Leaving Tui

I officially start my camino today! I was nervous leaving the albergue this morning. It wasn't helped by the fact that 1am this morning some random crawled into the top bunk. They came into the room with a lot of commotion and woke me up. I was scared thinking they were 1st trying to enter my bed so I stayed up for the longest just listening to their motions. They kept turning the lights on and off in the top bunk. Eventually I fell asleep again. I got a few hours rest, enough to start my day off.

I got up at 6.50am and got myself ready for the day. I filled my water bladder with tap water which is very unusual for me but I want to experience this the regular way. I set off at 7.30 sharp following the yellow arrows and met a fellow early pilgrim, Christaff from Latvia. He started his day an hour earlier in Valenca. I told him this was my 1st day on the Camino and agreed to walk with him a bit.

We chatted about our reasons for walking and why we chose to do it now. He's not religious and didn't even realise he might arrive to Santiago in the height of the celebrations. I find it so interesting speaking to non religious people who weren't even brought up with religion. Their viewpoint usually has less shame, less anxiety about God, more freedom of their personal choice. We spoke about psychology and theories about how religion just was a way of control and helping people to focus on behaviours without thought. Eventually after an hour I wanted to be free with my thoughts so I expressed that and he walked ahead. My pace was definitely slower than his long legs could manage.Read more