A reflective essay challenging the over-planning instinct many first-time pilgrims have. Explores how weather, body, community, and unexpected moments reshape t
I'm going to tell you something that might sting a little: that beautiful color-coded spreadsheet you've created – the one with your daily stages calculated to the kilometer, your albergue reservations booked three months out, your rest days strategically positioned every fourth stage – it's going to change. Dramatically. And that's not just okay. It's actually the point.
I've walked the Camino Frances six times now, the Via Podiensis twice (once all the way through to Santiago), completed the Norte, walked both the coastal and inland Portuguese routes starting from Lisbon, and made the pilgrimage to Finisterre five times. That's a lot of carefully planned itineraries. And I can tell you with absolute certainty: not a single one of them survived contact with the actual Camino.
I remember my first Camino Frances in excruciating detail. I had a laminated (!!) daily stage sheet that I'd printed at work. Stages calculated based on a 5.5 km/h walking pace. Departure times. Estimated arrival windows. Backup albergues in case the primary was full. I'd even color-coded it – green for easy stages, yellow for moderate, red for the challenging ones.
The Camino looked at my laminated sheet and laughed.
This is the first great teacher of surrender: your body. It doesn't care about your carefully calculated stages or your non-refundable booking in León. Tendinitis doesn't consult your spreadsheet. Blisters don't check your calendar.
The Spanish have a phrase you'll hear constantly: "poco a poco." Little by little. It sounds like a platitude until you're staring at a 28km stage with shin splints, and someone suggests you just walk to the next village – five kilometers away – and see how you feel. Just that. Just five kilometers. Then decide again.
I ended up taking two unplanned rest days in Burgos on that first Camino. I'd budgeted for exactly zero rest days (because I was 32 and invincible, obviously). Those two days weren't just about my knee healing – though they were essential for that. They became about watching the Cathedral towers change color at sunset, about a three-hour conversation with a retired schoolteacher from Cork, about discovering that the best tapas in Burgos are found in a tiny bar down a street I never would have explored if I'd been racing through as planned.
My suggestion is to build flexibility into your schedule from the start. If you think you need 33 days for the Frances, book your return flight for day 40. Your body will likely need at least one or two unplanned stops, and you'll want them when they come.
I'd checked the forecasts obsessively for the week before departure. Early May. Mild temperatures. Occasional light rain. What I got was a freak late-spring snowstorm on the Aubrac plateau that had me sheltering in a shepherd's hut for nearly four hours, questioning every life decision that had led me to that moment.
Weather on the Camino isn't just inconvenience – it's transformation. That snowstorm became one of my most vivid memories of any pilgrimage. The silence of the snow. The way the other pilgrims in that hut shared their food without discussion. The German woman who taught me to play a card game I've since forgotten but remember the laughter of.
You can't plan for these moments. You can only be present when they happen.
And it's not just dramatic storms. Unexpected heat waves will reshape your walking hours (start at 5 AM or suffer). Relentless rain will add hours to your day as you navigate mud. Glorious weather might make you linger somewhere you'd planned to leave.
A good rain jacket – I use the Outdoor Research Helium – is worth its weight in gold, but even the best gear won't make you impervious to the reality that nature operates on its own schedule.
I walked into Sahagún on my third Frances intending to continue another 13 kilometers to a small village called Calzadilla de los Hermanillos. Good stage length. Nice albergue there. Everything according to plan.
But there was this group at the albergue in Sahagún. A mix of nationalities – a Dutch couple, two Brazilian women traveling together, an older Japanese man who barely spoke English but whose quiet presence somehow made every gathering better. We'd been leapfrogging each other for days, sharing meals here and there.
"Stay," one of the Brazilians said. "We're making dinner together."
I stayed. We cooked a chaotic meal that probably violated several food safety regulations. We drank too much wine. The Japanese gentleman pulled out a harmonica and played songs I didn't recognize but understood completely. I went to bed later than I should have, knowing my early start was gone, knowing my itinerary was officially compromised.
It remains one of my favorite nights of any pilgrimage.
The Camino forms what pilgrims call a "Camino family" – groups that coalesce, walk together for days or weeks, then eventually drift apart as different paces and different needs pull them in different directions. These families don't form according to your schedule. They form when they're ready.
Sometimes staying means letting your planned stage go. Sometimes hurrying to catch up with friends you made three days ago means extending what should have been a short day. Either way, your spreadsheet didn't account for this – because it couldn't. You can ask about how to meet people on the Camino, but no guide can tell you who those people will be or when they'll matter.
Inside, an elderly woman was playing an old piano. Not well, exactly, but with such evident joy that technical proficiency seemed irrelevant. I sat in a wooden pew that might have been there for centuries. I listened for maybe twenty minutes. I have no idea who she was or why she was there. I never asked.
My stage plan said I should have been three kilometers down the trail at that moment.
The Camino is full of these moments – a perfect sunrise over the meseta that requires stopping, a conversation with a shepherd that stretches longer than expected, a church door that happens to be open when normally it's not, a spontaneous village festival that turns a transit town into an overnight destination.
You cannot plan for wonder. But you can make space for it – and that means holding your itinerary loosely enough to let wonder interrupt.
This doesn't mean passivity or lack of preparation. It means developing the capacity to respond to what is rather than demanding what you planned. There's a reason the traditional pilgrim's blessing says "Buen Camino" (good way) rather than "Successful Completion of Your Predetermined Schedule."
The pilgrimage happens in the gaps between your plans. In the detours. In the delays. In the unexpected hospitalero who invites you to help cook dinner instead of moving on to the next town. In the injury that forces you to slow down enough to notice things you would have walked right past.
My first time walking to Finisterre – that final stretch from Santiago to the end of the earth – I met a woman who had abandoned her entire Camino Frances itinerary on day two. She'd planned to walk 25 kilometers a day for 32 days. After a panic attack on the climb out of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, she'd decided to simply walk until she felt like stopping. Every day. With no predetermined endpoint.
She arrived in Santiago two weeks later than "planned." She said it was the most meaningful experience of her life.
Here's what I've learned actually helps:
Know your ranges, not your rigid numbers. Instead of "I will walk 22.4 kilometers to Grañón," try "I'll aim for somewhere between Grañón and Belorado, depending on how I feel and who I meet." Having 2-3 reasonable stopping points each day gives you flexibility without chaos.
Make reservations only when essential. In high season on the Frances, yes, you might want to book ahead for certain spots (Roncesvalles, Burgos, León). But don't book a month out for every single night. You'll either stress about making your reservation or lose money when plans change.
Build buffer days. If your flight home is fixed, build in 4-5 extra days beyond your calculated walking time. You'll use them. Whether for rest, weather, community, or wonder – you'll use them.
Carry a lightweight backup plan. Know how buses and trains work along your route. Not because you're planning to use them, but because knowing you could take a day off the trail and rejoin later removes the anxiety that might otherwise make you push through when you shouldn't.
If you want help thinking through a flexible approach to your specific situation, you can plan your Camino with questions about building in appropriate buffer time.
It's not failure. It's initiation.
What you gain is presence – actual, embodied presence in your walking, your surroundings, your conversations. When you're not constantly checking your pace against a predetermined schedule, you start to actually see the path under your feet. When you're not anxious about making your booking, you can accept the invitation to linger.
You also gain resilience. After your first major plan adjustment, the second one is easier. By your third, you start to almost enjoy the plot twists. You develop what I think of as "Camino flexibility" – a skill that transfers surprisingly well to life off the trail.
And you gain stories. Nobody tells campfire tales about the days everything went exactly according to plan. The stories worth telling are the detours, the delays, the unplanned encounters. The spreadsheet produces efficiency. The Camino produces transformation.
None of this is the Camino failing to meet your expectations. It is the Camino being exactly what it's supposed to be: an invitation to step outside your normal patterns of control and into something older, slower, and ultimately more meaningful.
The version of you who arrives in Santiago will not be the person who left Saint-Jean or Lisbon or Le Puy. Part of that transformation comes from the walking itself. But a significant part comes from what you learn by surrendering your grip on how it was supposed to go.
Make your plans. Do your research. Pack your good walking shoes and your backup charger and your laminated stage sheet if it makes you feel better. But hold it all loosely. The Camino will teach you anyway – it always does – but the lesson goes down easier when you're not fighting it.
Buen Camino. And I mean that in the fullest sense: may your way be good, especially when it's not what you expected.
---
Try asking My Camino Guide:
- How do I handle changing my plans mid-Camino?
- What should I do if I get injured on the Camino?
- How do I build buffer days into my Camino schedule?
I've walked the Camino Frances six times now, the Via Podiensis twice (once all the way through to Santiago), completed the Norte, walked both the coastal and inland Portuguese routes starting from Lisbon, and made the pilgrimage to Finisterre five times. That's a lot of carefully planned itineraries. And I can tell you with absolute certainty: not a single one of them survived contact with the actual Camino.
The Planning Paradox
Here's the irony. I'm not anti-planning. I actually think thoughtful preparation is important, especially for first-time pilgrims. You should have a general sense of the terrain, understand your body's baseline fitness, research the seasons, and yes – have a rough idea of where you might sleep each night. The problem isn't planning itself. It's the white-knuckle grip we tend to have on those plans.I remember my first Camino Frances in excruciating detail. I had a laminated (!!) daily stage sheet that I'd printed at work. Stages calculated based on a 5.5 km/h walking pace. Departure times. Estimated arrival windows. Backup albergues in case the primary was full. I'd even color-coded it – green for easy stages, yellow for moderate, red for the challenging ones.
The Camino looked at my laminated sheet and laughed.
When Your Body Has Other Ideas
On day four of that first pilgrimage, somewhere between Pamplona and Puente la Reina, my left knee started making sounds that knees shouldn't make. By day six, I was hobbling into Estella wondering if I'd be taking a bus to Santiago.This is the first great teacher of surrender: your body. It doesn't care about your carefully calculated stages or your non-refundable booking in León. Tendinitis doesn't consult your spreadsheet. Blisters don't check your calendar.
The Spanish have a phrase you'll hear constantly: "poco a poco." Little by little. It sounds like a platitude until you're staring at a 28km stage with shin splints, and someone suggests you just walk to the next village – five kilometers away – and see how you feel. Just that. Just five kilometers. Then decide again.
I ended up taking two unplanned rest days in Burgos on that first Camino. I'd budgeted for exactly zero rest days (because I was 32 and invincible, obviously). Those two days weren't just about my knee healing – though they were essential for that. They became about watching the Cathedral towers change color at sunset, about a three-hour conversation with a retired schoolteacher from Cork, about discovering that the best tapas in Burgos are found in a tiny bar down a street I never would have explored if I'd been racing through as planned.
My suggestion is to build flexibility into your schedule from the start. If you think you need 33 days for the Frances, book your return flight for day 40. Your body will likely need at least one or two unplanned stops, and you'll want them when they come.
The Weather Doesn't Read Forecasts
My second crossing of the Via Podiensis – that beautiful, brutal route from Le Puy-en-Velay through the Aubrac and down into Spain – taught me about weather in ways I hadn't expected.I'd checked the forecasts obsessively for the week before departure. Early May. Mild temperatures. Occasional light rain. What I got was a freak late-spring snowstorm on the Aubrac plateau that had me sheltering in a shepherd's hut for nearly four hours, questioning every life decision that had led me to that moment.
Weather on the Camino isn't just inconvenience – it's transformation. That snowstorm became one of my most vivid memories of any pilgrimage. The silence of the snow. The way the other pilgrims in that hut shared their food without discussion. The German woman who taught me to play a card game I've since forgotten but remember the laughter of.
You can't plan for these moments. You can only be present when they happen.
And it's not just dramatic storms. Unexpected heat waves will reshape your walking hours (start at 5 AM or suffer). Relentless rain will add hours to your day as you navigate mud. Glorious weather might make you linger somewhere you'd planned to leave.
A good rain jacket – I use the Outdoor Research Helium – is worth its weight in gold, but even the best gear won't make you impervious to the reality that nature operates on its own schedule.
The Community You Haven't Met Yet
This might be the hardest thing to explain to pre-Camino pilgrims: the people you'll meet will change everything.I walked into Sahagún on my third Frances intending to continue another 13 kilometers to a small village called Calzadilla de los Hermanillos. Good stage length. Nice albergue there. Everything according to plan.
But there was this group at the albergue in Sahagún. A mix of nationalities – a Dutch couple, two Brazilian women traveling together, an older Japanese man who barely spoke English but whose quiet presence somehow made every gathering better. We'd been leapfrogging each other for days, sharing meals here and there.
"Stay," one of the Brazilians said. "We're making dinner together."
I stayed. We cooked a chaotic meal that probably violated several food safety regulations. We drank too much wine. The Japanese gentleman pulled out a harmonica and played songs I didn't recognize but understood completely. I went to bed later than I should have, knowing my early start was gone, knowing my itinerary was officially compromised.
It remains one of my favorite nights of any pilgrimage.
The Camino forms what pilgrims call a "Camino family" – groups that coalesce, walk together for days or weeks, then eventually drift apart as different paces and different needs pull them in different directions. These families don't form according to your schedule. They form when they're ready.
Sometimes staying means letting your planned stage go. Sometimes hurrying to catch up with friends you made three days ago means extending what should have been a short day. Either way, your spreadsheet didn't account for this – because it couldn't. You can ask about how to meet people on the Camino, but no guide can tell you who those people will be or when they'll matter.
The Unexpected Moments That Demand Your Presence
Between Portomarín and Palas de Rei on my fourth Frances, I came across a tiny chapel that wasn't in any guidebook. It sat in a grove of eucalyptus trees, barely visible from the trail. A handwritten sign in Spanish invited pilgrims to enter.Inside, an elderly woman was playing an old piano. Not well, exactly, but with such evident joy that technical proficiency seemed irrelevant. I sat in a wooden pew that might have been there for centuries. I listened for maybe twenty minutes. I have no idea who she was or why she was there. I never asked.
My stage plan said I should have been three kilometers down the trail at that moment.
The Camino is full of these moments – a perfect sunrise over the meseta that requires stopping, a conversation with a shepherd that stretches longer than expected, a church door that happens to be open when normally it's not, a spontaneous village festival that turns a transit town into an overnight destination.
You cannot plan for wonder. But you can make space for it – and that means holding your itinerary loosely enough to let wonder interrupt.
Surrendering as Spiritual Practice
For many pilgrims, regardless of religious orientation, the Camino becomes a form of spiritual practice. And almost every spiritual tradition I know of has something to say about surrender.This doesn't mean passivity or lack of preparation. It means developing the capacity to respond to what is rather than demanding what you planned. There's a reason the traditional pilgrim's blessing says "Buen Camino" (good way) rather than "Successful Completion of Your Predetermined Schedule."
The pilgrimage happens in the gaps between your plans. In the detours. In the delays. In the unexpected hospitalero who invites you to help cook dinner instead of moving on to the next town. In the injury that forces you to slow down enough to notice things you would have walked right past.
My first time walking to Finisterre – that final stretch from Santiago to the end of the earth – I met a woman who had abandoned her entire Camino Frances itinerary on day two. She'd planned to walk 25 kilometers a day for 32 days. After a panic attack on the climb out of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, she'd decided to simply walk until she felt like stopping. Every day. With no predetermined endpoint.
She arrived in Santiago two weeks later than "planned." She said it was the most meaningful experience of her life.
Practical Wisdom for the Overly Planned
I'm not suggesting you throw your guidebook in the trash and wing it entirely. That creates its own problems, especially in high season when beds genuinely do fill up, or in shoulder months when albergue closures can catch you off guard.Here's what I've learned actually helps:
Know your ranges, not your rigid numbers. Instead of "I will walk 22.4 kilometers to Grañón," try "I'll aim for somewhere between Grañón and Belorado, depending on how I feel and who I meet." Having 2-3 reasonable stopping points each day gives you flexibility without chaos.
Make reservations only when essential. In high season on the Frances, yes, you might want to book ahead for certain spots (Roncesvalles, Burgos, León). But don't book a month out for every single night. You'll either stress about making your reservation or lose money when plans change.
Build buffer days. If your flight home is fixed, build in 4-5 extra days beyond your calculated walking time. You'll use them. Whether for rest, weather, community, or wonder – you'll use them.
Carry a lightweight backup plan. Know how buses and trains work along your route. Not because you're planning to use them, but because knowing you could take a day off the trail and rejoin later removes the anxiety that might otherwise make you push through when you shouldn't.
If you want help thinking through a flexible approach to your specific situation, you can plan your Camino with questions about building in appropriate buffer time.
What You Gain By Letting Go
I'll be honest: there's discomfort in releasing control. Especially for first-time pilgrims, especially for people (like me) who feel safer with structure. The first time your plan falls apart, it can feel like failure.It's not failure. It's initiation.
What you gain is presence – actual, embodied presence in your walking, your surroundings, your conversations. When you're not constantly checking your pace against a predetermined schedule, you start to actually see the path under your feet. When you're not anxious about making your booking, you can accept the invitation to linger.
You also gain resilience. After your first major plan adjustment, the second one is easier. By your third, you start to almost enjoy the plot twists. You develop what I think of as "Camino flexibility" – a skill that transfers surprisingly well to life off the trail.
And you gain stories. Nobody tells campfire tales about the days everything went exactly according to plan. The stories worth telling are the detours, the delays, the unplanned encounters. The spreadsheet produces efficiency. The Camino produces transformation.
Go In Knowing This
Your itinerary will change because the Camino isn't a product to be consumed according to specifications. It's a living, breathing tradition that has been reshaping pilgrims' expectations for over a thousand years. Your body will have opinions. The weather will have opinions. The people you meet will have opinions. And sometimes, the path itself will have opinions – a closed bridge, a washed-out section, a trail marker pointing somewhere your guidebook didn't anticipate.None of this is the Camino failing to meet your expectations. It is the Camino being exactly what it's supposed to be: an invitation to step outside your normal patterns of control and into something older, slower, and ultimately more meaningful.
The version of you who arrives in Santiago will not be the person who left Saint-Jean or Lisbon or Le Puy. Part of that transformation comes from the walking itself. But a significant part comes from what you learn by surrendering your grip on how it was supposed to go.
Make your plans. Do your research. Pack your good walking shoes and your backup charger and your laminated stage sheet if it makes you feel better. But hold it all loosely. The Camino will teach you anyway – it always does – but the lesson goes down easier when you're not fighting it.
Buen Camino. And I mean that in the fullest sense: may your way be good, especially when it's not what you expected.
---
Try asking My Camino Guide:
- How do I handle changing my plans mid-Camino?
- What should I do if I get injured on the Camino?
- How do I build buffer days into my Camino schedule?
