This is part 2 of a guest post written by Mr. Snacks. Make sure you read Part 1 first!
In part 1 of this post, I explained the background for where the (hairbrained?) idea came from to run the Camino de Santiago. In part 2, I will focus on the trip itself. Since there are about a billion excellent blogs, videos and guide books that will give the details and logistics for the Camino, I am going to focus on our trip and the pros and cons for running vs hiking.
The Adventure Begins:
Our journey started in Porto, where Cameron and Mr. Pickles arrived with Cameron’s partner and long-time BFF of Mrs. Snacks. The plan was for the boys to head off on our adventure while the girls spent the week in Porto drinking port wine. Yes, this isn’t the first time in our marriage where I’ve wondered if I am making the wrong life choices.
While the Camino ran only a few blocks from our apartment, leaving from Porto would have meant travelling a distance of 243k / 150 miles to Santiago, which felt like a lot given that our friends only had 10 days in total for their trip. In order for us to arrive in Santiago in a shortened timeline, we decided to take a train North to the border with Spain, knocking about 75 miles off our total distance and less distance to cover for each of our 5 running days.
After arriving in Porto in the late morning after flying overnight from the US, we organized gear and headed off for a quick coffee and Pastel de Nata before catching an early afternoon train.
Since the train doesn’t actually go directly to our start town in A Guardia, Spain, we hoped to take a ferry across the Minho river that makes up the Portuguese/ Spanish border between Caminah and A Guardia, saving us a 40 minute taxi ride from Valenca where the nearest bridge crossing was. Unfortunately, upon arriving we discovered that the ferry was not running, a combination of Covid travel disruptions and a dispute between Portugal and Spain about who should pay for the service. Fortunately, we were given the number for a boat that would run us across.
Now, normally, crossing borders inside the EU is about as exciting as crossing State lines in the US, but somehow riding across a river on a small, open cockpit boat and getting dropped off on a remote beach felt like we had to be breaking some rule by entering Spain this way (for the record, we weren’t). After walking for about a mile, we made it to our first night’s hotel in the small city of A Gaurdia enjoyed a Spanish seafood dinner while it poured rain outside (a preview of what was to come) before my friends passed out from jet lag.
Starting the Run:
The normal Camino pilgrim (known as “Peregrinos”) routine is to arise early and start walking, grabbing a light breakfast on the way. Since we were running, we knew we could be a bit more leisurely in the morning despite covering more milage each day, so we planned to leave around 9. We actually planned to get a cab for a few miles to bring us to our official start in Oia. In hindsight, we could have run the extra 6 or so miles that day, but at the time we planned our route our plan for 22.5K / 14 miles seemed ambitious enough.
After raining all night, we were greeted by a gorgeous morning and even a rainbow over the Atlantic in Oia – something we took as an excellent omen and an opportunity for a truly memorable coffee stop before we began to run.
Being our first day, we took it very slow and tried to walk frequently, especially on the uphills. It rained off and on throughout the day, but nothing too long or too hard. The Camino was a combination of coastal trail, highway and some lovely single-track over ancient cart paths (you could easily see hundreds of years of ruts in the larger rocks from the repeated cart traffic).
One significant downside for our plan to train/ drive and start in Oia was that we had bypassed about 80 miles of the most beautiful coastal sections of the Camino in Northern Portugal – a bummer but a necessary sacrifice if we wanted to end our run in Santiago. Travelling the Camino those first two days gave us a good taste of how gorgeous this coast is and I can only guess we missed some truly spectacular areas.
Unfortunately, Mr. Pickles almost immediately started having issues with his new running shoes and despite doing his best to take care of it early, the rain helped lay the groundwork for him suffering with badly torn up feet by the end of the trip.
Ending our first day in A Ramalhosa at around 2 demonstrated the advantages of running vs walking – as we settled into the converted monastery where we stayed, we watched an afternoon downpour roll in and other pilgrims coming in after us, looking soaked and miserable. We had covered the 14 miles in around 4 hours, including time for a leisurely lunch on a lovely sunny day.
The following day, we covered similar milage and made it to the larger port town of Vigo. Again, arriving early in the afternoon, we had time to shower, have a snack and walk up and down the city’s hills to see the numerous sights and enjoy an amazing seafood dinner (which, after spending time in Panama and Portugal, seemed super expensive to me but my friends, coming from the States, thought was a bargain).
While we were all fatigued from running 2 half marathons in a row, we were in good spirits and were enjoying both our time on the trail and the opportunity to see a beautiful new city we would have probably not visited otherwise.
Day three was one I had been nervously eyeing for months after I’d arranged our route and hotels. Due to the spacing of the towns in this area, I had no choice but to include a 33.2K/ 21Mi day from Vigo to Pontevedra in our route, well over our 22K/ 15 Mi / day target. We arose early and were on the road before 8 on an ominously cloudy morning.
Up until this point, we had seen very few other pilgrims, and the ones we saw were usually experienced hikers doing the full Camino from Lisbon or Porto. Given Vigo’s location right at the 100k to Santiago mark (and thus qualifying people for the official certificate) and the spot where 2 Camino routes combine (the Camino Portuguese, and our route, the Camino Coastal Portuguese), we saw a huge increase in the number of pilgrims from here onward.
The trail turns inland away from the coast and rocky coastline gives way to farmland and lots of hills. Shortly after we started running, the sky opened up and our (relative) luck avoiding the rain finally evaporated (forgive the pun). We spent a couple of hours running in the rain, passing numerous, equally drenched hikers before stopping for a much needed snack and coffee in Redondela.
While spending the day trudging through the rain is certainly not something I’d recommend, at one point Cameron and I were running on a forested mountain trail (Mr. Pickles had fallen behind due his increasing foot issues), the rain let up, the fog lifted, and the cool temperature made for some of the best trail running of our lives, and making for one of the most memorable moments of the trip for me.
Onward to Santiago:
After a long but successful day of running, we made it to the medieval city of Pontevedra. While I won’t go into details here, I would highly recommend a visit to this gorgeous medieval city with amazingly well-preserved architecture. Pontevedra was probably my favorite city on the Camino and is definitely not a place I would have known to go otherwise.
At this point, we had been running the trail for 4 days and only had 2 left to go. While we’d briefly chatted with other pilgrims, the fact that we were running meant that we tended to blow past them, rather than have time to socialize. Admittedly, now that we were past our longest day and were in a bit more of a groove, seeing all the other pilgrims doing their leisurely 5-8 hour days gave us the sneaking suspicion that we were missing out on the “true” Camino experience.
In the small town of Caldas de Reis, we had dinner with another pilgrim who had completed all the Caminos over many years. It became clear that our suspicion was correct and that a big part of his Camino experiences was the random comradery of fellow pilgrims, who you might run into repeatedly over several days and might choose to walk with for many miles.
With his now significant foot issues, Mr. Pickles opted to walk the last few days wearing flip flops. Given his obvious discomfort, it would have been totally understandable for him to bail out and take a train directly to Santiago, however he held on and completed the trip. Fortunately, he was frequently accompanied by other peregrinos and (I suspect), being a social butterfly, he probably had the best days of the trip while flip flopping along miles behind Cameron and I.
After 6 days of running and 120K, we met Mrs. Snacks and Mrs. Cameron in the historic city of Santiago de Compostela. While we were all ready for a break (two of us got colds in the days following, likely from our accumulated fatigue and time spent in the rain) and were delighted to no longer be sharing a hotel room with 3 guys, it was an amazing experience that I would highly recommend to anyone to consider running, or walking, the Camino de Santiago.
Overall pros and cons of Running vs Walking the Camino:
Pros:
- Shorter days travelling means more time to relax and sight see in the evenings.
- Able to cover more trail distance in less time.
- The Camino is well suited for extremely light travel due to the numerous restaurants and hotels along the way – no camping is required. Each of us only carried a small running backpack with 10-15lbs of clothing and gear – way less than the 30-40lbs we might typically carry for trekking.
- If you enjoy trail running, there is some really amazing non-technical trail running on the route.
Cons:
- There is no doubt that you are missing out on the social aspect and slow pace of the typical Camino experience. People make life-long friends on the trail, something we mostly missed out on with our faster pace each day.
- It does feel a bit strange (and even potentially a little rude) to be running past other people who may be doing this as part of a religious pilgrimage, but we were always met with curiosity and cheers rather than any annoyance, so I think generally people are cool with however you do it, but it’s something to consider.
- You can carry way more clothes hiking, making your time on the Camino a lot more comfortable (I pretty much wore the same t-shirt and sweat pants every evening for 6 days and hand washed 2 rotations of running clothes in order to fit everything in my 8L running pack). If I were hiking, I probably would have carried 2-3 times more stuff and been way more comfy as the weather changed throughout the week.
- And, the obvious, you have to actually be fit enough and an experienced long-distance runner to even consider doing this.
I am lucky to run down the dock and my
Progeny runs part of the Camino🥰