My walk from Boadilla to Carrion on the Camino Frances

And a bit of background on how I got here.

It’s already six days ago that I walked from the tiny village of Boadilla to Carrion de los Condes. So it is high time to update you on the progress I make on my Camino. If you are here for the video, just scroll down, but stay here if you wonder what I am doing here in northern Spain.

You will probably have read my earlier posts, and seen the videos, where I showed the start of my Camino. But today is the first time that I have a quiet room, proper internet, and even a desk to write on, so it gives me a chance to write a bit more. Please excuse me for any typos while I am on the Camino, I can’t carry more electronics than my iphone.

And that sets perhaps best the stage for what I’m doing this summer: all I have with me here in Spain is in a backpack of seven kilos. Add another two kilos for two liters of water and that is all I need for the about 30 to 45 days that I’m on this ancient pilgrimage from France to Santiago de Compostela. I’m far away from the office in Ottawa where I normally type my newsletters, surrounded by books, and all relevant information at my fingertips on the several screens on my desk. I must admit it was hard to leave my MacBook Air behind, but I realized that such a lightweight laptop of 1.5 kilo doesn’t feel as a light weight once you carry it over the mountains during a heatwave. The planning of a thru-hike starts with hard choices on what not to bring; you may have noted I dropped my shaving gear from the list of necessities as well.

I have had a fascination for this pilgrimage for as long as I can remember. Then, five years ago, during a visit to the Basque region, I saw for the first time pilgrims walking through the summer heat with their backpacks and wide-rimmed hats. Their experience felt distant from my world in my air-conditioned car while driving from Madrid to Pamplona. But this spring, the plan to join their ranks became more concrete, when I realized that two long winters in Canada where cold and piles of snow in combination with pandemic-measures had kept me inside for too long. I felt it was time to break away from the easy life of sitting in a chair and typing my stories; it was a life where on some days my maximum walked distance was no further than between the coffee machine and my desk. And at 56, I had experienced more health problems in the past six years than the 50 years before that. One morning, I was making a podcast about the importance for your mental and physical health of spending time more time in nature, while I realized that I hadn’t left the house at all the day before. It was high time to make some some drastic changes in my daily routine.

I started to watch YouTube videos about the Camino and I downloaded some books on my Kindle that I read before falling asleep; and before I knew it I was caught by the Camino bug. I believe I was hit by only a mild case, since I set my ambition very modestly. I only wanted to cross the Pyrenees from France to Spain and reach Pamplona. From there, I wanted to travel by bus or train to other Basque cities like Bilbao and San Sebastian. This modest ambition covered only the first three stages of the 32 that were described in my guidebook for the Camino Frances.

That is something else that I had to learn: there is not one “Camino de Santiago”, like a way to Santiago that starts at one point and ends in Santiago. This is a way that only has an end point, but countless beginnings. In the original concept of a millennium ago, the start of a pilgrimage was one’s home. So it is a way with a set ending but you can start it anywhere. I met in the past weeks several pilgrims who had started their pilgrimage in Belgium.

Some well-known starting points are Paris or Le Puy, but the most popular of the many routes to Santiago the Compostela is the Camino Frances that starts in Saint Jean Pied de Port. It is a charming historic town on the French side of the Pyrenees. So I decided a few months ago that my pilgrimage should start right there. You may remember it from the pictures on the first video that I posted.

So in the past two months, I started to collect whatever I may need; a backpack, shoes, socks, a headlamp, and a rather silly looking floppy head. And with all that I took the train to Saint Jean Pied de Port in mid June to start my pilgrimage. One that would bring me much further than just crossing the Pyrenees. Now that I am writing this in Leon, I have even passed the midway point to Santiago. I’m taking a break in this pleasant city to restore my health, and will in a couple of days shoulder my backpack again and walk further towards Santiago de Compostela.

The previous newsletters show the first stages of my walk. The one below is in my guidebook stage 15 out of 32.

The video doesn’t show the evening with the quite famous “Singing Nuns of Carrion”. I believe not all that the Camino has to offer should be online and it is best to be experienced by just being there. After the kind contribution of the nuns, the Italian pilgrims took the lead in making spaghetti for the about 15 pilgrims that had joined.

Soon after, the wine and guitar passed from one to the other and we sang Beatles and Coldplay favorites for hours.

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