The most experienced pilgrims share one piece of advice, and it sounds like no advice at all: don’t plan too much.
It is tempting to map every day before you go — the stages, the towns, the exact kilometer where you will stop each night. The guidebooks make it possible. But the Camino has a way of revising itineraries, usually by the third day: a blister, a new friend walking slower, a village festival you didn’t know about, a morning when your body simply says not today. The pilgrims who suffer most are not the unprepared. They are the over-planned, dragging a spreadsheet behind them like an anchor.
Leave room in the plan for the plan to change. Book the first night or two if it steadies your nerves, and then let the road schedule the rest. Some of the best days on any Camino are the unplanned ones — the short day that became a long lunch, the detour someone recommended at breakfast, the town you never intended to love.
The itinerary is a map. The Camino is the territory. Walk the territory.
A QUESTION TO CARRY
What would change if you planned half as much — and trusted twice as much?