“How you want to go on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela? Do you even know what that means?” Three times I read to my children (13+8) the stele from the travelogue about the Camino Primitivo: “The Camino Primitivo is considered exotic among the Camino de Santiago. If there is a path that stands for originality and does not run the risk of being commercially overrun, then it is probably this one. Because the Camino Primitivo is far too demanding and challenging for that. Its path profile takes the pilgrim up some high mountains and back down again, and with a high regularity…..It goes steadily uphill and downhill for several hundred meters of altitude per day.”

Okay, they really want it! Lukas and I have to take this opportunity , since it’s usually us who urge our kids to hike -or even just go for a walk. Often, even going upstairs in our house seems to be a burden for them.

Since we are already in Spain, the children talk and fantasize about pilgrimage and I can hardly imagine anything better than three weeks out in nature to move my body, a packing list is written, various things procured (in my new plastic T-shirt I walk 18 days with only two or three times wash in between :-), provisions packed (we are low-budget and can not afford restaurants), the bus parked at a campsite – and off we go. I would say, quick decision: From the idea to run the Camino de Santiago to the implementation we need just two days.

To Oviedo, the starting point of our pilgrimage, we take the public bus. Until we arrive at the pilgrimage office to get our pilgrim passports – in which we get a stamp in all churches and hostels, so that the Catholic Church knows that we have actually walked to Santiago – we are already walked 5 km.

Then it really starts. Before the church “San Salvador” I put on my backpack and : The hip belt buckle breaks off. Crap! Petur thinks of Armageddon and not to spoil the mood I knot due belts simply on the belly. This is done for 18 days, which leads to the fact that my belly has a dent every evening, which then expands again during the night – until the morning is tied again.

Actually, I thought I was the fittest hiker among us. I try to keep up with my fast friend Lara during the frequent extended walking-sprints. Okay, I don’t really have any more training worth mentioning either. What had I read again in the source mentioned above: “….is the Camino Primitivo not recommended for everyone. For pilgrims with an affinity for mountains and people in good shape, however, it is all the more appealing…So if you have a high level of fitness or are an experienced pilgrim, you might want to try the Camino Primitivo …”

After 13 kilometers I’m the last to arrive at the hostel and full of aches. Ouch! My shoulders! The rather stuffy hostel with 6 bunk beds in one room, we have to ourselves until late in the evening still two hikers arrive. In contrast to me, my son is thrilled to share the accommodation with others- by the way, amazingly well trained men.

I don’t sleep a wink. Outside it is raining cats and dogs, it is thundering. Instead of being in direct contact with what is (on a road several days later that leads steeply uphill we read in yellow camino writing : “The presence is a gift!”) I am worried about how we will hike in such weather. Finally it is early enough to wake the others. Before we leave in the dark, we hear from our new pilgrim friends, who have arrived from Ukraine, that last year they participated in “Iron-Man” (a triathlon competition where you have to have an unusual endurance)… Should that tell me anything about how trained you have to be for the Camino Primitivo? “No” I decide and let go of the thought. Quietly it comes again through the silence of the mind, when the two Ukrainians point incredulously at the children and our large luggage and take a photo of us to prove our existence. This is not the first time that we meet unbelieving pilgrims who want to have a photo of us …