Sarria to Portomarin - part one

Martina is going to be absolutely fine, and could actually host a training session I'd push to be mandatory for half the people I've been with for a month. Her alarm was silent, she took everything into the kitchen to pack up with no fuss, and she has a small backpack. A+ my darling.

She's nestled sliiiiiightly under my wing, she checked I was going to have breakfast at the hostel before she committed to it ("ok I will too", with a nervous smile), and I could see she was a bit hesitant about setting off so I pushed her out of the nest with a firm Buen Camino (BC) and assurances we'd see each other later. This only *might* be true but it's what she needed to hear at the time.

Harbouring a slight sense of foreboding about this turning into a theme park, some sort of conveyor belt Camino, I headed out of Sarria. There are so many people compared to what I'm used to. None of these new fucks are saying BC which really irks me but in the spirit of it all I'm being VERY laid back about them breaking the rules I've invented.

Other ways in which I am right and they are wrong include (all of them but specifically) walking on the LEFT side on the road and the RIGHT on the trail, letting people pass, stopping at the second or later bar in a town not always the first, taking your pack off before going in, looking for a sign inside that says aesos not baño (it's never baño) talking at normal human volumes, and greeting the locals.

I've been thinking about what parts of this experience I can carry forward into day to day life, where I might not have a spare five to eight hours a day to go walking. A big source of enjoyment here - and one I knew I'd appreciate before I even started - is the simplicity, the reduced number of decisions I need to make each day. For example in the morning I put on my one outfit, use the bare minimum toiletries, pack up my small bag, walk outside and look for an arrow.

I reckon if I start picking my outfits the night before and set up a better drop zone, I can achieve this efficiently at home, and maybe get a few kilometres walk in before work, go the long way? My body clock would currently give me tons of time, let's see if it resets once I'm out of bunk beds before we get ahead of ourselves though.Read more