It may be your idea of hell, but I’m glad I hiked the Camino

When you’re sitting down to a group dinner on one of Spain’s pilgrim trails, you can expect to hear talk of dreadful blisters, amazing sights, stunning churches, and weather good and bad. But what you don’t expect is to see a photo of some middle-aged guy’s naked arse.

“Look at thet,” says a 60-ish man of Zimbabwean origin, whom I will call Cecil, to protect the guilty. “Aah was eb-sah-lootly rupped beck then. Aah hev nivver been so rupped in mah lahf.”

It’s true. There he is in the 10-year-old photo he’s brandishing on his phone for all at the table to see, whether they want to or not, and it’s indisputably an image of muscles rippling, sinews sinewing, and butt cheeks leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination. As an example of fifty-something fitness, it’s all anyone could ever ask for. The only problem is no one ever asked for it.

Is this what they mean when they say “the Camino will provide” – too much information, photos included, whether you request it or not? Somehow, I don’t think so.

Luckily, I have plenty of time to recover. I’m at the halfway point of a short stretch of the Camino del Norte, walking with my 21-year-old daughter, from San Sebastian to Bilbao – about 130 kilometres over six days – and I’ve allowed us two nights in Markina-Xemein, a small town in the heart of the Basque Country. And that means tomorrow is a whole day of doing nothing much.

Tonight we’re in a dorm room with 16 other walkers. Tomorrow we have a private room in the main building next door. The dorm is in a purpose-built annexe, beds above, kitchen, meals area and communal bathroom below; tomorrow night’s posh room – twin beds and en suite – is in the converted stone-and-timber farmhouse next door, a dwelling typical of the rural parts of Pais Vasco, aka Basque Country.

Three or four storeys tall, with big barn doors below and tiny windows above, these dwellings were traditionally filled with animals on the ground floor, people in the middle, and food, material and grain stores up top.

These days they tend to be either abandoned and tumbling down or converted into accommodation. A small number now house restaurants such as Asador Etxebarri (ranked No. 2 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list) or Mugaritz (No. 87), which serve versions of the area’s cuisine and have resulted in the Basque region having one of the highest concentrations of Michelin-starred eateries on the planet.

Our meal tonight won’t trouble restaurant scorers any, though it’s just what the doctor ordered: three courses – soup, meat and veg, pudding – with bread and table wine for a mere €15 a head. The bed costs the same. It may need a little fiscal encouragement, but the Camino does indeed provide.

A shared table around which people swap tales of their experiences of walking one of the world’s most trafficked routes might be your idea of heaven or your idea of hell, but I’m glad to have had it.

For some, this is a nightly ritual as they traverse the route that has been taking pilgrims to the ostensible resting place of the bones of St James the Great for hundreds of years. For me and my daughter, who has an exchange semester at Granada University to get back to, it’s just one thread in the rich tapestry of the hike.

We start the trip with two nights in San Sebastian (aka Donostia, the Basque translation of St Sebastian), staying in bunk beds in a cramped private room in a converted 19th-century office building.

A Room in the City hostel is a short walk from La Concha (the central of the city’s three beaches) and the old town. That makes it a perfect base for an assault on the city’s tightly packed pintxos bars, where elaborate snacks are served atop crusty bread, held in place by long skewers, for between €3 and €6 each. Order a couple, and a drink to wash them down, scoff and swill, move on to the next bar, repeat. It’s a great way to while away an evening, but be warned: those snacks can soon add up to much more than a sit-down meal if you’re not careful.

We have been here before, on a family holiday a decade ago. Back then my daughter was turning handstands on the beach; now she’s putting her budding Spanish skills to work ordering beers and snacks (the Euskadi, as the locals are known, are autonomous and speak a distinct language, but for the benefit of tourists they’ll stoop to Spanish, or even English).

At a bar called La Cuchara de San Telmo we squeeze into a narrow passage jammed with revellers and somehow manage to order and eat a plate of the beef cheeks and mash for which it is renowned. Better yet, we get a tip for the best place in town for tortilla de Espana. That’s tomorrow’s breakfast sorted.

Word is, you need to get to Antonio Bar early because they only make one tortilla each day, and it goes quickly. But it’s raining when we turn up at 9am and there’s only one other person there, so the enormous potato omelette, made with 36 eggs and standing close to five centimetres high, has barely been touched.

The patron cuts us two chunks, adds wedges of crusty white bread, serves us a short black each, and away we go. Rich, sweet, runny in the middle, thick with onions, green pepper and, of course, potatoes (both sliced and simmered and chunky and fried), it is hands down the most perfect example of this wonderful dish I have ever tasted.

Duly fortified, we start to walk. We head out of town along the promenade overlooking La Concha, one of San Sebastian’s three beaches. We pass beside Ondaretta beach and then start climbing. From the top of the hill we should have spectacular views of the city, the sea and the rolling green hills of this magnificent stretch of coastline. Instead, everything is a wall of grey; sea, sky and forest merge in the rain and mist.

It hardly matters, though. If anything, it adds to the sense that we’re treading the same paths – muddy, trampled, running with water – that countless others have for more than a thousand years.

The Camino del Norte is first and foremost a religious pilgrimage (though there are plenty of non-religious walkers), and if done in full, the trail starts in Irun, just this side of the French border, and ends about 830 kilometres later in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, the westernmost province of Spain, just above Portugal.

It is one of dozens of routes (some start in Italy, France, Germany, some even in England) and while a reputed 200,000 people travel to visit the reputed remains of St James the Great (one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus) each year, on this particular stretch we often have the trail to ourselves, and rarely see more than a dozen fellow walkers a day.

Though there’s plenty of dirt and hills and woods, this is not much like hiking in Australia. For a start, you’re never far from a town, which means you don’t need to carry much food or water, and you’re only ever a couple of hours from coffee, tapas and wine.

The bucolic trails frequently lead to stretches of bitumen, and occasionally lead you alongside or across freeways. Our route takes us through pretty fishing ports (Orio, Getaria, Zumaia), a bustling agricultural market town (Markina-Xemein), and Gernika, the regional centre bombed by the Fascist general Franco in 1937. Pablo Picasso’s famous painting of the atrocity hangs in a dedicated gallery in Madrid, but there’s a tiled mural recreation of it in a small square in this defiantly modern town.

The biggest surprise might be that the “forest” through which we walk is more often than not plantation (forestry is one of the region’s major industries). And a fair amount of it is eucalypt, which first arrived in Spain about 1850.

While that prompts a little stir of pride in the Antipodean heart, the species has gone from being seen as a saviour (it reaches maturity here in just 15 years, and is hardier than the pine it supplants) to scourge (it consumes lots of water, is fire prone, and doesn’t support much by way of bird or animal life).

So divisive is the humble gum tree that a moratorium on new plantations was introduced in 2022, and “de-eucalyptus brigades” have been deployed to rip out saplings so that native oak and birch might regain a foothold.

Whatever your view, you have plenty of time to mull over this and other philosophical issues as you walk The Way of St James. We start with a 17-kilometre day, peak at 27 kilometres and end with a 14-kilometre amble into Bilbao that, in our match-fit condition, barely feels like we’ve even got started.

For our last night on the trail, I’ve booked a room in a guesthouse in Larrabetzu. Right next door is Azurmendi, a three-Michelin-star restaurant where the tasting menu costs €315 ($560) a head, not including drinks. I’ve thought about it, but can’t quite bring myself to splash that much cash. At any rate, it’s Good Friday, and it’s closed. But its sibling one-Michelin-star restaurant, Eneko, is open, and for a much more modest €85 a head we get a multi-course feast that my daughter declares is the best meal she’s ever eaten. Bargain.

It’s Easter Saturday when we arrive in Bilbao. After a couple of hours in the Guggenheim Museum (make sure to give yourself time to get lost in the magnificent Richard Serra sculptures on the ground floor), we stroll back along the river to the old town – more pintxos! – and, on the spur of the moment, pop into the Gothic cathedral.

It’s just before 7pm, and the place is packed. Mass is about to start. The lights dim, a choir starts up and then the organ. It’s pitch black for a moment and then, in a clerestory at the rear of the building, candles are lit and a procession, led by a priest, slowly emerges.

As they pass, they hand out small candles, with little cardboard scallops at their base to catch the dripping wax. Within minutes, the entire place is aglow with soft light, and awash with soaring music. It’s been years since I attended a service (and apart from weddings, it’s a first for my daughter), and it’s a special moment. Say what you will about the Catholic Church, it does great theatre.

It feels like the perfect way to end this incredible walk. The countryside has been stunning, the food and people terrific, and above all, spending a big chunk of time with my adult daughter has been a rare gift that I’ll treasure for years to come.

I haven’t exactly been converted – I remain a walker rather than a pilgrim at the end of it all – but by the time I fold my trekking poles away I am feeling absolutely ripped. If only I had the photo to prove it.

THE DETAILS

VISIT

The Camino del Norte is one of many routes walkers can take to Santiago de Compostela. Traditionally, the route begins in Irun, just on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, and runs 835 kilometres westwards, but you can walk any stretch you like. San Sebastian to Bilbao is about 130 kilometres and typically walked in six days. Spring is a great time to walk though it can be wet.

FLY

From Madrid get a connecting flight (or train or bus) to either San Sebastian or Bilbao. The latter is better serviced, and cheaper.

STAY

Albergues are dormitories that cater specifically to pilgrim traffic. To get a dorm bed, you need to arrive by early afternoon and it will cost about €15 a night; dinner is about the same. A private room will cost five to 10 times that price. The Basque Country is one of Spain’s wealthiest regions, and the costs reflect that. To book privately, do it online ahead of time. If your wallet can stand it, it’s a lot less stress.

PLAN