Foot traffic on the Camino is almost impossible to predict. One day you will start on the way and there will be dozens and dozens of pilgrims in front of you and dozens and dozens of pilgrims behind you.
most pilgrims will follow the same basic route and many use the same planters, which means that they will stop in the same towns or villages each evening and their travels essentially are the same as the people in front of them and behind them. However, foot speed varies, the number of brakes vary, and the time it takes to travel the days route can be substantially different depending on all these variables.
some days he simply don’t see anybody! We’ve traveled nine hour days and seen less than a handful of people and we’ve traveled three hour days and seems like we were just part of a crowd. Today was one of those days it seemed like we were part of a crowd, so we decided to get off the beaten path.
aside from the markers on the path we also use a hiking app that we become very found. We’ve used it all over the USA, as well as on our trips in Europe, it’s called AllTrails. We particularly like it, because unlike the maps of a park or in this case, the maps of the Camino, it provides alternate routes that other hikers have forged! In this case, we decided to get away from all the other pilgrims on the Camino and take Path we traveled; for a while, we were pretty sure this was a mistake!
The alternate path started pretty much like the Camino, a path wide enough to walk and clear enough to see ahead.
This didn’t last for long after a couple of miles we found ourselves with the choice between walking across the farmers field or Along a “Maybe this is it“ path through briars and crevices!
The path let us directly to a farmers field
I’ve never seen briars as large as those on these bushes crossing our pathI
Here we thought if we could get through those woods perhaps we could get back on the right path!
This was one of the larger portions of the path we traveled this day
as we progress, there were several of these decisions to make and from behind me there was the common phrase. “are you sure this is the right way“ to which my reply was “I hope so“. For several miles, the only thing I wish of was, we were kind of, sort of hidden in the right direction; I’m not really sure that was enough reassurance for my wife, but like the trooper she is she said OK let’s keep going.
ultimately the sound of traffic convinced us that even if we weren’t on the right path, we at least weren’t miles away from civilization. We requested a hill and saw the highway, but we’re faced with a huge dilemma, there was truly no path and nothing but boulders and rugged rocks in front of us! The road that we could see a few hundred yards away ended up being over a mile of “make do” paths and a singular episode we are tracking. Pole slid and almost sent Brenda tumbling down the hillside. After catching our breath, we waved our way to the highway where we were greeted by the signage that indicated we were On one of the connecting trails to the Camino.
we met our goal of getting away from the crowds, but in the end, perhaps question no judgment and the arguable joys of taking the path less traveled.
