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S1 E3 | Camino de Santiago Advice: What Worked, What We Skipped | Travel Joneses · Travel Joneses

• speaker-0: Do you think there was one piece of advice or opinion about walking a camino that we ignored? Aren't you glad to be alive singing? speaker-1: That is. Hey, where the Tribal Joneses, I'm Janice. speaker-0: And I'm Donald. We're a husband and wife team, storytellers by trade, and travelers by tra speaker-1: Fancy trips, road trips, city walks, mountain hikes, and every great discovery along the way. speaker-0: Definitely do our research and we plan the details. speaker-1: And then we leave room for surprises, because the best moments are rarely on the itinerary. speaker-0: When something better shows up, we are happy to pivot. speaker-1: So pull up a chair and come along. This is Travel Jones's. Porto, Portugal to Santiago, Spain, on foot. 242 kilometers, two countries, and lots of surprises. This is our take on the Camino de Santiago, Portuguese route. Yes. Because listeners from episode two will know that we scheduled every night stay. Ahead of time. We booked our rooms ahead of time. And that is something people don't always do on a Camino walk. Right. That's something traditionally that people say you can walk until you're tired and then look for a place to stay. There are lots of places to consider. You might have to walk farther for them, you might have to look for them. They might be filled. So we ended up booking ahead, and that gave us the comfort and the freedom to enjoy our walk at the pace that we wanted. And to not think about where were we going tonight, but just to enjoy the journey and feel confident that we have a place already booked. speaker-0: Not having something booked put that pressure on you. So the timing was all of a sudden restricted. Because what if you wanted to stop longer or see something on the side of the trail that day? a church, a museum, or just take it in a little bit longer. Maybe you need some more rest. Maybe you needed to put your feet up a little longer. trying to get to that next place. That might be an albergue that doesn't take a reservation, and you have to get in line to get your bunk, as we talked about in the episode with booking on choices of where you can stay. That was just a lot of pressure on us that we felt we didn't need to have because we really wanted to have a a sense of freedom, a sense of thought and and relaxation. speaker-1: And confidence that we were gonna have a comfortable place waiting for us. speaker-0: Exactly. And and that that way we could eat where we wanted to and win, rest where we wanted to and win, take everything that we wanted to and or e s sit and talk longer with friends that we made along the Camino. speaker-1: Well, that would that's a personal choice because some people might think all those things come with, I'm not worried about where I'm staying tonight. I'll just figure it out after I've done everything I want to do for the day. But what we saw on the trail was that you had to think about where you were staying because it could be far away or it could be crowded. And to to us that was a weight we didn't want. So scheduling ahead. speaker-0: And that's the key word I think you said is us. There's two of us, right? I could have been feeling great. Jan could have been super tired or not feeling right and I or could have been reverse. I could have had an issue with blisters or not just feeling the best that day and white, man, I you know, I I don't know how far I can go. Or there are just different things that play in. And maybe, maybe on an on another occasion that freedom might be something cool to experience. if if you're just by yourself and you're going and you don't have that concern and you can just fly by the seat of your pants and feel free that way with I have no restrictions and I'll go even farther today because I feel great and then I'll just find a room when I get. speaker-1: I think with some experience that would feel more comfortable to me. But also booking ahead to clarify allowed us to know exactly how many miles we were walking that day. Yeah. So we didn't and think we were gonna walk nine and end up walking 17, or it really it would only be three or four more miles. we think we're gonna walk 12, but we end up walking 16. That could be a big difference. So if you think or expect you're walking a certain amount because you know where you're staying, you're gonna stay in that window of what you expected. speaker-0: Right. And it worked out great for us. We I think we were happy we did it that way. speaker-1: Right. Yeah. So we got a lot of advice. Yeah. We had a lot of great advice that was extremely helpful. Where did we get all of our advice from? speaker-0: Well let's let's think back. we were so excited w the first thing you do is start sharing and and but that comes with friends. But we had a friend that helped us figure out we were gonna do it this way because you said, Hey speaker-1: Lenore from church did a solo walk on on her own and she did this exact route. She's the one that told us about this route, which is why we chose this route because it suited us as well. We knew a lot of her experience. I in fact followed her along watching her posts and her pictures on the experience. So I was familiar with it and she could kind of ahead time hold our hand a little bit and how to do this. So that was super helpful. speaker-0: And that was a little over a year before we even got the little the little itch to do this. And and that's when we started talking about the length and the time we'd be gone and you said, wait a minute, what what are we doing? Let me talk to Lenore. She did this shorter way and that's possible for us with the number of days that we could afford to take away from work and go do it. speaker-1: But we had some tried and true podcasts and YouTube channels and things like that that we relied upon and we want to share those with you. speaker-0: That was the excitement, is because there's tons of content out there. So we were excited. We immediately started searching. So we went on to YouTube and not only searched Camino de Santiago, but we searched Camino's Portuguese routes. And it and when you do that, all of a sudden you'll see people post and put up videos from the central, which we walk the majority of, or the littoral, or the coastal. As we mentioned before, there are three different routes that ultimately come into one as you get up to Santiago in Spain. But one of them that we enjoyed watching was the stingy nomads on YouTube. They share a lot. They've walked many different ways. And and they actually yeah, speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: they actually did some of the section that that we walked so it was fun to kind of see a little bit of what we would experience. Sometimes you don't see all of it and we didn't want to, right? speaker-1: Yeah, I it like I was very eager in the beginning to see what the path looked like and especially some sections that we had heard about. So that was a really helpful one because she showed here I am walking on the path. This is what it looked like. But then after I got that initial taste, I was like, okay, that's enough. I wanted to leave the rest to my own discovery. Right. It got to be a point when I I had enough input and I wanted to just wait and do it myself. speaker-0: We did have fun watching, and that was again Stingy Nomads, their YouTube channel. Try to remember to put all these in the show notes so that you can link to them if you are interested. And another one that was just fun to watch because they were quirky and funny was Danny and Brinna, two young women from Great Britain, and they travel all over the world. So if you look at their channel, they've been everywhere. But they happened to do the Camino Portuguese and they walked all along the Central. And it was just fun to see what they happened upon. They they did a episode for each stage. and it was just kind of fun to see what they happened upon or what they were doing and they shared what they were eating. it was humorous and it was kind of a fun way for us to get a little bit of the experience of what we might experience. speaker-1: And I really liked theirs because there was so much humor in it and it be and it was less serious about, you know, here's how you're gonna experience the community. Here's what you don't wanna do and here's how you don't get your feet hurt. And, you know, there's so much about prepping like all what could go wrong and let's let's here are the things to make it not go wrong. All they did was go down the path and have fun. Mm-hmm. And that was really enjoyable for me. Yeah. It was just a light hearted view of the Camino and I needed that. speaker-0: And they were honest. They were sharing when they were tired and had bad days and why. So check that out. That was that was interesting. The other thing is podcasts. As we were training, we were excited to experience more or listen to others who have walked the Camino. Again, it could have been the Portuguese, it could have been the French way, it could have been the Inglés, it could have been the Norte. There are all these routes that again end up in Santiago. But one of them that is very informative. Is the Camino de Santiago actually you on the Camino de Santiago. Nancy, speaker-1: This is Nancy. speaker-0: right? This is Nancy Reynolds, and she is a very experienced pilgrim, and she actually runs a group on the French way. She guides speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: and guides people that are first-timers, actually, some are returned, but she talks a lot about the French way and talks to a lot of pilgrims who have walked. Different Caminos, mostly the French way, but again, that's you on the Camino with Nancy Reynolds. speaker-1: Talks to them often before they go and then when they return. So she gets good advice on what they're preparing and how they're preparing. And then how did it work out? And all of those interviews, and she does a nice job interviewing and she's very open-minded and she listens to the people. That was all really helpful to listen to. Yeah. It made us think of questions for ourselves. It made us do more research on things that someone might have had a problem with that we think, ooh, we better look into that. So Nancy's podcasts were a big help. And we hope people do with ours, we listened while we were walking. So this took up our time while we were doing training walks to just get that repetitive walking experience in. We would listen to podcasts and very often Nancy and her guest. speaker-0: Yeah. Another one was Camino de Santiago Pilgrims Podcast, and that's Bradley Chermside. Bradley Chermside. He's funny. He's speaker-1: That's the buy me a coffee guy, right? That's the buy me a coffee guy. speaker-0: a musician. He's written a song about the Camino. he's written a book. I read his book as well. It was very comical, it lighthearted and fun. And he talks to folks who have walked or are walking. And gives advice as well because he has done the Camino multiple times as well. So it was just something to kind of entertain us as we were walking and taking it in. and it was a way to kind of soak it up because the excitement is there and you want to kind of find out more, which we also did with documentaries. We so yeah searched Netflix, we searched Prime, and one that we would suggest again, it's on the French way. But it's still getting that feeling of what someone experiences and also the different reasons people walk. And that is Six Ways to Santiago. The documentary is Six Ways to Santiago on Amazon Prime. speaker-1: That was probably my favorite. Yeah. It was it was very moving. And you see the challenge, you see the uplift, you see the reward. Those were great stories. And I quoted them all the time when people were asking now, what are you doing and why? I we didn't really know that much what we were doing because we hadn't done it yet, but I had watched people do it in this documentary. So I could say, for example, people have they go for these reasons and they have these kinds of experiences. So that was a really helpful and engaging one for me to watch. speaker-0: Yeah. The content is everywhere. It just doesn't matter how much you want to soak in and listen to. It's not always just pounding into your head with different advice and tips. It's just the story behind someone's walk. And it can be uplifting. It can be challenging, but you you learn from that because you kind of are experiencing this thought process yourself. What drew us to it? Why are we going? What will I experience? speaker-1: And even if you don't think you're gonna walk or you think it's on your bucket list way down the line, I think you'll enjoy these stories and learning about it a little bit more. If you're here, you probably will. It's human. speaker-0: It's human connection and we all love that. speaker-1: So advice that helped, were there some tips that we got and who were they from that really paid off for us on the trail? speaker-0: Where do we start? I speaker-1: Well speaker-0: think we had more. We we we started making a list. Jan and I were first separate. I put down things, she put down things, and there are things that cross over. And and there was a lot. I I guess some of them can be considered little things, but there were big ones, even though it sounds little. Yeah. Like buy your shoes early, as soon as you decide, get the shoes you want to try. And start training in them along with the exact socks that you will wear on the trail. speaker-1: You may decide after walking a bit that those are not the right shoes, for example. Right. Or when we found the shoes that we liked, we trained in them so much that mine started to have holes in them. But I knew I liked that shoe. Yeah. So I ended up getting the shoe again, the same shoe, and a few weeks out from going so that I could put enough time in them that they my feet were back comfortable in them and there weren't new blisters or something. but not worn out enough because how many miles we trained and put close to three hundred miles on our shoes and then we're gonna walk a hundred and fifty miles. So you don't wanna have shoes that you've walked hundreds and hundreds of miles in and then start the community. speaker-0: No. Because they start compressing. And we're gonna get into this in episode four, right? Episode four, which is the next episode. speaker-1: Specifics about equipment. Yeah. speaker-0: gear and what we decided to take and why. But again, so choose early, start training in them. speaker-1: I'm going to go down the timeline. So one of the pieces of advice that we got that we actually changed our trip schedule based on is from Lenore, who did the Portuguese route, the Porto to Santiago. And she said, my goodness, Porto was an absolute highlight. That is an incredible city. And we thought, boy, we're flying into this city. We're going to lay down and go to sleep, get up the next morning and walk out of the city. So we thought, Wait a second, maybe we t should take a pause here and enjoy this city. And then the same thing on the end when we land in Santiago, not turning around and flying right out. Now I know adding days to your trip could be a challenging thing, but it's important enough, we think, to have been over there and experienced that you don't want to rush through some things that you may not ever have the opportunity for again. So we added a day on the end and a day day on the beginning to just Soak up the starting city, which is an incredible city, and soak up the finishing city, which is another incredible city. Porto, Portugal, and Santiago, Spain. And I'm so glad because those were real highlights to my experience. speaker-0: That was the perfect that was the perfect thing to do. And w we could have done three days. That was that good. Sure. speaker-1: And we want to go back and all those things, but we did it right the first time. speaker-0: Build in the time on the front and the back end. And you you heard us just praise that in the last episode as well and why. So that was a good advice. speaker-1: This this the next one, which is probably one of the again, one of these most important scheduling breaks in your walking. I think it was probably Nancy or a guest where that came from, if you can remember differently. speaker-0: It was Nancy. speaker-1: But it we actually didn't even realize we had heard that until we were doing our training walks and we were starting, you know, we were on our long days when we walk twelve to fifteen miles. speaker-0: Not twelve to fifteen. Mostly twelve. I don't think we ever did fifth. That was a mistake. speaker-1: The first day was almost sixteen. But we did sixteen miles. But something mind you, some people are walking twenty, twenty-four miles a day, but twelve was great for us. speaker-0: We were walking inside and the GPS was not working and so I I speaker-1: Just kept walking and walking and walking because we wanted to hit twelve, but we realized we hit twelve a long time ago. The point is scheduling breaks, forcing yourself to stop and take a break, even when you think, I my feet are fine, I'm doing okay, I'm not hungry yet, I've been drinking my water. All of a sudden I remember they said, just take regular breaks. Nancy, in fact, encourages you sit down, take your shoes and socks off. She sometimes would take her socks off and switch into new dry socks. But I think she was wearing boots and it was hotter foot, but we we wear breathable shoes. we did so I said, you know what? We're today we're gonna stop every four miles. Four miles. Easy peasy walk for us at this point, but we're gonna stop. We're gonna stop at four miles. We're gonna walk four more miles and stop again and sit down and then we're gonna walk four more miles and stop again. And if we need to walk another four miles, we're gonna do that and stop every four miles. And we were so glad we did. Once we started training the four mile thing for ourselves All of a sudden for me it was completely doable. speaker-0: And then you're like, it's done? Wow, that went fast. speaker-1: And and the breaks were not 30 second, one minute, three minute breaks. These were closer to 15 to 20 minute breaks. And we would have a cup of coffee and we would put our feet up. Sometimes I would take my shoes off. We did this when we got on the trail. Not as not as regulated as we did during training. We should have maybe done it a little bit more on the trail. But sometimes it's logistically not easy to stop at four miles in. Where are you? In the middle of a road or a woods or something like that. But If you can get yourself to stop in a manageable amount of miles, to me, that made the hu the whole difference of making this a doable thing. Right. For me, it was four miles. I could do a bunch of four mile increments if I get a little break in there, massage my toes, have a drink, a snack. speaker-0: build it in and it certainly pays off. It certainly pays off because you're training and that's a big thing. Training. Some people have said, you don't need to train. It's a walk. I you you will you'll hear that if you start listening. But I think the majority is train and train in what you're going to be walking in when you're there. And we'll get into that again with gear. But think about it. If you're spending 10 to 12 miles on a trail every day then you want to be training in the exact same clothes, underwear, socks, shoes, backpack, everything that you're gonna do there, you need to prepare yourself in training at home. And it it was great we did. speaker-1: At least for us. Because if those shorts aren't comfortable, man, you don't want to be tugging on them for four hours. You know, for real. and we did hear a lot of people who said, I'm really fit, I work out every day, you know, I maybe I do weights or I do the treadmill or I do cycling or whatever. All that is great. But if you're not walking ten to fifteen miles every day, then You don't know this experience. With gear. If you're an endurance athlete, psh easy peasy, right? Right. Probably. Maybe. But for the average person, I don't know if your your workout translates exactly to this. It's a little different. speaker-0: Yep. What's next? speaker-1: Stop when there's one first sign of anything going on that's uncomfortable. Just stop and check it out, especially if it's on your feet. speaker-0: Yeah, don't use the old phrase, I'll just push through this. That will not help you. speaker-1: I almost did that. And then I heard it was probably Nancy. I think maybe even Greg. I think it was Greg or s or maybe someone else in the REI shoe department. Like if you start to feel a hot spot in your shoe, stop and tend to it right then and there. And I remember walking and thinking, Hmm, my toe feels a little different. And I thought, you know what? We've got two miles left. I'm just we'll just And then I remember hearing them the advice was tend to stop. So I did, I stopped and I looked in and sure enough a blister was starting. And we had been given advice on the kind of band-aids and stuff to use. And I put it on there, kept going, and I was able to manage it with no problem the rest of the trip. Stop and tend to it right away. speaker-0: There are many stories of pushing through or I didn't think it was that bad. And yeah, there was that little bit of a hot spot. We that's the best way to describe it. It's a hot spot. There's a tweak or something on your heel or your toe. It just you can feel that it's a little annoying. That's the beginning or already started into a a phase of a blister. And we still met people on on the trail when we were there that they were battling some serious blister. speaker-1: That was very common. Yeah. Yeah. And I would say even ankle, knee, hip tweaks where something's getting a little uncomfortable, I would it's the same advice. Just pause. speaker-0: Take your back back off, do some stretching. speaker-1: Do some little ankle spins. Like, just stop. We're not in a race. Yeah. Unless you're trying to get in line for an albergue that's gonna overflow. Right. Which is what we had already mitigated for. So, and then a couple other little light advice. Three outfits. Greg from REI said three outfits. Actually he might have said two. We did two t shirts, two shorts, one long pants, one long sleeve. So the long pants, long sleeve we wore on traveling on the plane. speaker-0: And we had that for evenings or early mornings if the temperature dropped. speaker-1: Cold weather evenings. And then otherwise we were alternating between shorts and a T shirt, one day, the other day, one day, the other day, and then we washed it wherever we stayed that night in between. speaker-0: The only thing we took three of, which we pushed against the advice, was three pairs of socks and three pairs of underwear. because yeah, you might wear a pair of underwear one day and you're washing the other one, and then that goes in clean and you wear the next one the next day. But just in case, you know, it something's not fitting right, again, we trained in it all, but y we had it just to be safe. And the same with socks. just wanted to have the type we trained in. And have a third pair just to be safe. speaker-1: That was us. Greg would have said you can do with two. Right. But we couldn't get ourselves down from three on the socks and underwear. speaker-0: Yeah. And we saw that I'm glad as we were stuffing any everything in our packs and practicing with the packing it and carrying our packs just as we would, then we could see that it would all fit and what it weighed. speaker-1: This is because we wanted the packs as light and small as possible. And we'll talk about that more in the specific equipment. And then one of the other cool tips we got was to buy breakfast items before bed at night, especially if you knew you were in a smaller town that the coffee shop might not be open before you left in the morning if you were gonna leave early, or there wasn't breakfast available because the first two hours were through the woods or something like that. We would search for a grocery store and find bananas or apples or something and load up our backpack. So we could get up in the morning and walk out and then rely on some speaker-0: And that kind of came over from the training because we made that as one of our first breaks when we were training was do the three to four miles, sit down, have some sips of our water, eat a banana, have some nuts or a granola bar. And so we kind of continued that. And that was nice. And if as we got hungry later, we just picked up something more. We knew we got to a town where we could eat a bigger lunch. speaker-1: Break two would be a coffee break. Yeah. And then break three would probably be lunch. So yeah, those breaks were in big bakes. We ignored some advice. We ignored the option for a bag service to carry our backpack to our next destination, which is very popular these days. It's done very often on the trail. speaker-0: It is common and you can do the service to where you schedule ahead of time if you know your route and you've pre-booked your room. That's where this comes in handy. Yeah. Is you have a pre-booked room or a place. And so these services will take, say, a smaller suitcase that you have. And the next morning you get up, you stick it by the front desk or wherever they tell you to, and you walk out the door and walk. And maybe you're just using a day pack or none at all, and you just have something to hold your water or snacks, and then you speaker-1: So one of our new friends who we will have on the show upcoming, Michelle from Kildare in Ireland. Right. I wish we could replicate her lovely accent, which was so fun and entertained us completely. She did that, but she had spent a few days at the beginning of the trip with girlfriends traveling. Traveling. So she had a larger suitcase. They all went home. She speaker-0: Yeah, she needed more. speaker-1: started her trips. She had her suitcase. So she sent her suitcase on each day to the next location and she carried a day pack because you still want your snacks and your water and that sort of thing. So there's a reason to do that. one thing I noticed was people who are carrying day packs, they still have quite a bit of weight in there because of your snacks, and maybe they've put a long sleeve shirt in there or something, or sometimes people will put extra shoes or at that becomes weight. And now you're in a small pack that is not distributed really nicely. This is probably the equipment talk. speaker-0: 'Cause it's just hanging on your shoulder. speaker-1: Larger packs sit on your your hips where the smaller packs will hang on your shoulders all day and that can get heavy. When Michelle comes we'll ask her to talk about that because I think that's an issue. speaker-0: One of the other things we ignored was a sleeping bag liner, which is very light. Some of them are made out of silk. And that's as if you want to sleep in that on the bed you're sleeping in, just to kind of separate you from the linens or the mattress. And that was a piece of advice mainly if you were an albergaze, simply because in some instances in the past, depending on the season, there have been bed bug issues. speaker-1: Albergues being hostels, basically, which are often dormitories, but they can be private rooms as well. And it was recommended some of the rooms will give you sort of paper sheets. So that's the way they are able to change sheets between people. Because mind you, pilgrims stay one night and they move on. So the places that host pilgrims are changing their sheets every day. So I bed bugs does not seem to be a widespread problem, but it is a possible problem. So it was recommended we take a a sleeping bag liner, which is not the big sleeping bag itself, but a liner, especially if you're in the warm season, because that can be lightweight. Well, one of the things we did by booking ahead of time, we chose places that were rated higher. So you're gonna pay a little bit extra for that, but we could ensure cleanliness. So we felt like we didn't need the liner that we could use the sheets that were given to us. But one of the things we did. To mitigate any potential for bed bugs was to spray our bags. speaker-0: We s we sprayed our bags with a permethrin, I believe is what it's called. You can get it at the outdoor store and you just coat it and let it fully dry. Once once speaker-1: Outside in the sun. speaker-0: it's dry, it's it's not toxic. You do want to be careful when you have that bottle and you're spraying, keep it away from pets, do it outside in a whole location that pets aren't nearby. and we did it just to the backpack, just to be safe. But when we got into the room, Wherever we stayed in the room we pre booked, we would go ahead and just check the seams of the mattresses and underneath and the bed the headboard if it was cloth, just to be safe and speaker-1: That was advice from Greg at REI about spraying the bag, about checking where and how to check the mattress. When you walk in the room, you don't put your backpack on the floor or on the bed. You put it on a hard surface up on a table or something if you can verify the cleanliness of the room or the bed, and then, you know, move on comfortably. speaker-0: The key was don't set it on anything upholstered or material. If it's on the table or a hard chair, then you're safe and that's that was good advice. Let me say though, in all the places we stayed and we checked everything, we never had an issue. We never saw one bed box. speaker-1: Very clean accommodations as well. A lot of people use guidebooks. First of all, we didn't want to carry a guidebook. Lenore gave us a guidebook. She said, don't carry it. Just take a picture or write down the pages that you're interested in. that was good advice. And also the guidebooks, they tell you here's what the stage should be looks like. You're walking from here to here. It's this many miles. And sometimes we didn't agree with that. So we're glad we didn't. follow the guidebooks exactly. We did all of our own research and determined our itinerary based on our own interests. But again, we did that work. You could hire somebody to do that work or you could use a guidebook. That's advice we did not take and we did it ourselves and we're happy we did it ourselves. speaker-0: And if you want to get techie on that note, part of advice that I took was downloading the GPS files that folks had walked before, which means they recorded the route and we knew we were doing that exact route from town to town. It's called a GPX file, which is what holds the route, and then you import it into the device you're using to follow along. I was happened to be using a GPS watch. This was great. It worked wonderfully. And you follow the little line that's on the map on your watch. And I would just change it out in the end to take us exactly to the hotel or the room that we had booked. So we knew exactly how far we had to go for the day. And as you walked, you could see exactly how much you had left to finish. Sometimes it wasn't great because also you saw the altitude change once we got into some of the hills. speaker-1: You tried to ignore that, but I wanted to see that and he kept trying to hide it from me. speaker-0: It was right. I g I speaker-1: I needed to know how many more miles, how long till I have to go up? How much do I have to go up? How what's the elevation? How long am I am I going two miles up for the whole, incline? Right. Or is this a short one? Is the one I just did the hardest one? Am I finished? Or are there harder ones ahead? I needed to know that. speaker-0: I would just just keep positive, positive thoughts going. Look up there. If we just get to that tree, that's where we'll take a rest. Yeah. And then we'll have a snack and a drink of water. And anyway, it w it was good to have the files and we knew exactly our distance and where we were at the time. And it it just helped us. So you can choose to to follow along how you might. It is so well marked, you really are not gonna get lost. And if someone sees you with a backpack or trekking poles, they know you're a pilgrim. And in many cases, they know where the Camino is running and they will guide you on your way. speaker-1: There were there were a couple times where a map might have sent us a certain direction and we saw other people going a different direction and we ended up following others because there's often other people walking around. And so those were great. We wouldn't have gotten lost. We might have taken a slightly longer or shorter or less picturesque or Yeah. something like that. There were we were walking in the dark one morning before the sun came up and we were about to follow the traditional path, which went into the dark woods. And we saw a couple walking down the side of a quiet road. The road hadn't gotten busy traffic yet because no one was up yet. So they were walking down the side of the road and we said, Hey, hey, hey, this is the way. We actually just whistled because they didn't speak the same language. And they said they shook their heads, no, no, no, go this way. And so we said, Let's follow them. And we're glad we did. We would have been tromping through a very dark forest. speaker-0: Which was correct. It was just taking us through speaker-1: Scenic route, which is often what it did. speaker-0: an and at that time the scenery didn't matter because it was dark and it was early morning in Spain, so speaker-1: We followed them and it walked on the sidewalk of a busy road for a little while. And then we then it matches you back up to the route and it all worked out fine. So there's always a way to figure out, but sometimes there is a little figuring. And I, by the way, ran my Google Map ran my Google Google Maps app alongside yours to double check things a lot. And that worked great. And I had the service most of the time and could do that. And I ran an app called When Camino. There's a ton of apps. speaker-0: Yes, that's a good one. speaker-1: And you can research and find out which one works for you, but that happened to be the one that I would use just to to compare against yours and to see if there was any information you weren't sharing with me from yours. speaker-0: It all it it all is there to help you and you have to just decide which which one you want to choose to to kind of follow along. I I want to touch on that part about the dark. It's kind of not like we didn't take the advice. I I think we just kind of didn't think it through that once you get to Spain and the time changes, when you're getting up at 6 a.m. or 7, it's it's really dark. speaker-1: That depends on what season you go, of course. speaker-0: We were there August into September. We were walking through Spain in early September. speaker-1: And it was warm, so we wanted to walk early before the sun came up. speaker-0: And we could have used some very light headlamps, right? Light my meaning weight, just to guide us through that first hour until the sun started coming up. Now there were street lights and we made our way just fine. And a couple of times just to be safe, we had our phone light on. But it if you want to, it wouldn't hurt to take a a light if you want to speaker-1: Weight in your bag. Right. but we did use our phone lights. And I've been curious to ask Lenore if I were a solo woman pilgrim, I would either see if there were were other people I could walk with in the morning hours in those dark hours. I'm not sure I would have been comfortable on my own or Michelle. She walked by herself. Right. And I, you know, this time of year in very warm season, you do want to walk early because it gets hot. And so planning out what area am I walking through the dark the next day? You know, can I do it by myself? How long will I be in the dark? Is is it dark in the woods or is it dark through town? Is there somebody else staying at the place that's staying with me that I've made friends with that might leave with me early in the morning? Those would be things I'd be asking as a solo woman. speaker-0: Which is a large percentage. A very large percentage of Camino walkers on the French way, the Portuguese way, are solo women. speaker-1: Solo travelers number one, and tops of the solo travelers are women. Yep. Yep. One last piece of advice we ignored, and this is the one I wish we hadn't. What is that? Take a dip in some of these lovely rivers and hot springs and near the Roman bridges, or take your shoes off and stick your feet in. And for some reason we were just on our way or Honestly, the idea of taking the shoes off, the socks off, wetting your feet, and then figuring out how to dry your feet because we weren't carrying towels to get them back in your socks. We ended up not doing it. And I watched people we have some friends, Giovanna swam in a number of of the rivers, I think. I I just wish we had done that. speaker-0: think it was like no we're not gonna do that. It we just did speaker-1: You're kinda on your way and you're like, we'll just keep going. It looks nice, but we should have stopped. speaker-0: Yes, because you get out even if you walked in up to your knees just to cool your feet off, you get back out, you sit there for five minutes, your feet are gonna dry. So speaker-1: And a number of people had bathing suits and they went in swimming. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Yep. I would do that. That's a piece of advice we ignored and shouldn't have. Dun dun dun. speaker-0: Take some time, go for a dip, enjoy the day. We were enjoying the day. We ended up just not taking advantage of hopping in the cool water. So that's definitely a good bit of talk on the advice, whether we took it or we didn't, or we shared with you, and you can decide whether you take it or not. speaker-1: So next episode, how we trained and the gear we would take with us again. We don't want to go on another Camino without this gear. speaker-0: It was perfect. It worked out for us. We're very fortunate. Maybe there were a couple of things that we thought, yeah, we didn't need that, or we might have wish we did take that. So we're looking forward to sharing everything about what we chose, what worked for us, and then you can decide from there. speaker-1: So if you wanna see photos of the trip, follow us on Instagram at Travel Joneses. That's Joneses with an E S E S on the end. Travel Joneses. speaker-0: Send us your questions, anything you might have about the Camino or what our experience was like. And that way we can include it on a bonus episode we're gonna tag on at the end about Ask the Joneses. Or as we move through these episodes and we see those questions coming in, we'll try to hit a couple of those at the end of each episode. speaker-1: Hey, do you want to ask them to give us a rating? speaker-0: Why not? Go on, you can do it. Give us a rating. Tell us what you thought. We hope you loved listening to us. We're certainly grateful that you have tuned in to hear us carry on about our Camino experience. And please subscribe so that way you know when the next episode is coming and what it's about. speaker-1: And if you share this episode, you will help us reach others who might be interested in learning about the Camino or traveling in this way. speaker-0: That wraps up this episode, guys. speaker-1: Thanks for listening. That's our story. Now go find yours. speaker-0: The Travel Joneses is produced, hosted, edited, and occasionally argued over by Donald and Janice Jones. Emotional support and Velcro snuggles provided by our golden retriever, Friday Jones. Quality control, keyboard napping, and general supervision by Juni Bug Jones, who has reviewed this episode and remains unimpressed. No interns were harmed in the making of this podcast because we don't have any.