As Wynette said we came early to avoid later crowds. We read a forum about all things Camino and everyone on the forum seems quite anxious to walk after a two-year hiatus. I expect there will be a huge number of pilgrims this year with the Holy Year and the post-covid surge. Hard to believe since now there are hardly any Pilgrims and many places are closed.
It is not like the Camino was free from crowds before the pandemic. The forum is filled with tales of people getting up at 5 am, walking some distance in the dark, and racing along in order to get a bed at the albergue for the night. We always thought this was sad. People did not stop and look at things. In a way this made sense because, for most pilgrims, the Camino is about doing the walking and socializing with other pilgrims.
Of course, the Camino will not be the only busy place this summer. I expect all the tourist sights will be packed and most are booked up for the entire summer.
Happy to get a room here (San Antonio de Padua) even though the heater stayed cold
We chose to come in early March for two reasons:
(1) To beat the rush. We expect the Camino to get crowded with pilgrims, perhaps as early as April. This is because of the pent-up demand of people not being able to come because of covid the past two years. Also this is a holy year on the Camino. The definition of a holy year is a year that St. James’ (Santiago’s) birthday falls on a Sunday. Actually, last year was the “real” holy year but, as Charlie says, it’s up to the pope to determine what is a holy year and he made this year a holy year since last year was pretty much a bust because of covid. The number of pilgrims goes way up in holy years. (Double or more.)
(2) The other reason we chose to go early was because we decided we’d like to get home before holy week, the week leading up to Easter. It’s even harder to find places to stay and eat that week. (We found that out the hard way in 2019.)
Now we are finding out the downside of coming so early.
(1) It’s been quite cold. Every morning we wake up to freezing temperatures. Actually it was something like 34 this morning, the warmest morning we’ve had. But it was also the grayest/drizzliest day. Even in the afternoon, it’s so cold and breezy in the shady tunnel-like streets of the little towns that we have very little inclination to stroll around and explore.
(2) We’re meeting very few other pilgrims. There’s been only one that we actually had a (brief) conversation with so far. He was from France. We met some bicyclists this afternoon but we were all freezing and rushing to get indoors and out of the drizzle and wind. Most of the places we’ve stayed had few other guests and as far as we could tell, no other pilgrims.
(3) Because of the scarcity of pilgrims, many place aren’t even open. We’ve been amazed to call for a reservation to places that looked like a wonderful place to stay to find they are closed. We are starting to dread hearing the word “cerrado” (closed) as much as we used to dread hearing the word “completo” (full). It’s not just the hotels that are closed but many bars and restaurants.
We are in the small town (population a little over 1000) of Hospital de Órbigo. It is one of my favorite places on the Camino. There is a long beautiful bridge leading into the town. I copied this out of wikipedia: “In 1434, the Leonese knight Suero de Quiñones held a tournament in which he or one of his companions challenged all men of equal rank who wished to cross the bridge here to a jousting tournament, Suero holding this bridge in the name of unrequited love. By 1434 the skill of jousting was not a standard part of military training but the challenge was taken seriously. Since 1434 was a Jacobean Holy Year, the traffic upon the Road of St James was considerable. The tournament lasted from July 11 until 9 August and Don Suero claimed to have broken 300 lances by the end.”
The bridge does bring up images of knights and romance.
We loved our private room experience in an albergue last night, mainly because of the nice interaction with the hospitaleros, but one problem is that there was no heat in our room and it suuuure was hard to get out of bed this morning. Close to freezing outside and dark and gray and drizzly. We had booked another private room in an Albergue tonight here in Hospital so we were nervous but, luckily, this room is heated and also it’s charming and sunny (even with gray skies outside). Well, it could be warmer but we are huddled next to the heater sitting at a table blogging (Wynette) and reading our news feeds (Charlie). Not too bad.
We walked 10.3 miles today. It was quite cold and drizzly and breezy (talk about wind chill) . We sure were glad to get here. Not exactly fun walking even though we passed through 2 charming towns and saw lots of storks. We had to walk 6 miles before we got to our first coffee stop. Whew, it was a relief to find them open. EVERYTHING else in that town was closed. Very few bars, etc. open here in Hospital either. But we did find one open bar/restaurant and had an excellent lunch. Charlie suggested while we were eating that, so far, we’ve been having better food on this Camino than ever and I think he’s right. I guess possibly it helps that we look at our phone for places that get the best Google reviews and choose one of those places. But we didn’t have many choices for lunch in Hospital today.
We’ve been eating a late lunch (around 3:00) and not eating dinner. They give you so much to eat we wouldn’t have room for dinner. The things we chose from today’s pilgrims menu (10 euros) : Charlie: trout soup, ham with red peppers, cheese cake. Wynette: mixed salad, garbanzo bean/shrimp soup, cheese cake. We share everything actually. Everything was incredible. Especially the two soups. We couldn’t believe how good they were. I can’t imagine how they manage to make them so flavorful. The woman who served us was also the cook. (I asked her if she was the cook and she said yes.) We found the same with the incredible lunch we had yesterday in a little bar in Villar de Mazarife. Both women were young. Man these Spanish women know how to cook. They proudly tell us things are “casera”, or “homemade” and there’s no question that that is true.
