Reasons for Returning to the Camino Again

“If I know one certainty about the Way of Saint James, it is that no one walks the Camino by accident.”

 Jack from Ireland, The Way

Why Walk the Camino de Santiago?

With each new adventure, with every time we walk out the door and onto another trail or pilgrimage route, the same question is both asked and answered. Why? Why go hiking again? Why go on pilgrimage? Why go on the Camino...again?

There are, of course, as many answers to these questions as there are pilgrims. Each person’s reasons can be for personal, religious, cultural, historical, or natural purposes… or they can be for a number of reasons that are hard to articulate. Indeed, in the modern age we must recognize that, like ourselves, many do not set out onto the Way of Saint James for the first time with spirituality or religion as their primary purpose.

Setting out onto the Camino

In 2016, for our first Camino – the Camino Frances – we undertook the pilgrimage for a range of reasons. We both needed a change from the routine of our lives, whether from having spent too much time at our desks, or having submitted too many school reports, or because things just didn’t seem to be going as planned.

We were at a point in our lives where we felt that things were not what we had hoped, that life was rushing past faster and faster, that there were other possibilities in the world beyond sitting and staring at a screen, and that we were still young enough to experience new cultures and experience new things. So, having discovered the Camino de Santiago, we saved up, we researched, we booked our tickets, and we went on the adventure of a lifetime, trekking from Saint Jean Pied de Port, France, to Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

Returning to the Camino again…and again...and again…

In many ways, returning to the Camino over the years since our first pilgrimage has been undertaken for many of the same reasons. In fact, the notion of returning to the Camino has remained in our minds since the day we concluded our original trek, and with each subsequent arrival in Santiago, daydreams of future routes soon plant their seeds. This process is enormously aided by the jubilation of having again arrived in Santiago, the friendliness of the Spanish people, the natural beauty of the country, and the availability of guidebooks for each of the routes in the Cathedral.

In our case, half a year after hiking across Spain, we were pulled back onto another of Europe’s routes to Santiago. In the time since leaving the Camino, we had begun to miss the essence of the pilgrimage, the social atmosphere of the albergues, the simplicity of the daily routine, and being regularly out in nature. As a result we soon found ourselves on the Via Podiensis, or GR65, hiking from Le Puy En Velay France westward to Saint Jean Pied de Port – our starting point in 2016. The sheer beauty of the French countryside in the spring, the nation’s foods and wines, and the meeting of pilgrims soon had us once again enthralled with the Camino.

Now entirely hooked by our time on the Camino, we quickly began planning our return and choosing our next route carefully. As such, by early 2019, having worked 15+ hours a day for almost 12 months, and with the help of family, we returned to venture the length of Portugal from Lisbon to Santiago along the Camino Portuguese Central. By this point, our primary desire was to return to the Camino to reconnect to nature after years of feeling a growing sense of disconnect from ourselves and the world. We also wanted to challenge ourselves again, hike into the unknown, and feel something real. I wanted to find reaffirmation; I wanted to experience the world firsthand, and I wanted a new perspective on the events of the times. I wanted to be mindful of life, those in my life, and the world around me once again. And most of all, I wanted to step away from those digital landscapes that we each now get so easily caught in and exchange them for natural ones.

Future Caminos

As we set out again in 2022, we are again in a different place in our lives, but again feel the call of the Camino. Everything changes with time, and so, with each venture back onto the Way of Saint James, so do our reasons for again becoming a pilgrim. Each experience is unique, bringing with it new meanings, fresh perspectives, and a range of new opportunities.

“One cannot step into the same river twice, for other waters are continually flowing on.”

Heraclitus

Yet there is no denying that, for us, returning to the Camino is entirely worthwhile. Those who come back again and again have usually discovered something along the Way that they wish to hold onto. Some continue to feel the pull of Santiago, some treasure the friendships and shared purpose of pilgrimage, and others simply love the rhythm of walking. Perhaps we have also become what people fondly call “Camino addicts,” although even that expression does not fully explain why the desire to return can be so powerful.

Words are not always adequate for describing something so personal. The reasons for walking may begin with a need for change, a search for meaning, a physical challenge or simple curiosity, but they rarely remain so easily defined. The Camino has a way of reshaping our intentions as we walk. What draws us onto the trail is not necessarily what keeps us there, and what we carry home is seldom what we expected to find.

This year, once again a Holy Year as 2016 had been, we felt a deep temptation to return to the Camino Francés. There would have been comfort in retracing the familiar route across northern Spain, revisiting remembered landscapes and discovering how both the Camino and we had changed since our first pilgrimage. However, after years spent reading about the remarkable network of paths leading toward Santiago, we increasingly felt that it was time for us to venture beyond the most popular Way.  The Holy Year had also been extended following the disruptions of COVID-19, and reports suggested that the Camino Francés was already becoming extraordinarily busy. When we investigated one of our preferred possibilities, we discovered that much of the accommodation along that route had already been reserved. Although this initially felt like a disappointment, it encouraged us to look more closely at other Caminos—routes that were quieter, more remote and less developed, but no less rich in history, landscape or meaning.

And so, our gaze turned toward the Camino de Madrid, the Camino de San Salvador and the Camino Primitivo. Together, these paths promised to carry us from the heart of Madrid, across the plains of central Spain and over the Cantabrian Mountains before eventually leading us through Asturias and Galicia toward Santiago de Compostela. It would be a longer and less familiar journey, filled with uncertainty, but perhaps that was precisely what we needed.

Once again, we would set out without fully understanding why the Camino was calling us back or what we hoped to discover along the way. Perhaps no one walks the Camino by accident, but neither do we always recognize the reasons for beginning until long after we have taken those first steps.

Buen Camino / Bon Chemin / Bom Caminho / Good Way / Ultreia

See you on the Way!