The weight of what you carry: a reflection on pack weight and pilgrimage

There's a moment I remember from my first Camino Frances. Day three, somewhere between Zubiri and Pamplona, my shoulders screaming, my hips already bruised where my pack's hip belt had been grinding against bone. I was watching a German woman in her sixties practically float past me on the trail, her small pack bobbing gently with each step, whilst I felt like I was hauling the contents of my entire apartment up another bloody hill.

She turned and smiled at me. Not unkindly, but with that knowing look veteran pilgrims get. "You'll learn," she said, gesturing at my enormous pack. "The Camino teaches everyone eventually."

She was right. But I had to suffer first.

The confession nobody wants to make

Here's the thing about pack weight that nobody talks about honestly in those cheerful "what to bring" blog posts: most of us screw it up. Badly. On that first Frances crossing, my pack weighed just under 12 kilograms, not including water. I'd read all the advice. I knew the 10% body weight rule. I ignored it spectacularly.

I brought two books (physical books, because I'm apparently a masochist). A "just in case" fleece and a down jacket. Three pairs of hiking pants. A full toiletry bag that would have been appropriate for a two-week cruise. A travel journal with 200 pages, as if I'd somehow write 200 pages worth of profound thoughts whilst also walking 800 kilometers.

The irony? I thought I'd packed light. I'd congratulated myself on leaving behind my laptop.

What I didn't understand then, what the Camino would spend the next 500 kilometers teaching me, is that the weight we carry in our packs is never just about the weight we carry in our packs.

That first great purge

By the time I reached Burgos, I was desperate. My feet had blisters on their blisters. My lower back had developed a permanent ache that no amount of stretching could touch. And I'd started to hate every single item in my bag with a passion I usually reserve for flight delays and people who stop in doorways.

So I did what pilgrims have done for centuries: I gave things away. Mailed things home. Left things on the "free" tables in albergues with a sense of relief that bordered on inappropriate.

A book went to a fellow pilgrim in Logroño. The fleece I gave to a young man who was somehow walking in a cotton hoodie. The extra hiking pants I left in a donation bin in Santo Domingo de la Calzada, next to a stuffed rooster's shrine (the Camino is weird sometimes).

And here's what surprised me: I didn't miss any of it. Not once. The remaining book lasted me the whole journey. One jacket was plenty. Two pairs of pants, one to wear and one to dry, turned out to be the magic number.

But something else happened during that purge. As I was sorting through my physical belongings, deciding what was truly essential and what was just emotional insurance, I started noticing how much non-physical weight pilgrims carry too.

The invisible pack

I've now walked the Camino Frances six times. The Via Podiensis from Le Puy twice, once all the way through to Santiago. The Norte. The Portugués from both Lisbon and Porto, coastal and inland variants. Walked to Finisterre five times because apparently I can't resist that dramatic cliff-edge ending.

And I've noticed something across all those thousands of kilometers and hundreds of conversations with fellow pilgrims: we all come carrying two packs.

The first is the obvious one. The physical bag with its dubious organization and optimistic packing choices. The one that sits on your back and makes itself known through sore muscles and aching joints.

But the second pack is invisible. And it's often far heavier.

People bring grief to the Camino. I've walked with parents who lost children, partners who lost partners, adults who lost parents too soon. They carry that weight in their chests, not on their backs, but it shows in their faces and their pace and the way they sometimes stop at the most random vistas, not because the view is particularly spectacular, but because something about the light or the sound or the smell has triggered a memory they weren't prepared for.

People bring career crises, divorce papers mentally if not physically signed, health diagnoses they're still processing, questions about faith and purpose and what to do with their one wild and precious life.

Almost everyone seems to arrive with some invisible weight. Most pilgrims I've met are carrying something heavy that doesn't show up on a scale, even when they tell people they're walking for "adventure."

What the kilometers teach

There's a strange alchemy that happens somewhere around week two on a long Camino. The rhythm of walking day after day starts to work on you. Not in some magical, mystical way, though some pilgrims experience it that way, but in a more practical, mechanical sense.

Your body adapts. Your pack settles into its position on your shoulders. Your feet stop screaming quite so loudly. And with the physical discomfort diminishing, something else has room to emerge.

I remember a day on the Meseta, that vast, flat, supposedly boring stretch that many pilgrims dread or skip entirely, when I walked for six hours without seeing another person. Just wheat fields and sky and the distant line of the path stretching toward the horizon. My mind had nothing to do but wander.

At first it wandered to the usual anxieties, the kind every pilgrim hauls onto the trail. The questions that never seem to have good answers.

But then something shifted. Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe it was the hypnotic rhythm of step after step after step. But those anxieties started to feel smaller. Less like mountains and more like items in a pack that could, perhaps, be set down.

I didn't solve anything that day on the Meseta. I didn't have a dramatic breakthrough or a vision from God or a sudden clarity about my next life steps. But I did start to understand, in my body and not just my head, that carrying something doesn't mean you have to carry it forever. That the weight you bring to the trail doesn't have to be the weight you leave with.

The practical and the metaphorical (they're the same thing)

Here's where the literal and symbolic start to merge in ways that have taken me years to fully appreciate.

On my second Camino Frances, I brought a lighter pack. Around 7 kilograms, dry. I'd learned from my mistakes. Bought a smaller bag so I couldn't overpack even if I wanted to, invested in a good ultralight down jacket that compressed to nothing, switched from heavy cotton to merino wool shirts that didn't stink after three days.

And you know what? Walking was easier. Obviously. But something else was easier too.

I started that second Camino with clearer intentions. Not because I'd resolved every loose end in the years between (I hadn't), but because I'd learned that the Camino works better when you let it work on you rather than trying to force outcomes.

I didn't bring as much invisible weight either. Fewer expectations. Less attachment to how the experience was "supposed" to feel. A willingness to be bored, disappointed, uncomfortable, and still trust the process.

The parallels became impossible to ignore. Pack lighter, physically and emotionally, and you move easier. Bring only what you actually need, not what you fear you might need, and there's more room for what the journey provides. Let go of the "just in case" items, the backup anxieties, the contingency worries, the protection against hypothetical disasters, and suddenly the path feels less like a struggle and more like, well, a walk.

The things we think we can't live without

On the Via Podiensis, I once met a woman who'd brought a full-sized pillow from home. A real pillow. She'd stuffed it into the top of her pack, where it bobbed around like some absurd cotton tumor.

I asked her about it, gently I hope, and she said she couldn't sleep without her pillow. She'd tried. It didn't work. The pillow was non-negotiable.

By Cahors, the pillow was gone. She'd mailed it ahead to a friend. "I can't believe I thought I needed that," she laughed over dinner. "I've been sleeping fine on these terrible albergue pillows. Better, actually, because I'm so tired."

I think about that pillow often. Not because she was foolish (we all have our pillows, our non-negotiables that turn out to be very negotiable once we're actually tested). I think about it because it perfectly illustrates how wrong we are about our own needs.

Before the Camino, I thought I needed: eight hours of sleep, privacy, a hot shower daily, specific foods at specific times, control over my environment, certainty about what tomorrow would bring.

The Camino said: here's a bunk bed in a room with thirty snoring strangers, a cold trickle of water that might be warm if you're lucky, meals at Spanish hours which means lunch at 2pm and dinner at 9pm, paths that change based on weather and construction, and absolutely no control over anything except where you put your feet.

And I survived. More than survived, I thrived. Because it turns out I didn't need any of those things I thought I needed. I just thought I did because I'd never been forced to discover otherwise.

The invisible weight works the same way. The certainty we think we need, the closure we think we need, the answers we think we need about what our lives mean: we can walk without them. They're pillows. Comforting, familiar, but ultimately unnecessary for forward motion.

What actually matters (a partial list)

After six Camino Frances walks, two Via Podiensis journeys, the Norte, the Portugués variations, and five treks to Finisterre, here's what I've learned actually matters in a pack:

Shoes that fit. Not shoes that look good, or shoes that were on sale, or shoes someone recommended. Shoes that fit YOUR feet. I'm partial to trail runners now, though it took me two Caminos in heavy boots to figure that out.

A rain jacket that actually keeps you dry. The Galician rain doesn't care about your fashion choices.

One change of clothes. Maybe two for the shirts if you're particularly sweaty. That's it. Your ego wants more. Your shoulders want less. Listen to your shoulders.

A basic first aid kit focused on blister prevention: Compeed patches, Leukotape, and zinc oxide tape. Your feet are everything.

And here's what I've learned actually matters in the invisible pack:

Openness to the experience as it actually is, not as you'd planned it to be.

Willingness to talk to strangers, even when you're tired, even when they're annoying, even when you'd rather walk alone.

Patience with yourself when you're not having the transcendent experience you read about in Paulo Coelho.

And perhaps most importantly: permission to put things down. The grief doesn't have to be solved on the Camino, just held differently. The questions don't need answers by Santiago, just better company.

The letting go that doesn't feel like letting go

I want to be careful here, because the Camino isn't therapy and I'm not pretending otherwise. Walking 800 kilometers doesn't cure depression or heal trauma or fix broken relationships. Anyone who tells you it does is selling something.

But what the Camino does offer, what those repetitive days of walking and sleeping and walking again provide, is space. Physical space, obviously. Spain is big and the sky is huge and the paths go on for hundreds of kilometers. But also mental space, emotional space, spiritual space if you're inclined that way.

And in that space, some of the weight you've been carrying can shift. Not disappear, necessarily. Not resolve itself into neat answers. But shift.

I've walked stretches alongside pilgrims carrying fresh grief, people who lost someone only months before and were still raw with it, still catching themselves reaching for the phone to call a person who wasn't there anymore. They didn't set out to "process" the loss on the Camino, and I'm suspicious of that kind of instrumental thinking anyway, but walking seemed to give the grief somewhere to go.

Not away. Just somewhere. Into the legs, maybe. Into the rhythm of steps. Into the sunsets and the village churches where they stopped to light a candle, the quiet conversations with other pilgrims who'd lost someone too and understood.

Grief doesn't get left behind in Santiago. You bring it home, because that's how grief works. But plenty of pilgrims seem to carry it differently afterward. Less like a crushing weight on the chest and more like a companion walking beside them. The same mass, perhaps, but distributed better.

Before you pack

If you're planning your first Camino, or your tenth, my suggestion is this: think about both packs.

For the physical one, start by laying everything out on your bed, then putting half of it back. If you haven't used something by day five, you probably don't need it. Plan your Camino with weight in mind from the beginning.

For the invisible one, maybe do the same exercise but with expectations instead of objects. What are you hoping for? What would count as "success"? What are you afraid of? Lay those out mentally, examine them, and consider which ones might be unnecessary weight.

Go in knowing that the Camino will teach you what you actually need regardless of what you bring. The trail has a way of stripping things down, possessions, pretenses, protective habits, until you're left with just yourself and the path and the surprisingly manageable necessities of food, shelter, and forward motion.

That German woman who floated past me on day three? I saw her again in Santiago, at the pilgrims' Mass in the cathedral. She was crying, not from sadness, but from something more complicated than sadness. When I asked her about it afterward, she shrugged and said: "I'm not sure what I'm crying about. But it feels lighter than what I was carrying at the start."

That's about as good a summary of the Camino's work as I've ever heard.

The weight that remains

I've started and ended enough Caminos now to know that the magic isn't in the arrival. Santiago is beautiful, and the moment you reach the cathedral is genuinely moving, but it's not where the work gets done.

The work gets done somewhere around kilometer 400, when your body has stopped complaining and your mind has run out of its usual distractions. It gets done in the boring stretches, the hard stretches, the stretches where you wonder why you're doing this and can't quite remember what you hoped to find.

It gets done in the carrying. Both kinds.

So when you're packing your bag, really stuffing things in, making decisions about what makes the cut, maybe take a moment to think about the other bag too. The one that doesn't have zippers or compression straps. The one that weighs nothing at all on a scale but can make 800 kilometers feel like twice that distance.

What's in there? What do you actually need to bring? And what might you be ready, finally, to leave behind?

The Camino will ask you these questions eventually. Might as well start thinking about them now.

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Try asking My Camino Guide:
- What's a realistic pack weight for the Camino Frances?
- How do I prepare mentally for a long pilgrimage?
- What do pilgrims regret bringing on the Camino?