On our first Camino (in 2013!) we flew into Madrid, took a long bus ride to Pamplona, and finally a 45 minute bus ride to Roncesvalles, and stayed the night. The next three days we walked back to Pamplona, the start of the 45 minute bus ride. This gave me pause at the time and started me thinking about why people walk the Camino.
Our bus ride and walk back are completely normal for the Camino and almost all pilgrims do similar things, but if we then had taken the bus from Pamplona to Logrono, the next large city on the Camino, it would have been completely contrary to the spirit of the Camino and virtually no pilgrims would do that. Why is the direction so important? I think this is fairly obvious if you go through the reasons for walking the Camino in a previous post. Still, it makes you think.
Later in the same Camino we got to a town and called up a hotel about ten miles off the Camino. They sent a car to pick us up and take us there, we spent the night, and the next morning they gave us a ride back the exact spot we had been picked up. They provided this service to attract pilgrim business. Other than staying in a hotel, which has somewhat less pilgrim status than staying in an albergue, this was perfectly acceptable pilgrim behavior.
Yesterday we walked from Bercianos towards Mansilla de las Mulas for about seven miles, called a taxi to come and take us to Mansilla, stayed the night in a lovely hotel, and in the morning called a taxi to take us back to where we were picked up and walked the rest of the way into Mansilla, where we are staying tonight in the same lovely hotel.
From the outside this is kind of a crazy thing to do but I’m sure you see that it completely within the spirit of walking the Camino. Apart from the slight issue of staying in a hotel and spending the taxi money (32 euros) no one would fault us for doing this, and, in fact, this is common pilgrim behavior and recommended in Camino guidebooks as a way to handle long sections without services that many people cannot walk.
Despite this “taxi up and back” being “Camino community approved” doing it was somewhat unsatisfying. There is a pleasure in just walking the normal path that seemed somehow missing. It wasn’t that there is something wrong with it but I’m not sure it is the best way to get the Camino experience we want. We might do it again if we need to but we will try to avoid it.
Thinking about these issues was fun for me and a fun thing to do while walking. So there is another reason for walking the Camino, it encourages us to think about things that you would not have thought about if you had stayed home.
Full disclosure: Okay, we are wimpy walkers and only taxied back six miles instead of the nine to get to where we were picked up. So sue me.
Do you use any particular taxi app for summoning the taxis?
No, we just called the local taxi service. There are lots of taxi drivers along the Camino because of pilgrims needing occasional help like we did. We found out on previous caminos that you can just walk into the local bar in any small town and ask that they can call you a taxi. This works great on the main Camino that we are walking now. It didn’t work quite so well on the other caminos we’ve walked. Just not enough pilgrims to cause that demand elsewhere.
In some cases I went to a city in google maps and searched for taxis. Last night we found out a place we were planning to stay at tonight was closed until the 15th so I did that to see if we could do another taxi assisted two day stay in the next town. Luckily we found an albergue we thought was closed was letting out private rooms. That is where we are right now, answering emails in their common room, sitting around with our two hosts. We are the only people staying here. As Wynette said, taxis are ubiquitous on the Camino Frances. Not so when we were walking the via Francigena in Italy. There we found towns of 20,000 with no taxi article at all. Another reason we like the Camino.