My wife and I just finished a 200 mile hike in Northern Spain, and as I know a few of you here enjoy this stuff I figured I'd share a trip report and photos as I usually do. Plus I'm stuck on a train right now on our way back to Madrid, so writing this seems like as good a way as any to pass the time and mentally process what we just finished. I'll probably put it together with some photos and post it when we get back home, and break it down by day. I took a real camera this time, not just my phone, so I got some decent photos (and some not so decent) but a trip like this doesn't really make sense with just pictures…you also need the context and people we met along the way, hence the write-up.

A little background: The Camino Santiago is a network of historic Catholic pilgrimage trails, most of which culminate at the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. The most common of these is the Camino Frances, which starts at the French border or beyond and makes its way to Santiago over some 500+ km. It's long (too long to do without some kind of sabbatical from work), crowded, and large segments of it are topographically boring. We're practicing Christians, but not Catholic, so the spiritual aspect is a little different for us, but we like to hike and enjoy the adventure of encountering new places and people.

Last year my wife, son, and I did a 60 mile section of the Camino Portugues from Vigo and then continued on from Santiago to the coast at Finisterre and Muxia. It was a great experience but this year I had a little more time and we wanted to do something a little different. We decided on the Camino Primitivo (in Spanish the "Original Way"), because it's mountainous, less popular (and less crowded), and short enough that we could get it done in about 14-15 days.

The Camino Primitivo begins in Oviedo and ends in Santiago de Compostela. It's just over 200 miles long, and there's between 25,000 and 35,000 feet of elevation gain over the entirety of the route, depending upon the routes you choose and what sources you look at. Based on how we did it, I imagine we were probably close to the high end of that. You travel through two different regions of Spain, Asturias and Galicia.

Sometime between 814 and 835, King Alphonso II of Asturias (or Fonzie, as I like to call him) decided to go on a pilgrimage from the Asturian capital in Oviedo to visit the bones of St James in Santiago de Compostela. Before he did this, there was no established pilgrimage route to Santiago, so he is considered the first pilgrim. Fonzie was kind of a badass, as he picked a pretty gnarly route. He was also engaged in fighting off the Muslim Moors who had occupied the rest of Spain. Thanks to him, they never got Asturias. So the pilgrimage was probably as much a political statement as it was a religious one...he was demonstrating that this was Christian territory and it was going to be maintained and protected.

Our trip started with a drive to Chicago to catch a TAP flight to Lisbon, nervously navigating the new EU biometric immigration requirements during a 2 hour layover (thankfully it wasn't as bad as expected, mainly because we had a lower volume of people), and then a quick flight into Madrid. We then had 2 hours to get to the Chamartin train station in Madrid (airport bus to Carcanias commuter rail station and a 15 minute train ride), and then get on an AVE high-speed train to Oviedo. Somehow it all worked out...we didn't get delayed or lost and got into Oviedo about 7pm Saturday night...roughly 25 hours after leaving our house in Indiana. Also, high-speed rail is cool. It's quite the experience going 200mph at ground level, and you get there quick.



We walked from the train station to the municipal albergue in Oviedo. I had done my research ahead of time and had the Buen Camino app to help with navigation, but I really had very little idea of what to expect.



On the walk to the albergue we discovered that there was some kind of huge festival going on. There was a parade with floats (giant Nina/pinta type boats with people riding on them) going down the main street, people everywhere, and the city was crazy. The Cathedral of Oviedo was on the way to the albergue, so we swung by. We went inside, but they had a mass going on, so we quickly ducked back out. We made our way through the crowds down some side streets and finally got into a less busy section of town and found the Albergue. It was pretty basic, but it wasn't full and had beds and showers, so we were good to go.



Before we left to go find a grocery store for some food, we met Kim and Kyle heading out to go check out the town, a lady from Ohio and her Nephew from Texas. Kim was clearly the friendly, outgoing type, and told us that they had started on the Camino del Norte at the French border and then cut down to finish their trip on the Primitivo. We spent a lot more time with them later on.

We hit up the grocery store, got some stuff for a salad for me and some baked goods for my wife, and ate a quick dinner at a picnic table outside the albergue with a few German girls. I'm not sure where they went after that night, because we never saw them again. It's possible they spent a few extra days in Oviedo, as a lot of pilgrims chose to do that in the larger towns along the way.