The final countdown

It is hard to believe that it is almost time to head off to Portugal to begin walking the Camino Portuguesé from Porto to Santiago de Compostela. The final countdown to departure has begun as I go over my route plan - again - and make last-minute additions and subtractions to my pack list.

On my first camino in 2018, my backpack was 12 kg without water. In 2022, it was 10kg, and in 2024, it was 8kg. The experience of having walked several caminos and taking advice from more experienced hikers has helped me to reduce my backpack for this trip to about 7kg, quite a difference from 2018!

My advice for packing for a camino is to lay out everything you want to take with you and then get rid of half of it. It seems that one of the most common mistakes people make when walking a camino is to overpack. On my first camino I took a lot of stuff that I thought I might need, but never did. Portugal and Spain are modern countries, you can buy stuff when you're there. Many of the bigger towns and cities even have outdoor stores like Decathlon, etc. and a supermarket is a supermarket, whatever the country. So, don't take what you can buy when you are there. Another way to lighten the load is simply to buy ultralight clothing and equipment - for example some backpacks can be 2kg or more when empty, but there are other, and lighter options.

The Camino Portuguese from Porto is a short camino that is 240km - 280km depending which route you take, and it is very well resourced in terms of accommodation and facilities. As a result, it is also very popular, which brings both positives and negatives. On the positive side, because it is well resourced, there are a lot of places to stay and eat along the way. In fact, I will only be carrying 1L of water most days as we will walk through plenty of towns and villages along the way. The downside is that it is a very busy camino. Pilgrim numbers for this camino are up 20% so far this year, and that means there will be more people, and more competition for beds in the municipal albergues, etc. Unlike other caminos it is advisable to reserve a bed if you can. However, we are going right at the end of the first season, (only the truly mad walk it in July/August), so pilgrim numbers may not be too bad.

UPDATE: apparently this camino is still busy even though the season is coming to a close. I have had to book beds and a few albergues had no spaces. So far I have managed to book eleven of the sixteen nights we will be away, importantly I have managed to book an albergue in Santiago and one in Madrid.

I will be trying to get as much walking and prep done over the next two weeks. I know there are a lot of YouTube videos out there advising months of training before you walk a camino, but, this one is only for two weeks, and no amount of training really prepares you for the camino, especially the longer ones, it takes you two weeks to get your 'camino legs'. However, another school of thought suggests that intense prep is not the best way to train for the camino. Rather, it is better to maintain a good level of fitness throughout the year. It is also sadly the case that living in Scotland will not prepare you for the heat on a camino.

Another challenge this time is the new EU border controls which are apparently not going well and are leading to long queues of two to three hours at airports. I am hopeful that some of the problems at east will have been sorted by the time we go.Read more