Do we like “thru-hiking” in Europe?

We just finished our trial thru-hikes to see if are ready for doing a Camino de Santiago. I’m sure everyone is on the edge of their seat to see what we are now thinking :>)

First, we need to try to define the terms. In America, I have done a lot of “backpacking” in Washington State. This is carrying your tent, sleeping bag, and food on trails up into the wilderness. I really enjoy waking up in nature, usually in a quiet isolated beautiful place. I prefer this type of camping to staying in campgrounds next to RV’s with their barking dogs, satellite dishes, and radios. But backpacking in Europe means something different. Most people think of backpacking through Europe as traveling around on trains and staying in hostels or hotels.

Some backpackers in America, do extended treks like the Appalachian Trail (AT) or the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). These guys are still carrying everything they need to live in the wilderness, and are generally called “Thru-hikers”. I have contemplated about doing this some day, but my wife doesn’t really share this dream. Europe has some long “backpacking” thru-hikes, but they aren’t as popular as they are in America. But they do have other routes, like Mont Blanc, or the Camino de Santiago, (the Saint James Way), which is called trekking, hut-to-hut hiking, or thru-hiking. This is a bit different because most people are staying in hostels (Albergue’s), or hotels, and eating in restaurants or simple prepared food from grocery stores along the route. This keeps backpacks very light.

There are several Caminos that end in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain that were originally religious pilgrim routes. Many people hike still hike them for religious regions, but now many more are hiking for other reasons. The most popular route is the Camino Frances which starts in St. Jean Pied du Port, France and takes about 35 days to complete. There is also the Portuguese Camino which takes about 30 days from Lisbon or about 14 days from Porto. We have been considering doing a Camino and decided to do some shorter European thru-hikes this year to see if we liked it. We just finished a 4 day hike from Saint Malo to Mont Saint Michel (Part 1, and Part 2) and a 4 day hike along the Alsace wine route.

How did we do that? We are currently on a 3.5 month trip with 2 months in Europe and six weeks in Mexico so we have more luggage than we need for hiking. In our normal traveling mode, we each have one carry-on rolly bag and a small backpack that fits under an airline seat. For these hikes, we wanted to go light and only carry our small backpacks. We were able to fit a couple changes of clothes, a raincoat, some sandals, and some toiletries into our backpacks and they were still less than 7 pounds. On the first hike, we found a taxi to take our rolly bags to our end of hike Airbnb and our host agreed to hold our bags until we finished the hike. On the second hike, we stayed one night in a hotel in our final destination before we took a train to the trailhead town. Our hotel agreed to keep our bags in their lobby closet for free for 5 days :>). So, now we were hiking with some really light backpacks.

We chose to reserve accommodation for each night along our route. We lose a lot of flexibility because sickness, injuries and weather can make you want to rework your plans. But, we were going to be in some isolated small towns and we wanted the assurance that we wouldn’t get shutout when looking for hotels at the last minute. We ended up getting sick just before hiking, and just missed hiking in the rain, so it might not have been the best plan. I’m not sure I would reserve ahead, if we were doing a longer thru-hike like the Camino, although there have been several reports of towns with no vacancies in recent years.

We found our hikes in a 2018 book by Cassandra Overby from Seattle- Exploring Europe on Foot. This helped us plan each day for hiking as well as our hotels and logistics. It helped a lot, but it also left off a few details about each village we went through. We had some difficulties in things not being open in the smaller towns, especially on Sundays and Mondays. It is hard to write a hiking book but also include up-to-date info about lodging and restaurants. Things change a lot from year to year. There may be better guides out there, but I think they are mostly written in French. There are a lot of info available out there for the Camino’s but it can be difficult to plan for an alternative European thru-hike.

Like I said before, these hikes were meant to see if we liked thru-hiking enough to attempt a longer hike like the Camino. Could we handle hiking long distances? We definitely enjoyed the scenery and the freedom of traveling light and by ourselves. We realized that our 50-something bodies are still in good enough shape to handle doing 15 miles a day. We had minor problems with blisters and aches and pains but we kept all of that in control and we are confident we could handle longer hikes. On each of our hikes, we scheduled a “rest day” half way through the hike. Our bodies didn’t really need the rest day, and we decided we would only plan them once every 5-7 days on longer hikes to create some flexibility against bad weather or injuries/sickness.

What we didn’t see on our hikes, were many other people doing what we were doing. On the Brittany coast hike, we saw a few hikers but most of them were just day hikers. On the Alsace hike, we saw a lot of cycle touring, but didn’t see much foot traffic except for grape pickers and dog walkers. One of the biggest draws of the Camino is the hiking together with hundreds of other people every day. It is easy to make friends while walking, or hanging out in restaurants or the common rooms of the auberge’s or hotels. We didn’t meet anyone on our hikes (although every single person we passed, on foot or a bike, regardless of age, said “bonjour” to us – so polite!!). If this was our trial hikes for the Camino, I don’t think we really got a good sample of the famous Camino camaraderie.

The Camino has been getting very popular and there is a lot of competition to find a room at certain times of the year. Shorter hikes, like we did, could be an alternative to a Camino. But you are not going to get the same experience. We walked alone every day and went through a lot of small towns without much to offer. We were in small towns without grocery stores and restaurants. That wouldn’t be true on a Camino. We had some fantastic scenery on both hikes and really enjoyed our solitude, but at the same time, we had hoped to make some hiking friends. It really is a different type of experience. I would definitely recommend our hikes, but not for someone who is looking for a Camino like experience.

So where does that leave us? Are we going to try a Camino? We don’t want to have to reserve too far ahead again and lose all flexibility. But, we also are afraid of the crowds. We have heard reports of the Camino Frances being very busy in August and September. I get nervous about “no-vacancy” towns. We don’t want to hike in the middle summer or when it starts to get too cold and rainy. Some of our nomad friends have had luck reserving one to two days ahead of time, and that seems like a good compromise. Also, hiking late spring instead of Sept/Oct might be a good option. The Portuguese Camino from Porto sounds like it would be a great option for our first longer thru-hike. This is going to take a bit more research to find the best choice for us. Our hikes this year have given us a great taste of this different type of traveling and we have confirmed that we can physically do it. We also appreciate the many nomads we follow online who have done or are currently doing caminos – we’ve learned so much from each of them! We will continue to do our planning…. but you will probably hear from us on a longer thru-hike sometime in the next couple of years.