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).
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.
‘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 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!
Mini Adventures on Foot 