Tags: travel
<< previousnext >>In October of 2023, I flew to Spain and walked over 600km along the Camino de Santiago. I kept a diary throughout this journey, writing in broken Spanish. Here, I'll give a brief introduction to the series of diary entries, which I have now transcribed and translated to less-broken English.
The Camino de Santiago ("Way of St. James") is a network of pilgrimages or walking routes. They're mostly situated in Spain, and the endpoint of all the routes is Santiago de Compostela, a city in the autonomous community of Galicia. Hundreds of thousands of people walk these routes every year. Some of them do it for spiritual reasons, but nowadays I think most people just do it for fun. The tradition is over 1000 years old.
I can't remember how I discovered the Camino. A lot of people, especially from North America, first hear of it through a Martin Sheen movie called The Way, but I haven't watched it. Someone probably mentioned it to me during the 3-month Spanish course I did in Valencia. Wherever I got the idea, I'd been excited by it for a long time (adventure! introspection! nature! Spanish!), and after submitting my thesis in September of 2025 it seemed like the perfect time to go.
The Camino del Norte, or "Northern Way", is a route along the coast of northern Spain. I picked it because it's less crowded than the the most popular route, the Camino Francés ("French Way"). I thought the pilgrims taking that route might be more interesting, and it'd be less touristy.
The Norte starts in Irún, in the Basque Country of northeastern Spain. It consists of about 35 stages, depending on how you break it up. Given that I only had 30ish days to spend, I decided to skip a few stages and start in Bilbao instead. This shaved off about 150km, which happened to be the most mountainous and difficult part of the Norte, but I still had to walk over 600km.
Here are the stops I planned to make along the way, with particularly difficult segments marked by an X. The total distance was 667.8km.
In reality, this isn't the precise route I ended up following, and I actually got to Santiago ahead of schedule. A few reasons why:
I had a few days to spare at the end, which I used to explore Santiago and visit Finisterre. I envisioned myself reading Sylvia Plath's poem of the same name, Finisterre, in the final moments of the trip. [Editor's note: well, aren't you a pretentious little sod?]
I had a relatively small backpack, with a capacity of 22L. It weighed 4-6kg, depending on whether my water bottle was full and whether I was carrying food. Many other pilgrims commented on how small and light my bag was. It was a conscious choice - all the guides said to be minimalist and reduce weight as much as possible. I may have taken it a bit too far, though.
Here's the full list:
While there are some things I might change with hindsight, I feel that the packing was a success! Possible amendments:
My main resource was r/CaminoDeSantiago. The discussions and guides on there cover everything you might need: routes, packing, walking tips, accommodation, weather, blister prevention, etc. I also used pilgrim.es for route planning, and the Buen Camino app was helpful too. I didn't book any accommodation before the trip, which ended up biting me on the first night. After that, I sometimes booked accommodation ahead of my arrival in a town, but that mostly wasn't necessary.
Yep. Almost every day. And I always went back to fill in the days I missed. It was a lot of work, but I didn't have much else to do in the evenings, and I'm glad to now have a record of my trip.
I wrote in Spanish, for practice. This somewhat limited what I could express, but I usually managed to capture the day's events with the generous use of a dictionary. I wrote in a mixture of present and past tense, but for the transcription I'm converting everything to the past tense, because otherwise it'd be hard to read. I've also done extensive editing, moved some non-chronological bits around, and added details that I neglected to write down at the time.
At the time I did the Camino, I was vegetarian. Sometimes I had to settle for subpar or expensive veggie food, especially in small villages, but for the most part I didn't have any issues. I ate a LOT of tortilla de patatas (Spanish omelette), as they're available in all the cafeterías. It would've been much harder as a vegan. I suspect I would've had to cook for myself a lot more and carry more food supplies with me.
Seems a shame to write so much and not share it with anyone. Also, it's fun.
I'd be happy to hear from you at galligankevinp@gmail.com.