Camino

About the author: Karl Trautmann is a Catholic husband and father to three young children with the hopes of more to come. A private music teacher turned police officer with a love of reading, writing, and all things outdoors.

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I joined my university’s choir in September 2016, because they were going to Europe in the summer. Thankfully, I did know how to sing; mostly. I had wanted to do the Camino since seeing the movie The Way starring Martin Sheen in 2012 but didn’t have the funds for it, and this was the perfect opportunity for me to get there. I still didn’t have the funds for it, but thankfully the choir was fundraising and so I wouldn’t have to pay for the whole flight. I wasn’t particularly interested in choir; I had joined my high school choir for all of one year and hadn’t joined any other choir since.

I saved up what I could and started a GoFundMe page titled, “don’t let Karl starve.” I largely depended on donations from friends and family. This got me most of the way through my pilgrimage and I only had to resort to one night of busking (a random Canadian singing classical music with zero instruments was not a wildly successful venture) before I racked up a few more donations from home to tide me over. To help with both spending less money and to add to the feel of an old-school pilgrimage I bought a sleeping bag and a hammock (after a miserable night spent sleeping on the cold ground) that I ended up sleeping in probably 90% of the time after the first week of my four-week trip.

The “Camino de Santiago” is the way (camino) of St. James (Santiago). Tradition holds that after being beheaded in Jerusalem, St. James the Greater’s body arrived in Santiago—likely brought there by faithful disciples back to the land he was evangelizing. King Alfonso II (c. 760–842) built a chapel over the remains of St. James after they were rediscovered by a hermit named Pelagius. Alfonso II is said to be the first pilgrim that walked the Camino. This chapel was later transformed into a church which was then destroyed by a muslim army before being rebuilt into the basilica we have today under the patronage of King Alfonso VI in the 11th century. The first “guidebook” was the Codex Calixtinus, outlining the route but also including sermons, reports of miracles, and local customs encountered. The Codex was believed to have been written in the 12th century but was only rediscovered in 1886. It wasn’t until the 1980s that yellow arrows were added by Father Elias Valina Sampedro.

There are multiple Caminos, a network of paths, if you will, that lead to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela which is situated in the city of the same name in the province of Galicia, Northwestern Spain. The oldest and most popular route (almost 50% of all Camino pilgrims in 2023) to take is the “French Way” (camino frances) which starts in St. Jean Pied de Port (SJPD), France (entering Spain on day #1) then follows a 778.5 km walk, passing through cities such as Pamplona, Los Arcos, Santo Domingo, Burgos, and Leon. This walk also uses an old Roman road nicknamed the “milky way” because it’s supposed to point in the same direction the galaxy does, ending in the town of Finisterra (the end of the world, a Spanish version of the original Roman name for the location).

While originally a religious pilgrimage, pilgrims (peregrinos) now walk the Camino for a wide variety of reasons. I’ll write about my personal experiences and the people I encountered but according to followthecamino.com, 42% of pilgrims walk out of religious devotion, 34.7% have a blend of motivations (what the website refers to as a combination of religious and secular), and nearly 23% are motivated by non-religious reasons.

My intentions were in line with the majority. I initially wanted to do the Camino to discern a call to the priesthood but instead decided just to enter seminary and after two years discerned back out again (with the help of the formation team there). While in the choir that I joined I took note of an exceptional and beautiful young woman who, as luck (or providence!) would have it, would be in two of my other classes as well. We began dating a little over a month later and I decided to dedicate my pilgrimage to discerning marriage with her. I was largely decided by the time the pilgrimage came but still offered it up as an intention.

I started my Camino on May 24. I can’t remember why I didn’t or couldn’t arrange for a bus all the way to SJPD but I remember hitchhiking from somewhere around Bayonne for the last 50 or so kilometres. I ended up arriving in SJPD after midnight when all the hostels (“alberge” in France, “albergue” in Spain) were closed. I hiked a stone staircase of an historic citadel multiple times to generate body heat then spent the night encased in cardboard on a park bench. Despite the lack of sleep, I was absolutely ecstatic to begin my journey and probably spent more energy than I should have walking around the town waiting for the centre to open where I could pick up my “credencial del peregrino” (pilgrim passport—a stamp book essentially) and clam shell. I was completely unprepared physically, other than being slim and fit in the general sense of the word, and also made a crucial error: I didn’t tie my shoes tightly enough. I was accustomed to walking maybe ten kilometres max and liked being able to slip out of my shoes quickly to remove offensive pebbles. My first day was 31.3 km (only 6 km farther than my guidebook’s advertised first stop in Roncesvalles) and I woke up the next morning with the beginning of the worst foot blisters (mostly my toes) I would ever experience.

The next night I slept in what was either a small monastery or refectory attached to St. Stephen’s in Zabaldika, now upheld by volunteers and sisters belonging to the Religious Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I was able to partake in a communal supper with fellow peregrinos and a few sisters and a priest. The following day I walked through Pamplona and marvelled at the first city that I recognized from both tales of St. Ignatius being shot with a cannon ball and the city’s bull run (I may have had a moment of panic when I saw that I was walking through a corral set up in the street, thankfully I did not find myself walking through a stampede at any point).

After this my memories start to run together quite a bit. I remember feeling very lonely a few days in, my toes blistering and peeling and hurting so bad that I would totter and limp, counting to 10 or even 100 steps before momentum finally took the pain away. I heard it said on my journey multiple times that the first half of the Camino breaks your body and the second half breaks your mind. I would say this is fairly accurate except I would divide it into thirds as the final third is when both your body and mind are strengthened together. The first third breaks your body, the second third breaks your mind, and the final third renews both. I’ll return to the breaking of the body and some tips to overcome it later.

The albergues were generally good and clean. Going to bed early was advisable because usually you had a lot of people who shared the same room (snoring galore!). I had anywhere from one other person in my room to a whopping nineteen. I would leave my backpack close to my bed with my passport and cash in a discreet fanny pack I wore at all times. Any additional valuables like my phone and wallet would go into a small bag under my pillow. Security was an issue, not with other peregrinos (in my experience) but in one town I left my phone plugged in overnight along with several other peregrinos’ phones in the room. I woke up to yelling in French and Italian and tried to shush them, thinking it was an argument. They found out I spoke English and promptly informed me that some random youth from the town had run away with all of our phones. Luckily, I had brought an iPod touch for extra memory and so was still able to communicate with home. It was still a frustrating way to learn a lesson.

Despite my blisters I committed to continue walking longer days both to avoid the busier albergues as well as to have more time at my final destination. As a result of committing to walking father distances, I found myself coming to smaller towns with a consistent group of people whom I would see again and again throughout the Camino, eventually forming what is affectionately called a “camino family.”

It was a largely secular group with only one other Christian who was very “progressive” to put it charitably. I still became quite close to everyone I was with and chose to stay on with them in order to combat my loneliness. When you’re walking an average of 30 km per day it’s very easy to find alone time, all you have to do is say, “I’m gonna hang back for a little while” or “I’m gonna get ahead a little bit,” adjust your pace, and then just like that you can walk by yourself for as long as you want. At either end of the Camino there were trains of people just like cars on a highway but for large sections in the middle you might not see anyone for hours at a time, especially if you took some of the alternative routes or detours.

Everyone in my camino family spoke English to varying degrees. We represented Canada, USA (who fell victim to blisters and knee pain and finished the Camino a few days after us), England, Germany, Switzerland, Croatia, New Zealand (not part of the family for long), Poland, and a couple other countries I can’t remember. Our motives ranged from an avid long-distance hiker to a newly divorced individual to a fairly senior citizen who had done the Camino every year since her husband passed away nearly a decade earlier.

We had a travel nanny who after spending a year working for one of the richest families in America decided to take a six month vacation travelling around the world, a youth counsellor who was contemplating a career change and decided to start his Camino on foot from his front door in Germany, a couple university students (myself included), and a professional chef (we did a lot of pitching in for meals made by him after we found that out!). There were nine of us in total (eleven counting the New Zealanders we picked up for a week or so) and we seldom all walked together. Three of us became dedicated hammockers and so would end up spending the most time together but sometimes the family would shift as we three would need to spend the night in an albergue in order to gain access to a shower or laundry.

The three of us that consistently slept outside most of the time started doing night walks to beat the heat. We essentially slept twice a day, we would go to bed in the evening and wake up around midnight, walk until the sun came up and then sleep again as long as we could, finding shade to spend the early afternoon before carrying on. We only carried this on until we felt like we could handle the heat because it wasn’t sustainable but there were some beautiful nights spent walking under the stars. We also happened upon a pilgrim who started his own albergue in the hills with beds set up on pads outside the building as well as inside. He was sleeping outside and woke up while we were walking through at two or three in the morning and insisted on giving us a light breakfast before we continued on.

Camping on the Camino isn’t common but it’s not rare either, allegedly there is some rule that permits pilgrims to sleep on the trail or just off the trail, but I never saw it written anywhere. I recall one night where we found this copse of perfectly spaced trees just off the path. We made a small fire and set up our hammocks and were soon joined by a Spaniard who informed us that he was a firefighter from the closest town and this was his family tree farm. We apologized profusely and offered to put out the fire and move on but to our delight he said he was satisfied with the size and location of our fire, and that he had done the Camino and wished he had slept outside like we were doing. He joined us for a single drink and then went to go get the keys he left in his tractor farther down the way, the purpose of his late-night trip when he had spotted us. Locals that I encountered were overwhelmingly friendly (mostly), particularly from the smaller towns. Even though they saw thousands of pilgrims walk through their town every year they never seemed to get tired of saying “buen camino!”

We found a lot of beautiful places to sleep. There were times where we had to walk a lot before finally finding some trees to tie up our hammocks, other times where you could be picky and scout out several locations before setting up. We woke up to fireworks in the nearest town once and decided to do a night walk, and another time I woke up and was surrounded by sheep. It turned out I was in the middle of the path by which a sheep dog would herd its master’s sheep. There aren’t any large predators in Spain to worry about, though they do have some venomous snakes, spiders, and believe it or not, a toxic caterpillar (processionary caterpillar) with little hairs that hook into your skin, causing a rash at the least and a cough, and/or allergic reaction at the worst. I never saw any of these on my Camino, though there were little signs a couple times stating to keep out of long grass because of ticks (horror stories trickled through about someone knowing someone else who got lime disease from taking a shortcut through long grass). In my journey we mostly tried to avoid tying up to trees that had ants on them, and there was one time that I woke up, walked into town, went into the bathroom of a cafe to brush my teeth and observed some kind of small insect crawl out of my beard and onto my cheek. I remember thinking “well, it was bound to happen eventually” so I just swatted it away, finished brushing my teeth, then grabbed my comb and very thoroughly combed out my beard.

One downside to sleeping outside was that it left less time to explore the towns and cities that your albergue was located in. This was especially true for perhaps the second third of the Camino when there are less trees (easily avoided if tenting). We would have an idea of where trees would be thanks to our guidebooks but you wanted to make sure you had time to set up camp before the sun was down. If you slept in an albergue alternatively, you would want to arrive in the early afternoon to secure a room, then have dinner somewhere, then spend the evening seeing the sights before turning in for the night. I regret not looking at more churches, going to mass only on Sundays, and not just exploring places more in general. I found lots of peace in the outdoors and thoroughly enjoyed sleeping under the stars away from all the people in albergues, walking in silence, and avoiding the rush. I think it would be possible to get the best of both worlds, if I had committed to walking more by myself or planning with my camino family where we would meet up again to sleep rather than always playing it by ear. When I returned home, I actually struck out from home a couple times, pointing towards the nearest hillside or ravine to find a place to sleep outside.

For the last four or five days of my Camino, I finally was at peace enough that I left my two dedicated hammockers and walked on my own, randomly encountering members of my camino family from time to time. I arrived in Santiago de Compostela in 24 days, received my certificate which officially told me I had walked the distance from SJPD to Compostela and inscribed my name in Latin (some computer program butchers the process, turning Karl into Carolum, the neuter version of my name. I tried to explain it should end in “us” to be consistent with Roman male names, but it was a lost cause). I sat through mass with hundreds of peregrinos who were there mostly just to watch the giant thurible swing across the entire width of the church, all eagerly pulling out their phones to record the moment. It was impressive, but I honestly felt it took away from the mass and felt rather gimmicky.

One random thing I wasn’t anticipating was for people to not understand me as I walked farther East. The dialect of Spanish switches from Castilian to Galician. For instance, “hombre” on the male bathroom sign becomes “humano” and the female “mujer” becomes “muller.” I thought I had become fairly proficient in Spanish for a peregrino but was informed in Galicia that I would be better understood if I spoke in English than in Castilian Spanish. One pointer for dining at a restaurant is not to ask for the menu (in Castilian Spanish anyways). “Menu” is “Carta” (as in “Puedo ver la carta” = “May I see the menu”). If you ask for the “menu” the server will either bring you the special of the day (salad, entree, dessert, and wine) or might have mercy on you and ask if you know what you’re asking for.

My two fellow hammockers joined me in Compostela and we walked together to Muxia on the coast and then Finisterra. These are both ‘bonus endings’ of the Camino and I highly recommend planning the three extra days it takes to walk to one of these. I hadn’t known about these unofficial endings and hadn’t planned on doing them but thankfully had enough days to spare to go. I enjoyed Finisterra more, and there are certainly more peregrinos there. This is also where the “0 mile” marker lies, next to a lighthouse on the coast (not far away from Finisterra’s Catholic church). There was a cafe with a garden that offered some wages or room and board to peregrinos if all the positions weren’t already filled. There are also nightly bonfires on the beach, a hillside with lots of trees, and lots and lots of coast with different beach options to relax (my favourite was Praia de Talon, a smaller beach farther Northeast of the giant main beach Praia as Boleiras). I would set up my hammock and spend hours just alternating between napping, reading, and swimming, soaking up the sun the whole while. I stayed there for several days before I had to take the shuttle back to Compostela in time to catch my bus and start my return trip home. It felt incredible to let my body relax and sleep as much as I wanted to. The one and only downside to Finisterra was these massive queen wasp-like looking bugs that patrolled the shoreline at night time. We would smack them to the ground and bury them in the sand, resulting in a peaceful five or so minutes before they emerged again. No one that I knew of got bit or stung but they were unnerving to say the least. I slept on the beach once and didn’t do it a second night, choosing instead to return to the trees on the hillside.

And now back to the breaking of the body and some hopefully helpful tips. For those who aren’t already aware; blisters are the result of moisture + friction. Taking out both is the best prevention, but you can just remove one. Either take away the moisture or take away the friction. Properly lacing your shoes helps with the friction, and baby powder became my go-to for taking away the moisture. Conversely, I met others that would Vaseline their feet and just go for 100% moisture and 0% friction. I tried it for a few days, but it was just too weird for me.

For the sake of your body and your back in particular, it is advised to carry 10% of your body weight. With water weighing a kilogram (2.2 lbs) per litre, and taking into account the weight of food if you carry a meal or two at a time, then your bag should probably be closer to 5%, a near impossible task. I weighed my bag at 10% of my body weight (160 lbs at the time of the Camino) without water or food. I had a 2 litre water bladder which when filled increased my bag’s weight from 16 lbs to 20.4 lbs, add the sleeping bag, hammock, food, and two cans of Shandy (lemonade + beer, more commonly known as a Radler here in Canada) that I started carrying habitually and my pack would fluctuate between 15% and 20% of my weight (24—32 lbs). I did not injure myself and I got used to it eventually, but it made the first part of the Camino harder than it had to be.

I did have a rather spectacular healing on my Camino though. I’m hesitant to call it a miracle but I’ll explain why after I elaborate. In the fall of my first year in seminary I developed an inguinal hernia. I had surgery in the spring and a piece of mesh was placed inside me to keep the parts that are supposed to be on the inside from bulging out of me. The surgery was successful, but I ended up with chronic discomfort from the mesh and occasional pain. One of the causes for my pain was a lot of time spent standing or walking. I would describe the pain as moderate at worst; not so much that I couldn’t work through it and I wanted to do the Camino badly enough that I decided to go for it anyways. I didn’t pray to be healed specifically, I just asked God to help it not hurt so much. Well, not only did it not hurt so much but even the chronic discomfort went away. Either by God’s grace alone or assisted by my walking breaking down scar tissue that had built up in the mesh I was healed entirely and to this day am hardly ever bothered by it.

When I hopefully do it again, I will change a few things. I wouldn’t bother bringing sandals, as nice as it was to wear on a very hot day, my hiking shoes were lightweight enough that I didn’t need them, and when your feet are accustomed to shoes and you switch to sandals, you will inevitably get some soreness and/or blisters from the new spots being rubbed. I also wouldn’t bring my bible, not only did I do a terrible job of actually reading it, but after walking through a couple rainstorms it was nearly ruined despite keeping it in the centre of my bag and having a rain cover for my bag. I brought a fiction book which I read and then left behind to save weight after I finished it. There were a number of things left on way markers, broken boots, books, items of clothing, as nearly everyone realizes they have things that they can do without for the sake of saving weight. I would also not have brought the fiction book and instead just brought my kindle, downloading a bible onto it and storing it in a waterproof bag inside the backpack (which I could have done with the bible as well obviously, if I had been smarter).

I had a roommate who cut down so much on his Camino, he only walked with a fanny pack. He cut a towel down to a quarter of its size, and managed to fit it in with his toothbrush, toothpaste, a knife, his money, and his passport. He carried his water bottle and showered with his clothes to wash them. I did this a couple times to save money (albergues usually charge to use their washing machines if you’re not paying to sleep there) and it is not the same as freshly laundered clothing. Another option is to send your luggage via courier or bus to your next destination and not have to carry it. These individuals are referred to as “tourigrinos” and are considered to be doing the Camino version of “glamping.” One exception in my opinion was a young couple with an infant. They took turns carrying their child in a carrier while the other carried a diaper bag with some extras in it, and they shipped their bags forward. I’d challenge anyone to try and fit a diaper bag’s worth of things plus your own into a backpack while your spouse carries their own bag plus a child.

My other regret is not taking any notes in my guide book (“A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Camino de Santiago (Camino Frances),” by John Brierley). I should have noted where I slept, which churches made the biggest impact, which detours I enjoyed the most, etc. I remembered everything so vividly at the time and wanted to spend all my time being outside, seeing things or being with friends, that I lacked the discipline to force myself to sit down and write down some notes, even though it likely would have only taken ten minutes or so a day. It also could have made an awesome gift to a child if they wanted to walk in my footsteps so to speak.

When I returned home what stayed with me more than anything else was a desire to walk. I wasn’t as comfortable with silence as I had been once surrounded by familiar and friendly distractions. I worked in a small neighbouring city very close to my own, only 11.5 km away from my house. If I had nothing else going on that day, I would walk to work and back just as a way to be on foot again. I also occasionally would just walk along footpaths as far as I could before walking back to my house, spending maybe two to four hours out and about, enjoying local parks and the fresh air. This habit had to be curtailed quite a bit once my wife and I started having children, but I’m committed to taking them all on long nature walks and hikes with me as soon as their little legs can handle the distance. I also want to take my wife on the Camino some day. It’s an expensive thing to do but if approached the right way it’s easy to make it incredibly rewarding both physically and spiritually. I benefited the most from the former but fully intend to make more of the latter next time. Buen Camino!