THE SOLO TRAVELLER
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Hiking and Trekking
The Camino de Santiago is a network of ancient routes leading to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain. Photographer: Sven Bieder | iStock.
Remembering the Camino
Briefly …
At more than 75 years of age, Peggy travelled from Australia to walk the Camino Francés. In this conversation, she reflects on the pilgrimage, the people she met, the memories it stirred and what the journey came to mean.
Pilgrimage is one of the oldest forms of travel – a journey undertaken not simply to reach a destination, but to be changed by the experience of getting there. Over centuries, cultures and faiths around the world have embraced the idea, each shaping it in different ways.
Today, the Camino de Santiago – a network of ancient routes leading to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain, where tradition holds that the remains of Saint James the Apostle are buried – remains one of the best-known pilgrimages, drawing hundreds of thousands of people each year. Having acquired an almost mythical status in modern travel, countless walkers have shared stories of friendships formed between strangers, moments of quiet reflection, physical hardship and unexpected acts of kindness.
The Camino Francés, the most travelled of the Camino routes, stretches almost 800 kilometres from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France, across the Pyrenees and northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela. Along the way, pilgrims share hostels, meals and conversations with strangers, following a path that has connected travellers for centuries. For many, the destination matters. Equally important is what happens between the beginning and the end. Some walk to recover from loss. Others celebrate retirement, test themselves, search for perspective or simply find themselves drawn to the journey without ever being able to fully explain why.
Peggy was one of them. At more than 75 years of age, she travelled from Australia to walk the Camino Francés – a trek of 779 kilometres. What follows is not simply the story of a long-distance walk across northern Spain, but of one woman’s pilgrimage.
I really wanted to do the Camino because it’s a pilgrim walk. It’s not a through walk … although you do walk every day and you can go at your own pace, but you need to have preparation because a lot of the track that you’re walking on is nothing like a straight bitumen road.
It was February 2023, and I was training to go at the end of that year. Unfortunately, I fell and broke my arm, and because of my age it took me a year and a half to have full function back in my arm. During that time though, I was still doing some of my training. If you’re going to walk the Camino for 36 days, you need to walk. I started walking about 14 kilometres every day, before bumping it up to 27 or 28 kilometres each day. I would walk the 27 kilometres from where I lived to a friend’s place and then she would drive me back home. I was also carrying at least two litres of water with me, along with food for my calorific energy. Protein is the big thing.
I flew out to Singapore on the 16th of July 2025 – Singapore to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Madrid, and from Madrid I got a train to Pamplona and a bus from Pamplona over the Pyrenees into the south of France to my starting point, a small French village called Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. It was just delightful.
Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France. Photographer: Sergi Formoso | iStock.
I started the walk on the 19th of July … and it was raining. So, there we were, heading out of the village … I say “we” because I had stopped to put my poncho on and a young lady from Canada was grappling with her raincoat. She said, “If you’d like we’ll walk together”, and I said “Yeah, that’s fine, we’ll go together”. She asked me if I was going to walk all the way to Roncesvalles, which is just over the French border with Spain. It is probably the most difficult section as we would be crossing the Pyrenees through the Roncesvalles Pass. There is an alternative route to reach Roncesvalles that is considered less challenging, but I wasn’t interested in doing that. She said to me “You’re not going on the easier paths?”, and I said, “Oh no! I want to see the Pyrenees”. So, there we were, trudging up about 7 kilometres to the top where we stopped at the Refuge Orisson, where I tried for the first time, this egg, potato and bacon tortilla. It’s like a large, inch-thick omelette, and they cut pieces off. Cheap as they come, full of protein, and that’s what you need.
You also fill up with your protein bars and water, and that’s the big thing … you always have to remember to get your supplies where you can because according to the information I had about the walk, we were supposed to get to a food truck that was only about another 20-odd kilometres further on. So, we finally get there and I turn around and said to my friend, “There’s no truck!”, and this German girl who was sitting near where she had also expected to find the food truck said, “Wouldn’t that be a bitch?!”.
Because I expected there to be a food truck, I only had one protein bar and half a banana left but I was going along okay. My friend was in front of me and she said, “We’ll go down here”, and it was down a hill and around tree roots and so forth, and all of a sudden I started to feel freezing cold inside … freezing cold. I was sweating profusely but I was starting to shiver, and I started to get very hazy. I didn’t have enough calories, and I said to my friend, “I’m just going to sit down here”, and because she was a marathon runner, she said, “How do you feel? Have you got enough food?”. “No”, I said, “because there was no truck”. She dug into her pack where she had some trail nuts, and she said, “Don’t sit down … stand up, move your legs”. I had the nuts and she also gave me a handful of sultanas, and I had my protein bar, and within half an hour, with a big guzzle of water, I was fine.
We made it to Roncesvalles, and it got me over the hump. When you cross the border into Spain, you have to go to an office and report in and register. They told us, “Okay, we’ll put this in an email to you”, but there was a handful of us, and they couldn’t get it into our emails … it just wasn’t working. They were beautiful people, no really critical bureaucratic nonsense, they were just so nice. They said, “Look, don’t stress, don’t worry. It’s on our system, so all you need to say to someone in Roncesvalles, ‘We saw Chantal, and she put us on the computer’”. They would need to just bring up our names, and they would see everything on the computer. You’re tracked all the way, because I guess if anything happens to you on the trails, they have all the information they need about your trip so far. When we asked about the food truck, their response was “Sometimes truck, sometimes no truck, yes?”.
Roncesvalles, Spain. Photographer: Imag3s | iStock.
What kind of conversations are you having with these complete strangers you are meeting along the way?
Well, I’m of a personality that I really like to challenge myself physically, mentally, emotionally … my soul. When you’re going along like this you’re not chatting all the time … you’re thinking and you’re looking at the scenery, and part of what I was thinking when I finally made it to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to begin my walk was, “Thank God I’m here!”.
Of course, the minute someone finds out that you’re from Australia, they say “Oh, that’s a long way!”, but I was thinking that, at my age, I was just so lucky to be able to have the vitality, the strength and the need to actually come on this trip and climb over the Pyrenees. During the war, people crawled over the Pyrenees to get to safety, and yet here I am. It’s very emotional. Powerful. Powerful. And never once did I think it was hard work.
What was it that drew you to the Camino?
Part of my motivation was because my father died when I was seven years and eight months old, and he died as a result of the Second World War … and yes, it was tough. We had a lot of love from our mum, but my recognition of him was very much a part of my walk. I also met a lady who, at a very young age … her early teenage years … was part of the Underground movement during the war, and what she would have had to have gone through just to make it safely across the border … there certainly would have been sexual favours at her age. And she had told me she had done “Whatever it took to get food”. And that was all in my mind … that is what I was thinking about. It also put the missing food truck into perspective. And the camaraderie of the people you meet along the way … you form a very strong emotional link that you don’t realise is so strong until you’re finished.
You have stayed in touch with some of your fellow travellers. What have they taught you?
I realised that there are more decent good people in the world than there are nasty idiots. I would arrive in one of the small villages along the way, ready to sit down, and I would turn a corner and there would be a whole pile of people, and some of them would form little groups and travel together. Everyone would say, “Well, you made it!”, and there would be a big round of applause and lots of celebrating. If you wanted to sit on your own, just to gather yourself for a bit, everyone seemed to understand … they didn’t come and crowd you. And that was nice. There was just a general overall understanding, because everyone was doing it, and everyone had an idea of how everyone else felt.
On this particular day I had arrived in Logroño, and I said to my friend, “There’s my hotel”, and then I turned and went straight down onto the pavement and split my eyebrow open. So, I’ve just walked over a hundred kilometres, and I’ve gone down on a footpath next to a kerbside café! Everyone was there, and of course there was panic. Anyway, I got up and took my pack off and put my towel over my eye to stop the bleeding. Someone had phoned the ambulance … we have two paramedics in our ambulances, there they had five … and they wanted to rush me to hospital.
I said, “No, no hospital. You’ve got Steri-Strips.” I showed them how to apply the strips, and we fixed it up and it was good … it was fine. I also had a decent adhesive bandage, so I put that on the wound, because I thought if I pull the Steri-Strips off, it’s not going to be healed and it will bleed. I had some crepe bandages and other things in my first aid kit, but not Steri-Strips – the most important things in this situation. I did the rest of the walk with this big bandage stuck on my left eyebrow. I’d arrive at my hotel, and they would give me a sideways glance thinking, “Yes, yes”. Yes, but never mind.
I also broke my hand in the fall. I tested to see if I could hold my poles because they’re very important for your balance when you’re going along the goat tracks and everything. And I could, so I said, “Oh well, we won’t worry”. I just put a bandage around my hand too and it was fine.
The main square of Logroño, Spain. Photographer: Sergi Formoso | iStock.
How did that change your walk?
Towards the end of the day, I would start to feel pretty tired. When you get to that point, you find a rock or a seat somewhere and you sit down and have a drink and then a walker will come by and sit with you and have a chat. But because I had all the hotels booked along the way, there was a sense of urgency to make it to my hotel every day. Finding my hotel was also a big problem. In Spain, I found the ladies didn’t want to know me. But the men were beautiful. They would show me where to find my hotel … they walked with me, “I'll show you. I'll show you where this is.” And so safe. I never felt unsafe.
I used to get to where I was going and then immediately have a shower and a rest and then go out and find something to eat. But as far as thinking about anything, I had pictures of my whole life going through my head a lot of the time. I was thinking about different areas of my life and the profession I was in and different people I had seen and had the pleasure to be with during my profession and just picturing them. Because I had retired it was also closure as well from that life into this life, which helps, I think, when you’ve been in a job for 60 years plus, and then you retire, there has to be something to fill that void. And all of that was going through my head and then also analysing what was happening every day with me and the different people I was meeting along the way and just how lovely they were. Kids would get up off their chair and give me a chair to sit down. And I would think, “Yes, there is more kindness in people if you want to actually look at what’s happening around you.”
In terms of your expectations, what was different?
I think the whole walk was different. I knew there would be some rough patches, but I didn’t realise I’d be shoulder-deep in a track where over the years it had just worn down … and that the walking path area would only be about 18 inches wide. I would have my poles up on the sides of the rockface while also coming down a very deep gradient. I had to be very careful I didn’t slip on the rocks … and so you just keep on going … yes, you keep on going.
The little signs and symbols guiding us along the walk are generally called ‘milestones’, ‘scallop shells’, and there are also yellow arrows. If you come to a fork in the path and the pillar with the particular symbol on it is on the left side of the divide, well, that’s the fork you take … hopefully! I arrived at one such junction, and there was a group of very confused young men. There were three different pathways we could have taken, and there was no pillar, no arrow, no nothing. Anyway, one of them said, “Oh, wait, wait, here comes a tractor!”. We asked him … you just say, “Camino”, and he said “Ah, Camino!”, and pointed us in the right direction. I walked with them for a bit, and one of them said “Okay boys, we’ll find Peggy’s hotel and then we’ll look for our hostel.” And away we would go … almost like the Wizard of Oz.
Left: A Camino ‘scallop shell’ and a yellow arrow indicating which direction to take; and some thoughtful hikers had made an arrow on the path. Photographs supplied by Peggy.
Along the way, a lot of people were saying to me was that I walked fast, but I was only walking my usual pace, and they’d say, “Oh, you walk fast!” I said, “Oh, not really”. They couldn’t get over that. I’d go up these hills and try to keep up with them, but being a past smoker, I’d run out of puff, and I’d have to lean and gasp for breath and they’d pass me. I said, “Yeah, I’m fine. Past smoker!”. Then I met another bloke from Wales, and he said to me, “You can climb any mountain in the world. You know, all you’ve got to do is match the speed of your feet to your breathing, not the other way around. And you will go up the mountain, and you can climb any mountain in the world. If you do that, you won’t gasp for breath.” And it was quite true. So, I did after that.
The concept of a pilgrimage has religious connotations. What role did your faith play in keeping on going?
Faith is a funny thing, isn’t it, faith? It’s very hard for people to explain ‘faith’ as such, because you can be walking along and you’re feeling fine and then something will come into your head, like, for example, the death of my mother. She died in her favourite chair. I spoke to her on a Sunday, and I got a phone call at seven o’clock on the Monday night to say she’s dead. And I’m walking along on this track and all of a sudden it popped into my head, this scenario, talking to her on a Sunday, a conversation and so forth, and I just cried for an hour. And after I finished crying, I said a “Hail Mary”, and all of a sudden I just felt so at peace.
You know the old saying “Make hay when the sun shines”? Well, along this particular part of my walk, all the hay was actually cut and the bales were everywhere. And it was just such a … and I can still feel it now … it was such an incredibly peaceful feeling. I wasn’t walking with anyone. No-one was within cooee of me. And there was just me and the hay fields and the track, and I just felt at peace. That happened about three times, and tears would just roll down my face. I wouldn’t even be feeling that emotional, and all of a sudden tears were rolling down my face.
“And there was just me and the hay fields and the track. And I just felt at peace.” Photograph supplied by Peggy.
It could be that I had some inner stuff that I had to get rid of or whatever, but, and it’s written, Camino does this to people. It’s written that after two weeks of walking, all of a sudden you’ll just feel very low. And there’s no explanation for it. In one book I had read, a lady who was walking the Camino had phoned a friend in her own country and said, “I’m not feeling that great”. And they had a chat and that was it. And then the next day she felt fine. When my foot was playing up, I phoned my niece who is a physiotherapist. And she asked me how I was feeling. And that’s when tears just rolled down my face. She asked me if I was crying, and I said, “Well, I’m sort of crying, but I’m not crying. Tears are just rolling down my face. I’m just feeling a little bit blue. That’s all, I’ve just got a fit of the blues.” My niece was lovely on the phone and told me that she was glad I had phoned her. She told me to just wrap my foot up like I was doing, and that I would be fine. And basically, all I needed was to have a bit of contact.
How was that different to the contact that you had with people you were meeting on the walk?
I think it was the fact that it was family, and she was so accepting of the fact that I phoned her. With the people on the walk, you’d be talking with them all the time and, and there’s not the relationship … the depth isn’t there.
Were there any unexpected moments along the walk that have stayed with you?
Probably the biggest surprise was when I was speaking with this fellow who told me about matching your feet to your breathing instead of your breathing to your feet. On another occasion, I was sharing a tortilla with some friends, and this handsome young man comes in and he says, “Peggy!”, and I had never seen him before in my life. I looked up and said, “Oh, hello”. He said, “I’m Australian … from Perth. I’ve been hearing about you along the track … and here you are!” And he was so elated. He said, “You’re the oldest person walking on the ‘true Camino’, and it’s marvellous. And you’re Australian. It’s a big feat.” I didn’t think it was such a big deal at all, really. I was doing it for the reasons I’ve said, but here he is, so pleased and happy that there I was!
Can you put your feelings about actually finishing the walk into words?
I had walked 589 kilometres, and my knee was very painful. I had to give up because I really could not do the distance of 27 kilometres and get to my hotel before five o’clock in the afternoon. I was exhausted. I had to give up the walk and get taxis from town to town for the last 190 kilometres, which was only about five or six days out of the 36 that I had to do. I would ask the staff at my hotel to ring for a taxi, and they’d ring and help me out with everything.
I’d take Panadol in the morning and Panadol at night and that was enough. I didn’t want to be taking too many anti-inflammatories otherwise it messes with your gut. And when I got to my Santiago hotel, I was going to walk. I didn’t care how long it took me, I was going to walk. The big thing to round off the trip is to walk into the square where the cathedral is … the Santiago de Compostela. I got to my hotel, took off my pack, had a drink, put my pack back on, and what should have been a 20 minute walk took me two hours. Because I had to keep stopping and then I got lost.
By the time I got to the square, there were hardly any people there. I had made it against all adversity, broken hand, split face, a painful leg, and I was there. And just that feeling that it doesn’t matter what happens in life from here on in, I’ll make it. I'll make it. And then by half past three, four o’clock in the afternoon, it was packed with all the pilgrims coming in … and the elation!
The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Photographer: Pedro Costa Simeao | Unsplash.
On this particular day, the 21st of August, I had got a text from one of the young women I had been walking some of the way with. We first met when we were at Carrión de los Condes going over the Pyrenees. We had our first tortilla together. I had walked with her for a short time and then didn’t see her again. And then I got this text from her to tell me she had just received word that her younger brother had just passed away. And she said, “If you’re in Santiago de Compostela at 12 midday on the 21st, I have paid to have the Botafumeiro”. That is where you’re in the cathedral and they swing this huge silver incense burner across the transept. They had done this only two weeks before, and it wasn’t due again until the November. But she paid about 400 euros for her brother to have one. I got to the square, but there were a lot of people who had heard that the Botafumeiro was on and a lot of people were going in, and you can’t just push in. I sent her a text and said, “I’m here in the square. I won’t be able to get in because the queue is too long but please know that I’m here and I’m sure your brother is there with you.”
Botafumeiro in full swing at the Cathedral Santiago de Compostela. Photographer: MHJ Hoek Beheer BV | iStock.
If you could say something to someone your age about why they might do this, even if they have reservations, what would that be?
I would speak to someone who actually has done the walk or who can explain a little bit about the terrain. Much of the time the grass is growing over the track or, you know, tree trunks and God knows what you’re stepping over. Sometimes you’ve got slabs of rock that you’re climbing through and they’re incredibly high. Speak to someone that has a true tongue in what the track is like. Ask about the food and the drink, and the length of time that one walks each day.
“I would speak to someone who actually has done the walk or who can explain a little bit about the terrain.” Photographs supplied by Peggy.
If you were going to go again tomorrow, is there anything in particular that you might do differently?
Well, I underestimated the style of track because none of the books explained what the track and the style of the track is like … a goat track. Now, if someone said, “Oh, they’re just goat tracks, the majority of them”, you’d understand. So that means it might be narrow, full of rocks and all of this. I underestimated that. I underestimated the actual height that I would be hiking up and coming down … not so much going over the Pyrenees but the tracks along the way … and the height of the hills that we had to go up and down. And coming down these tracks was where I think I got my stress fracture on my knee, even though I had proper hiking boots and poles. You are concentrating on balance a lot on these tracks, so I underestimated that.
So many times, I would be tired in the morning, but I would still think “I will get up and shower” and then I was fine. I would say to myself “It’s a new day and, yes, I am heading for this town!” Never once did I say I had enough. A few times I thought it would be nice to have a bit more sleep because the beds were great!