I’m not a hiker, but I walked the Camino de Santiago with ease. This is how I did it

My friends and I had been talking about doing something special for our 50th birthdays for years in that optimistic way that busy women in their 40s talk about all the things they’ll do one day.

Then, suddenly, “one day” arrived. My friend Tara, who is the sort of person who actually makes things happen, announced she had been looking into organising a trip to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain.

Over the next few months, there were dozens of emails. There were spreadsheets. There were accommodation bookings, train times and a packing list involving a lot of quick-dry underwear. There were constant chats about an app called Splitwise. Some friends committed, then retracted. Others hesitated, then jumped in.

Finally, six pilgrims were locked in. We reacted as all sensible women of a certain age would – with excitement, mild panic and a flurry of messages asking things like, “How many pairs of socks do you need for a pilgrimage?” and “Should I buy Salomons or Hokas?”

Ten months later, we found ourselves in the tiny Spanish village of Sarria, shoulders squared under our backpacks, squinting at the horizon with equal parts wonder and terror.

The Camino de Santiago, or the Way of St James, is a network of ancient pilgrim routes stretching across Europe, all converging at the tomb of St James the Great in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain. While it originated in the ninth century as a deeply religious Catholic pilgrimage, today it attracts hundreds of thousands of people annually from all walks of life. Many still walk it for spiritual reasons, while others go for fitness, or after a heartbreak, or simply because they’ve seen the Martin Sheen film The Way and thought it looked nice.

Now, to be honest, none of us are what you’d call serious trekkers. Most of us are women whose exercise routine involves doing yoga or Pilates occasionally and saying “we should go hiking more often”. We put together a pre-trip training regimen and promptly abandoned it.

Tara had wisely booked the option where our accommodation was organised in advance and our luggage was transferred from one hotel to the next each day. Each morning, we’d leave our suitcase in the hotel lobby, set off with only a small daypack and then, as if by miracle, our luggage would be waiting for us at the next hotel (unless you went over your bag weight limit, an expensive lesson I learnt when I had to pay for mine to be privately transferred).

But what was probably most surprising about our package was the price. Accommodation, daily breakfast, daily dinners and the luggage transfer only cost around $200 per day.

At each hotel, we stayed in twin-share rooms, bringing our friendships even closer, with a level of intimacy we might never have otherwise discovered. For instance, I found out that one friend sleeps with her mouth firmly taped shut; I’ll never look at her the same way again.

Purists might shake their heads, but if there is a way to trek across Spain without a backpack crushing your spine, I’m taking it. Besides, the “real” pilgrims we met along the way, some of whom had already walked more than 800 kilometres, never judged us. I think they were too tired to care.

There were steep hills, a beating sun and mornings when sitting on the toilet was a painful reminder of the kilometres we’d trekked the day before.

We’d chosen to walk just the final 114 kilometres of the Camino, enough to earn the official Compostela certificate without requiring a hip replacement on return, and our daily distances ranged from an easy, breezy 14 kilometres to a gruelling 28-kilometre stretch.

On the first morning, as we set off toward Portomarín, a silence fell over the group. We were busy mastering our walking sticks and wondering why even our daypacks suddenly felt so heavy. Tiny villages appeared in the distance. Church bells rang somewhere far away. We walked along dusty paths and through forests, passing cheerful strangers who called out “Buen Camino!”

By morning tea, we’d become absolutely fixated on food and drink – cafe con leche, croissants, toasted sandwiches – and from then on, every cafe stop felt miraculous, the mid-morning break becoming a highlight of each day.

Walking all day does funny things to your conversations. At first, we talked about the usual things – work, kids, husbands, ageing parents, perimenopause and whether anyone had remembered to bring magnesium. But after a while, the conversations changed. There was a lot of laughter. More than I can remember having in years. A few tears. There was also a lot of talk about blisters.

There were steep hills, a beating sun and mornings when sitting on the toilet was a painful reminder of the kilometres we’d trekked the day before. And yet, every morning we laced up our Hokas (or Salomons) and did it again. From Sarria to Portomarín, then Palas de Rei to Melide. By day five, traversing the stretch from Arzua toward O Pedrouzo, our feet were screaming but our spirits were soaring.

There is a sense of freedom in walking with only what you can carry. Or, in our case, walking with only what fits in a daypack because the rest is being transported by someone else. Most of us packed headphones, but none of us ever put them on. There was too much to take in. A distraction from all the beauty was not welcome.

On the sixth day, the spires of the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral finally pierced the skyline. When we walked into the grand plaza, we stood there – exhausted and elated – and realised we’d done it. We’d bloody done it! We’d not only walked the Camino, we were six women in our 50s who’d said yes to the adventure. Which might be the greatest pilgrimage of all.

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