there we have one more big mountain, and the last stretch from Sarria which will (apparently) become even more crowded.

There will undoubtedly be more ups and downs (although hopefully no more setbacks), good moments with my friends, hard moments on the trail and so many unpredictable experiences in between. Yet believe it or not, I’m still really, really looking forward to it.

One more week, another couple of hundred km and another 300,000 steps or so and I’ll be there. Let’s see what this next week brings.