Solo but not alone...


The Camino Forum offers a calendar who is traveling when.  if you wish, you can add your trip start date and starting point to a monthly calendar on the Forum. 

Since you sign on with an alias, you can post that information without exposing your email address etc.  If you wish, you can then write to others who are travelling from the same point and offer to connect when in Spain.

I've heard tales about arriving in Paris or Madrid or Biarritz as a solo traveller embarking on a Camino and being greeted by others with backpacks about to do the same thing.  

Pilgrims walk different routes- there are many many Caminos.  I'm walking the Camino Frances, which starts at the foot of the Pyrenees in France, at St Jean Pied-de-Port.

 

Others walk the Primitivo, the Portuguese, the Norte, the Angles, Le Puy, La Via de la Plata - these are all various Camino routes that funnel into the destination in Spain- Santiago de Compestella 

 


 

And LOTS of people now walk the Camino each year. Numbers have been rising substantially. 


2024 pilgrim stats feature compostelas credencials issued 3 American Pilgrims


 

Popular posts from this blog

2019 How it began

Image
My journey to the Camino began many years ago. In the fall of 2011, we had just moved from Philadelphia to Chapel Hill.   We got settled in and then headed off for a barging trip on the Canal de Midi in the south of France. Our barging route took us past Moissac on the Canal de Garonne.   We stopped at the old church and learned that it was a pilgrim church for the Camino de Santiago.  (I now know it is a stop on the French Way- the Le Puy Camino.) We even received a credential (pilgrim passport) and had it stamped with a sello  or a stamp saying we had travelled as a pilgrim to this spot.  Along the canal route,we'd sometimes see pilgrims walking with their big backpacks.   Thus a seed was planted. Fast forward to 2019. Two friends asked me to join them in an Ollie class about the Camino de Santiago, offered by John Saxon, an inveterate pilgrim.  I went and we all were hooked.       We began planning a trip for 2020 and ...
Read more

2023 Rescheduling our Camino...to the Cotswolds

Image
As the world began to open up in 2021 and 2022, our group of 7 kept discussing  whether not to try going on the Camino.Alas, some folks had illness and injuries that make doing the Camino more daunting than before. We all agreed that being together was more important than the route and so ended up planning a 10-day walk in the Cotswolds  for the fall of 2023. We had a marvelous time on that walk which I'll write about separately.  Alas, even after this Cotswold walk, my friends were unable to join me in walking the Camino in 2024. But the Camino kept calling to me.  I loved our Cotswold trip.  I loved getting up every morning, putting on my boots and a day pack and heading out to the next town, walking with friends in the beautiful countryside.  I kept thinking, could I do this alone?   I decided yes.   For our Cotswolds trip, we had booked via Contours, a company that will arrange your lodging, luggage transport and provide maps. We qui...
Read more