Off-Peak Pilgrim

Days 1-3 on the Camino Primitivo (Oviedo to La Espina)
65.3km; 1,782m elevation gain; 17h45mins

Days before heading off on the Camino Primitivo, I came across this post on the Camino de Santiago forum: “I am writing this from Lugo, as I have just taken the bus from Fonsagrada where I stopped walking the Primitivo after 8 days on the Camino. In that entire time, I saw just one other pilgrim.” The writer continues that “water is a real challenge”, with sources of drinking water scarce, and bars and cafés along the route mostly closed. He seemed to be finding the elevations as difficult as the lack of company along the route, and concluded that he would abandon the route, take the train from Lugo and try walking the Camino Ingles instead.

This rather alarmed me. I immediately forwarded it to Martin, my pilgrimage partner for the upcoming Primitivo, who dismissed the concerns of the author and his sympathisers, responding “Pfft! They are old people chatting!”

OK then. If Martin wasn’t worried, then I couldn’t be (but I was – just a little).

The official start of the Camino Primitivo outside the Cathedral of Oviedo

Leaving Oviedo, the first part of the Primitivo felt like any day on the Frances: from the Cathedral, we navigated the city streets, looking out for yellow arrows or scallop shells to guide us through the traffic signals, street signs, and graffiti. These were scant, but the route easy enough to guess, and soon, we had left the urban sprawl behind leaving nothing but green hills and the beginnings of a perfectly bucolic landscape. Not another soul in sight.

Admittedly, we had chosen the unconventional finish-point of Escamplero, a mere 12km from Oviedo, as the end-point of our first day. The reason for this was that it gave us the first morning to stroll around the old city of Oviedo itself, visiting some of the Roman ruins, the ninth-century chapel of San Julián de los Prados outside the city centre, and the cathedral itself. Time very well-spent, but it did mean we would forgo the company of other pilgrims during the already quiet time of year on the trail of mid-March.

Climbing into the hamlet of Loriana, I turned around briefly and noticed a figure in the distance behind us. ‘Martin!’ I whispered. ‘There’s a pilgrim behind us!’ We played it cool and kept on walking, and our first pilgrim eventually caught up to us as we were taking in the views at the top.

The Asturian landscape opening ahead

‘Ah!’ she said. ‘I think I heard about you guys’. For a moment, I was tempted to believe my reputation (what for it did not matter) had preceded me, but we quickly said that as we had only started that morning, and that she was the first pilgrim we had seen, she must have heard about someone else.

We would have quite gladly carried on chatting, but whilst we only had seven kilometers to walk to Escamplero, she was heading to Grado that evening, a little over 13km further than us. We bid her a Buen Camino and she disappeared into the distance as quickly as she had appeared.

We pootled on.

Escamplero seemed like a reasonable place to stop: it had both a small pension (B&B) and a municipal albergue. For the latter, the keys had to be collected from the town’s only restaurant. Small but simple. Food and shelter. What more could a pilgrim need?

As we arrived, we noticed that the B&B looked suspiciously closed. Not only that, but it was attached to the restaurant — which was also closed. We went round the back in the hopes of finding some indication of where to find the keys to the albergue. After a moment, a woman opened a window. We couldn’t make out everything she said, but we did understand the word albergue. ‘Si si!’ came our response.

The woman came down, unexpectedly plonked her baby grandson (who promptly started screaming) into my arms, and gave Martin the rundown. ‘¿Y para comer mas tarde?’ he asked (where can we get food?). ‘Ah, no. Cerrado!’ she said (‘everything is closed!’). My heart sank. The baby screamed. ‘There is a supermarket, she continued, but that is also closed’. She smiled and shrugged, ‘or it is until 5pm’.

Hurrah! We had time to drop off our bags, get to the supermarket and stock up on provisions for the next day.

To cut a long story short, a supermarket it was not. We cooked ourselves a whole bag of pasta on the temperamental hob in the albergue, topped with tinned bean and pork stew and a few bits of cheese. We were the only occupants of the 30-bed albergue (which was no bad thing given that we needed to use 80% of the equipment in the kitchen to prepare our pasta feast).

The Monasterio San Salvador in Cornellana, where pilgrims have been staying for over a thousand years

The next day, over 27km from Escamplero to Cornellana, we didn’t see another pilgrim all day, until an untalkative Spaniard from Oviedo tumbled into our room in the monastery shortly after 6pm, by which time we had assumed we once again would have the place to ourselves.

Day 3 (21km to La Espina) was much the same, not a pilgrim in sight all day, even in the busy little town of Salas. It turns out not many people on the Primitivo stay anywhere but the main stops along the route, so although there were other pilgrims on the way, we were missing them by a few kilometers every day along those first few stages.

Did we mind? No, not especially! When I was there last Spring, the Frances wasn’t exactly the pilgrim superhighway it looks to be in the Summer, so I was used to occasionally walking a whole day without seeing anyone, but these consecutive days and evenings to ourselves made for a very different experience. The landscape of the Primitivo is also very different to the Frances — much more spectacular, mountainous, remote. It would be incongruous to experience it surrounded by throngs of other pilgrims. Although the route never seems to be crowded, I was happy to be there in low-season.

As for the other concerns of the pilgrim who gave up the route in Lugo (with four days to go – really!?), water for us wasn’t a problem. My two-litre waterpack occasionally ran out towards the end of the day, but I also carried a small 33cl emergency bottle. We certainly saw our fair share of closed cafés and bars, so always carried snacks that would see us through the day and restocked whenever possible. The terrain… admittedly, it was tough-going, but I’ll save that for another blog post!

The Camino Primitivo: Thoughts and Motivations

Looking back at the diary I kept on the Camino Frances last year, I’m surprised to see that even writing at the end of the exhausting first day, I was already talking about coming back (to do the Napoleon route, having been forced to take the Charlemagne route because of the weather). By the time I had spent a week on the trail on my own, I had compiled a long list of things to do differently next time in my mind: the Napoleon route, spending a day in Estella to properly look around the medieval town, visiting Pamplona cathedral… But I knew I wouldn’t be back to redo the Frances route any time soon. It’s not easy to be able to take five weeks out of normal life, and I was very fortunate to be able to do so last year. Besides, there are countless other Caminos to experience first.

There is another motivation to head back to the Caminos: once again, I have the opportunity to do so – one of the perks of a precarious employment situation! Since last year, I have worked flat out, commuting eight hours a week between Cambridge and Oxford, splitting my life between those two cities where I have worked up to six different jobs at a time. The teaching has left me feeling exhilarated, but this double life is mentally and physically exhausting. Some of this has borne fruit: I now have two book contracts under my belt, and will be spending the Summer completing one, and breaking the back of the other. The rest of 2019 is shaping up to be an excitingly busy time professionally, but I need some time to clear my head before getting stuck back into it all.

And so, I’m heading off.

The routes to Santiago de Compostela across Spain, Portugal, and France © Confraternity of Saint James

Last year, when deciding which of the Camino de Santiago routes to do, I had a bit of a conundrum on my hands. You see, personally, I was more inclined towards the much shorter Camino Primitivo – literally, the original route, that starts from the cathedral in Oviedo, bits of which date back to the ninth century. According to legend, when King Alfonso II undertook the first pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella, this is where he started. Alfonso is credited with both discovering the tomb of St James and with designing the Camino de Santiago itself, so if you like to proceed chronologically or are interested in origins, this is the route to take!

‘But why is the Camino Frances so famous?’, I hear you cry! Well, quite simply, the French invested a lot of money in the infrastructure of the route, building churches, hostels or hospitales, and settlements along the way (hence the number of Villafrancas – or French towns – through which you pass along that route). The efforts of the French to secure the path that pilgrims would take from France and mainland Europe mean that this became one of the safest routes for pilgrims who would be well provided for – which is still a feature of the Camino Frances today.

But back to the Primitivo… When doing my research ahead of doing the Frances last year, I came across this saying: “whoever goes to Santiago and not to the Cathedral of the Holy Savior [in Oviedo], visits the servant but not their master.” For my non-Christian, academic mind, this translated as visiting the facsimile but not the source. I knew I would have to go. This, however was not the time to do it. Last year was about walking in memory my father; this year is about me, walking in the present.

Martin and I in La Faba on the Camino Frances in 2018

This time will be slightly different to last. For instance, this time, I know what to bring and what to leave at home (hand cream a must; fewer books this time Charlotte!). I am not feeling as sick with nerves as I was this time last year, because I know more or less what to expect, and more importantly, I know that I can do it. A key difference is that this time, I won’t be going it alone. I am returning with Martin, one of the pilgrims I met on the trail last year with whom I shared many a happy day walking and talking. A well-seasoned pilgrim, having completed the Frances (a frankly perturbing) three and a bit times as well as the Portugese coastal route, Martin walks at the same pace as me, and shares my passions for history and red wine. I am confident we will make for happy trail companions. More importantly, he speaks better Spanish than I do, so he will be an invaluable help should any sticky situations arise!

So, are we doing, exactly? The plan is to set off from Oviedo, and walk the 255km to Melide, four days outside Santiago. Neither of us feel that the section from Melide to Santiago is one that we especially feel a burning desire to repeat, and so from there, we will skip these days by taking a bus straight to Santiago. Time permitting, our plan is then to continue to walk on to Finisterre and Muxia instead.

I very much hope and firmly believe that this will be the first of many returns to the various Caminos de Santiago in Spain. When I finish, I will ultimately finish back at exactly the same place – both in Santiago and at home. In some ways, it might seem that I won’t have progressed at all, but I will; at least I’ll have covered a little more ground.