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We walked more than 650km (officially) carrying our 7 month old baby. Want to know all the details? Read on!
Camino de Santiago is a pilgrimage which encompasses several routes in Spain, France, and Portugal. Many people decide to become pilgrims each year and embark on the journey to Santiago. Sometimes just the last 100km (the minimum for receiving a compostela), and sometimes to just get out of their house wherever it might be and start walking. People have different reasons to walk the camino. We encountered people that do it as a tradition, for spiritual reasons, for physical reasons, even financial reasons, and people like us that do it for family. This series of posts is going to describe our journey on several caminos with our baby boy. Enjoy!
Definitions
A few definitions I'm going to use in this series of posts that you should know:
Stamps - Proof that you were walking along the camino. You can get them along the camino in albergues, churches, town halls and even restaurants and bars
Credentials - A small book you can buy in places on the camino or related to the camino. This is where you will collect your stamps.
Albergue - A pilgrim hostel on the way to Santiago. These places are special accommodations for pilgrims on the camino. They are mostly offering simple beds in shared dormitories. you can stay in one only if you have credentials
Compostela - The certificate you get for reaching Santiago by traveling at least 100km by foot (bicycle, horse, or bus have different requirements). For more details about Santiago itself check out this post.
Fisterrana - The certificate you get by reaching Fisterra by foot (there is also Muxiana that means the same for Muxia, but we did not get that one)
How we prepared
Our preparations started long before our son was born, both physical and mental preparations. We researched a lot, we consulted with experts, we asked friends that did it before. Everything we did led us to believe we can do it, so we decided to go through with it. You can read about the details of our preparations here.
All the preparations in the world still won't get you ready for the camino, especially with your baby. I wrote down the things that still surprised us in our things that we wish we knew before post
The baby
After clearing all of our preparations, our baby was ready. Armed with infinite happiness and curiosity he made everyone's camino better. He often acted as our energy charger. When you are tired and in pain, it is enough to just look at his face or hear his laugh and all of a sudden you can walk 20km more. We don't really know how much of all of it he absorbed, but he definitely looked at the world differently by the time we finished. Our camino was different in a way that we had to stop every 1.5-2 hours to let our baby play and eat, so we couldn't run it like most people do (averaging about 15km per day). On the other hand we enjoyed our time, and found our community of slow walkers to accompany us on our journey.
By the end of the journey our baby would be 9 months old, a bit heavier (whereas I lost a few kilos), and full of life experiences.
More baby stuff
Embarking on such a journey with a baby can raise a lot of worries in a parent. This section is here show you how we overcame some of them.
Sleeping
We slept, for the most part, in albergues with 20 more people in the room. The baby slept, and was even less noisy than the snorers. We always fed him out of the room (usually in the kitchen) just before lights out, then Lucy went to sleep with him in the same bed and in case he woke up he had his mom next to him to calm him down. Our son wakes up several times a night for eating, and it didn't change on the camino. Being in close proximity to his mother (as compared to a crib when we are at home) made the whole thing so much easier for both. The main thing was to cover the bed around with towels and blankets so Lucy would feel comfortable to breastfeed and the light won't wake the baby up. From time to time we did stay either in a private room our an AirBnb. Mostly when we were sick or after sleepless nights.
Eating
Our baby was mostly breastfed during the whole journey, which made it easier. We did need to supplement him for which we carried a box of porridge from which he ate every night before sleep, we gave him fruits (apples, bananas, pears and whatever else we could find... Even orange juice). The meat was the complicated part, as we could only buy the small jars from the supermarkets and they are disgusting (I know, I tried.) so I don't blame our baby for not wanting them. We we creative and made it into a drink so he can still consume it and we got by. He gained weight during the travel while we lost some, so I would crown it as a success.
Physical activity
The stops for playing were frequent and Our son usually had enough space to explore and to eat grass, rocks and anything else he finds when he gets of the blanket. We also did plenty of crawling exercises so he can start crawling asap (which he didn't, and we are happy for as we could put him on a table in a crowded place and not be afraid that he will fall off
Contact with humans
As I found out talking with other parents, not everybody is as comfortable as us letting strangers talk, hold and play with their child. Be prepared, a baby is a rare sighting on the camino so people get excited, and the local Spanish people are very physical and personal and mostly won't ask your permission to touch your child (especially grandmas!)
Our route
What started as walking about half of the French camino, turned out to be a 51 days journey where we started in Leon, ended up in Santiago. Then continued to Fisterra and back, and decided to walk to Porto to catch a flight home.
I broke down our journey into 3 parts, which also happen to be the 3 caminos we walked:
And on the map:
Baby walks to Santiago
We decided to document the journey as much as we can. The result of it was 2 Instagram accounts with daily updates, one Facebook page and eventually, one book that is in the works. Somehow we managed to do it, as 2 people that suck at social media. If you feel like seeing the camino through photos and our stories, you can check them out here:
Final thoughts
I think that as parents, we both needed to be a little bit crazy to do this kind of thing (the word brave was coming up a lot during the travel). We don't regret it for a moment, and we would recommend it to anyone that can afford to do it (financials is another topic we covered here). Seeing our son growing as the camino continues is an indescribable experience and we will cherish it for the rest of our lives. We hope that in his sub-conscience he will remember it as well, but if not then we can always remind him. We don't feel particularly brave, and we are definitely not the only ones to travel as a family. We met families with 4 year olds, 11 year olds, 35 year olds and heard of some other babies walking the camino a few days ahead of us. The point of this series of posts, and the book is to inspire parents and families to travel together.
This here is the proof that Camino de Santiago with your baby is doable, and even enjoyable.
I hope you'll find the information in these post inspiring and helpful. Let us know!
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