Camino de Santiago Walking Equipment: After Action Comments

Hello, everyone.

I woke up this morning before the alarm with my mind thinking about what I would say on this subject. Why disregard inspiration? The pictures of our museum visits in Madrid will still be there tomorrow. 

Some things I took and how they worked out:

My Kindle: I'm very glad I had my Kindle. Books I used on it were: airplane novels (re-read a couple I had on there by Jack Campbell;) Kelly's Guide to the Camino de Santiago (this wasn't just a map book, it had directions to the albergues in the villages and other useful information;) Gitlitz & Davidson's _The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago_ (wonderful, informative book--I bought the Kindle version because the paperback we had already purchased is too, too heavy.)  My Kindle is not the fancy Fire version with the internally lit screen. It's one of the classic models that requires external light. My son gave me a 1" long tiny flashlight which I attached to the zipper pull on the case.

Headlamp style flashlight: Not useful for me at all; shipped it home from Leon. I did see a man using it to go through his pack after bedtime once. The rustling had kept me from falling asleep right away.

Boots: I had the Merrell half-height ladies' boot, purchased at REI.com, in a half size larger than my usual tennis shoe size. I didn't realize this when I bought it, but this boot is a water-resistant style. It didn't keep out any water on the day of flooding rains. Nothing could have that wasn't a pair of fishing waders! But it did keep any moisture inside the boot with me from evaporating out. Like, say, sweat. Of course it had trouble drying out when it was soaked, but I could have helped that along if I'd had a clue. 

This was the second pair of boots. The first, in my regular tennis shoe size, gave me mauve toe on our first 10 mile training hike. But it didn't slide on my heel! This one had room in front, but it slides on my heels sometimes. Female feet, feh!

Shower sandals: I had bought a pair of cheap rubber flipflops at Wal-Mart. They are thong-style. The paint on the top surface began to peel off and stick to my foot toward the end of the trip. The thong gave me new blisters when I wore them all day long while tramping around Pamplona. If I were buying new sandals today, I'd buy a pair that doesn't have the toe strap, so I could wear them with socks. That way if things were just impossible (I am thinking of the day of floods here) I could take the boots off and hike in the sandals. When I wear rubber clogs to to gardening, if I get wet and have no socks, I get blisters. When I wear socks with the clogs, even though the socks get wet, I have no blisters. You absolutely need to have shower shoes of some kind, since you really don't want to go barefoot in the albergues. Too many feet with too many possible fungal spores! As you can tell if you stand downwind from the shelf of Botes. ;-)

Tummy meds: I took Pepto-Bismol. I also took Loperamide generic gel pills. The Pepto is my go-to answer to the bloating that turns into trouble if not attended to. You can take it when you feel the bloat starting and it will help fairly soon. The Loperamide you really need to take the night before. But how do you know in advance that you will need it? The airport in Dublin had no anti-diarrheal stuff at all in the airport shops. (This fact mystifies me still.) The Spanish pharmacies have never heard of Pepto Bismol and don't have anything similar that I was able to find. And I asked for it by the generic name: bismuth whatever-whatever. 

Pain meds: We left with 2/3 of a bottle of Bufferin. We ran out. The pharmacist had never heard of buffered aspirin. She sold us packets of Ibuprofen powder (really strong stuff!) to drink with water. Later on we got a tube of Ibuprofen gel for my sweetie's feet. This stuff is good, but they don't have it in the States. For some kind of equivalent here, you have to see a doctor and get a script. We bought Compeed while we were over there. This isn't sold at all in the US. (I have no idea why not.) It's a gel stick-on that you apply to the (unpopped) blister to protect it, make the pain go away, and help it start healing. In Spain you can get many, many sizes and shapes of Compeed. It works wonders for the top or side of the foot. Not the sole. On the sole it gets hard and is like walking on a shelf all day long. The gauze bandage with the stickum on the sides (fairly wide) that you cut to length, which was sold in the pharmacies, was good on the soles of the feet. I did cover it over with tape sometimes. (Adhesive tape) Scissors are useful and used. Take a pair that you can cut bandages with and trim toenails with. If you're taking a sewing kit, take another scissors that only cuts thread. (Unless you don't sew and don't care that you have to make three tries to cut the strand!) Speaking of sewing kits, you will be glad if you take a medium sized hand sewing needle and a bobbin of thread. You can repair your mesh laundry bag if you brought one--the mesh loves to let go at the side seams. I had a big needle but never used it. I had a screwdriver for glasses and needed it. You don't want your earpiece to fall off when you're three days from the nearest place to get a new screw.

Charmin To Go: I had about two-thirds of a roll of this on hand before we left, and I supplemented this with a three-pack of Camper's Toilet Paper from Wal-Mart. I am very glad I did. I put 2 rolls in my sweetie's pack and kept the Charmin container and the 3rd roll in mine. He sent his two rolls home in Leon. I kept mine. And since he didn't realize that it's a good thing to have, I took to saying "Charmin To Go for the win!" whenever I came out of the bathroom after needing to use it. Fellas, I gotta say this: we ladies have entirely different plumbing setups and surrounding areas, so we need to at least pat off every time we go. It's as important as being able to sit down is...though in desperate necessity we can hover, it's not fun. End of embarrassing digression. 

Socks: As I have mentioned before, socks became an issue for me. I took thick, soft, purpose-made Hiking Socks with me, and at the last minute I left home the Liner Sock pair that I had intended to pack because I was trying to get my pack weight below 20 pounds. (That is about 9.5 kilos for all you metric folk.) That weight includes the pack itself, by the way. So there I was with 4 pairs of socks, and when there was a washer and dryer to use, I used it. Mistake! All those "feels like buttah!" socks shrink like nobody's business when the hot dryer air and tumbling hit them. I should have taken 3 pairs of thin socks, most likely, and a pair or two of medium thick ones. They would have dried a lot faster (well, the thin ones would have) so I wouldn't have been all wound up on putting them in the dryer. The Altus socks I bought just before reaching Virgen del Camino are good, and I still have them. The Nike running socks that wick and are blister-resistant, that I bought at El Corte Ingles in Madrid are good and I wear them still, too. (They have separate right and left socks! And feel wrong if you put them onto the incorrect feet.) You can put a Liner sock inside of another thin sock if you need more fabric between your feet and the boot. You can't thin out a fat sock if your feet have gotten bigger than they were to start with.

Undies: I took the fancy Ex Officio panties, which are made of mesh. You don't want to sweat on your rump while hiking in these panties. They chafe. I wish I had taken my tried and true Breathe by Barely There ones--I can't even find this brand any more, but they're wonderful!--as I think they would have dried just as fast, and they aren't scratchy mesh, they're some jersey-like knit instead. Bras became an issue immediately. And I had taken two of the same model, a sturdy sports bra with Velcro-adjustable straps. The bra straps put up a territorial fight with the pack straps, hurt like the dickens, and were working on making a pressure sore on one shoulder. I had to quit wearing a bra. I can't say that "free-boobing" across Spain was the most comfortable thing I ever did. (And I'm not huge.) But I skipped the bra starting on about day 2 and didn't start wearing a bra again until we got to Santiago and I could leave the pack sitting by the bed all day long. Shipped one of them home from Leon, even. You probably want something with thin straps that won't make a miserable lump under the weight of the strap on your shoulder, but I don't know which brand or style to suggest. Anyone who has solved this issue is welcome to chime in in the comments!

Thin, lightweight, quick-dry shirts: One would have been sufficient. I had a long-sleeved "fishing shirt" that had straps to keep the sleeves rolled up and also a short sleeved one. They're not hot, really, but they don't retain any warmth at all on the cold days. And spring in the Pyrenees is not like spring in Texas. It's about 20F degrees colder! Or more. We plant our tomato sets in February in South Texas, and we don't need to put caps on them. The days are generally warm then. (Sometimes we have a late frost and cover the transplants for a night.) In May in Spain, we saw new tomato sets in the gardens and they all had clear caps on them to build a little warmth in the day and keep the frost off at night. You should probably look at the latitude of your home and compare it to the latitude of northern Spain when considering the clothing issue. I bought a fleece long-sleeved shirt in Pamplona at Caminoteca and it became my best friend for the next several days. The last week and a half or so, I didn't need it at all. But that is what happens when you walk during the change of the seasons.

You can see the pink fleece from Pamplona here. Also, the camera is hanging from my chest strap. The hat is tucked into my belt, with its stampede string looped around the strap. These are the zip-off pants. They were fine. By this time, I had begun carrying my water bottle in my waist pouch. I can't reach it when it's in the side pocket of the pack.

Jacket: I got a little don't-hit-me-green rain jacket from the clearance rack at the San Antonio REI store. My sweetie got the packs-into-its-own-pouch rain jacket from Sports Authority in the next town over from us. We layered these over our other shirts. Sometimes over more than one shirt.

You see the green jacket here, and the sticks. This was on Day One, the Route Napoleon. The pants are a pair of gray exercise tights, that got a hole in the back of the leg when I sat on the grass that day. They were PJ pants after that for a while, and then I tossed them.

Hat: I got a green hiking hat from Amazon and my sweetie picked up a bone-colored fishing hat from either Academy or Sports Authority. We wore them a lot! They had adjustable strings, so we could tuck them up under our chins against the wind snatching them, and they were squashable if we wanted to fold them or stick them into the pack.

Pilgrim water fountain at Estella. My sweetie's camera case is much smaller than mine. He's wearing a "fishing shirt" and zip-off pants and his hat.

Climbing the 12-degree slope to the top of the mesa after Burgos. The "fishing shirt" with the sleeves rolled down here, the hat, and that bright green bit is the rain jacket, tucked behind as it got too warm. Stick in carry loop on pack.

Rain poncho: We both had blue taffeta rain ponchos, the kind that have extra length to cover our packs. They have hoods with draw strings. The taffeta rustles. When I have it on, and the hood up, I can't hear anything behind me. I think this was a frustrating thing for faster walkers behind me during the early days. (I often stepped to the side at the next wide spot in the path to wave the faster ones on. It's just neighborly, after all.) I wore my hat under the hood of the poncho to keep the rain off my glasses. That worked out well.

Leaving Roncesvalles, with poncho, hat, and sticks. The monastery had a molded-concrete walk leading to the path.

Sleeping bag liner: This was useful. I didn't always tuck myself into it, because it was a bag and I had to worm myself into it after getting into the sleeping bag (which unzipped) and then straighten out the sleeping bag afterwards. But it did serve nicely as a pillow, and because it had a pillow extension at the top, it covered the pillows on-hand in albergues. I didn't sleep on the pillows without something. Often I pulled th sleeping bag up enough to cover the pillow. Then I tucked my camera and waist pouch into the foot of the bag to keep the weight of the sleeping bag from pressing on my toes. (Purple toes make you think of things like that.)

Sticks: My sticks paid for themselves the first two days. But after that, I concluded that they were too much for me to coordinate and were slowing me down. I had to find firm footing not only for my two feet but also for my two stick ends. People differ on this issue. But on the first day, buffeted by the tropical storm force cross winds on the steep downhill paths, the sticks paid for themselves. I'm glad I had them, even though they spent much of the trip in their little carry-loops on the sides of my pack.

Camera: My sweetie's camera fit into a pocket. Mine didn't. I probably should have had one like his. Mine was basically a cube shaped blob in its case. You can see it sometimes hanging from my chest strap in the pictures. 

Batteries: I brought swap batteries for our cameras (one each) and if the charge ran low in a cathedral, we swapped out to the fresh battery. We then charged the empty one that night or at the first opportunity with the 3-outlet travel plug. (I got that from Amazon for about $7. And then I wrote my initials on it.) We only carried one cell phone and its battery, in case we should fall and break a leg or something drastic like that, and we didn't use it from when we left the US to when we got back there again. And because my touch screen Storm BB kept trying to turn on inside the pack--jostled by stuff--I took the battery out of the phone and kept them together in their Ziplock bag in the bottom of the pack. After the second time I had to recharge the darned thing. I also used the travel plug to recharge the Kindle battery. I just plugged the proprietary charger into the travel plug. My sweetie had brought camera cable (the USB thingie to get the pictures out with) but we shipped that home from Leon, too.

Ziplock bags. Yes! But if you use it for your travel-soap bar, it will get worn and torn from all the opening and manipulation at the shower. So have an extra. The groceries in Spain do sell sandwich sized plastic bags, but I didn't notice whether they have waterproof closures or not.

And this post is really long, so I'll stop here for today.

Onward, always onward

Hello, everyone.

Before I forget, I want to mention one other thing about Carreon de los Condes: there was an American hospitalera there. She was talking about her pilgrimage with us--it was rain, rain, rain and when she walked the hills by Atapuerca it was nothing but wet, sticky clay. And she is active in American Pilgrims on the Camino--they do conventions, apparently. She was working there for two weeks, she told us, and then she'd do two more weeks in Santiago. "Maybe I'll see you there," she said.

But back to getting in to Sahagun:

View from the trail toward a small range of hills in the midst of the meseta

Lovely little chapel/ermita (Virgen del Puente?) at end of medieval bridge--note the stone surface.

What is left of the medieval walls of Sahagun. The city was sacked by Al-mansur and had to be resettled from scratch later.

 

Santiago watching us as we go by

Many of the houses in the old town had tile murals by the door.

We had intended to find a post office in Sahagun, a biggish city according to the guidebook, and mail unneeded things home. We walked all the way through and didn't see it--there were historical monuments, including the ruins of an old monastery from when Sahagun was first occupied, which we enjoyed seeing. But the vagaries of the Camino trail routing, plus our lack of a map, meant that we had neither sight of a post office nor any idea where it might be. And it was much too early to stop for the day--only about 10:30 if I remember it right.

We kept on, veered left onto the graded roadside path (Real Camino Frances instead of the "natural path" through Calzadilla de los Hermanillos) when the trail split, and after much buffeting by wind got to El Burgo Ranero about 3. There are several albergues in this town, which sits on top of a mesa. Every one of them was full.

We got a room ("habitation") at the hostel over one of the bars instead. Sheets! A real bed! And our own bathroom with our own shower. Luxury.

At the other bar, we ate the menu del dia, which included Garlic Soup Leon Style (yum! and a poached egg on top) which almost filled me up by itself.

That night, the promise made by the strong south winds was fulfilled. A blue norther blew in at bedtime, and the patio outside the window made moving-chair noises off and on until about 3 in the morning, along with the pounding rain and the lightning. I was just grateful that the storm had waited until we went to bed, and grateful again when it stopped before we had to get up.

I was homesick, but I knew the only way home was through Santiago and to Madrid for our plane reservations three weeks or so in the future. We had about 355 km to go to Santiago.

A Long Morning

Hello, everyone.

We left Carreon de los Condes at 6:45 am, trusting to luck that a bar with cafe leche and bocadillos would turn up in an hour or two. No such luck. Our first shot at food--real food, that is--was 18 km down the trail in Cazadilla de las Cuevas. Before that, feeling the empty, we shared a couple of my sweetie's Oreos and an apple that he cut up as we walked. The land was mostly flat--a symphony of greens and golds--and I got some pictures as we went along.

Wheat all around--very peaceful

That tiny red spot in the distance is my sweetie!

First swallow nests I saw in Spain!

We stopped for the night at Terradillos de los Templarios. The albergue is named after Jacques DeMolay, the last head of the Templars. The albergue had a lovely garden patio, with roses, and also a well where I slapped laundry on, not a rock exactly, but a plastic laundry tub. With cold water.

Doing the laundry old-school. I'm in the orange shirt.

 But the weather was good, and the clothes dried on the line. Our Bufferin was starting to run low by now. (We'd been taking 2 at bedtime to bring down foot swelling so the muscles could flush out toxins during the sleep hours.) The bunks were made of wood (solidly made) instead of iron. The hospitaleros had a cena (supper) and I ate rabbit for the first time. It was good.

We had planned to walk the next day to Sahagun, but things worked out differently in the end. (Don't they always?) But that is stuff for another post. This one is long enough.

Carreon de los Condes

Hello, everyone.

We left the Heavy Metal Village (also called Hippie Hollow around our house) earlyin the morning. We walked to Carreon de los Condes and found ourselves a pair of top bunks at the Augustinas' convent. These ladies were into the whole togetherness thing. They had a meeting with self-introductions and singing before dinner, then dinner was a potluck affair (they had made a soup with some meat and potatoes--I know why they were all skinny!) and then after dinner we went to Mass at the nearby church. We had gotten in about 2:30 in the afternoon, so I had some time to figure out how to get up to the top bunk by myself. Ladders really aren't my favorite thing, but I got myself straightened out and coped with it. A few days later I was glad that I had done so, as I got another top bunk.

Another beautiful retablo. The ladies really went all-out on the flowers!

I think this was a dovecote. The little things at the top were all small-bird-sized openings.

My sweetie with Santiago

We had enjoyed another day of warm weather. I do want to mention, in case I haven't already, that when you turn on the sink faucets in Spain--like when you help out with the dishes in the nuns' kitchen--the hot water is really, really hot. They don't seem to have the regulation about maximum water temperature settings there that I was used to in the States.
What was our contribution to the potluck? While I tended to our laundry, my sweetie strolled the groceries and came back with canned sardines and cream cheese and a loaf of baguette: snickeldrip! Yum.

Heavy Metal Zone

Hello, everyone.

We left Hontanas about 7:10 am, which was late for us. The day was clear and pleasant, not too cold nor too warm. We walked through fields and around mesas and past Castrojeriz:

 There is a castle on a nearby mesa that protected the area.

 We also walked over one mesa that was, well, difficult. The trail had signs before both the climb to the top:

Slogging uphill at 12 degrees of slope

 

 

Copy of the slope sign for people going the other way!

And also the 18 degree descent to the bottom (again, the sign pic is to show off that we completed the slope!)

The downhill side was a cement path, about as wide as a small road, and I had to zigzag it to keep my toes from being completely beaten to pieces inside my boots. I kept stopping to look back, too, because I was afraid that a bike pilgrim would be coming down, and be unable to go around me at the high speed the bike would surely hit. All in all, I was very glad to get to the bottom of that path!

We continued on, reaching the border of the province and stopping for the night in Itero de la Vega. This small village, we discovered, is the site of a heavy metal festival every August. The young fellows who ran the albergue we stayed at were metalheads, too. The walls resounded with the THUD THUD of the music being listened to by the one who was doing reception in the afternoon. Some friends of theirs had a bar and we were given samples of their herbal liqueur after dinner. It was strongly fennel-and-apple in the taste.

The next day we left early and headed on down the road. When we stopped for cafe leche, at a little eat place out in the middle of wherever, I heard the sound of home: a lady came in with her family and she asked the bartender for "jugo de naranja." (In Spain, we had discovered, nobody says "jugo." They all say "zumo.") Just the sound of it was refreshing.

Hontanas

Hello, everyone.

We left Burgos early on Monday morning, after putting the room key on the table in the room. (We had asked the night before what they wanted us to do with it, "porque vamos muy temprano.") As usual there wasn't much going on at 6:30 or 7.
We got turned around while following yellow arrows on pavement at one point, and someone saw us and pointed the way. And we saw an old waymarker that was neat looking:

Waymarker on the way out of Burgos. Note the shells on the Cross of Santiago and the top of the pillar.

Shortly we were on the meseta. When I called it the Kansas of Spain a few weeks back, I wasn't joking. We had good weather for all the the meseta walking we did--sunshine, rain that restricted itself to after bedtime, moderate temperatures. (Actually the same temperatures that had been so cold in Pamplona--we had adapted to the 17C and 19C and as long as the sun shone we were fine.)

 The province has improved the pilgrim pathways. The surface is compressed caliche and there are very few rocks sticking up through the surface. I saw a lot of miffed comments in the guidebooks about this. The authors--I particularly noticed it with the Brierly guide--prefer "natural" paths. By which I guess they mean lumpy things with rocks sticking through every which way and unimproved mud surfaces that go to slop if there is rain. I had walked on their "natural paths" already and greatly preferred these. Not having to stress out about where to put my feet was a relief.Being able to stretch out my legs and go my natural pace also felt better than having to perch unsteadily on various rocks while going downhill.

The walk to Hontanas was about 20 miles.

On another subject, I am setting up a shop at Cafe Press so anyone that wants a copy of some of the pictures we took can get one. The Burgos waymarker above is one of the shots I used. The name of the shop is Texas Wanderer on the Camino, if anyone wants to look it up. (And I hope that it actually shows up on a search. I'm still new to all this stuff!)