Last year, we walked from Viana do Castelo, a cute village north of Porto, to Santiago de Compostela on the Camino Portuguese, coastal route, with our niece and her husband. It was our third Camino, having walked half of the Camino del Norte and full Primitivo routes in 2017, and the full Camino del Norte route in 2022. When Lauren and James said they’d like to do another Camino after the Portuguese route, Mike immediately asked, “When are we going?” I wasn’t quite as enthusiastic, and for 6 months I thought I’d sit this one out.

Then, Mike was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma, an aggressive type of skin cancer, on the top of his head. The cancer was very deep, but it was removed in March, and after 4 weeks of radiation treatments, the oncologist is confident that he’ll be fine. During that time, Mike told me that he really wanted me to accompany him to Spain. So, we’ve been training on the hills in Park City for the past few months.

This time, we’ll be walking about 200 miles of the Camino Francés (French Way), the most popular of the various Camino de Santiago routes. Starting in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, whose name means “Saint John at the Foot of the Pass”, a picturesque town in the French Basque Country. The full Camino traverses about 500 miles across northern Spain, culminating, as most of the Caminos do, at the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, where the remains of Saint James are believed to rest. We’ll walk 8 days to Logroño, and then skip ahead to Sarria to walk the final 5 days to Santiago.

In his book A Million Steps, Kurt Koontz wrote that the first third of this 500-mile journey focuses on the “physical” aspects; the second on the “emotional”; and the third on the “spiritual”. I found that to be true on our first 2 Caminos. Our third Camino was an abbreviated pilgrimage, only 125 miles. I never got past the physical, even on our last day.

We arrived after a few uneventful flights to Paris and Biarritz. This town is charming, with dams and waterfalls on the Nives River. There are a lot of peregrinos (pilgrims) in town, all getting ready for their Caminos.