My own favourite when arriving in a village big enough to have more than one bar: ?Perdon, donde se come bien? - usually directed to a middle-aged or older couple. They usually point out the place where the locals eat - maybe two euros more than the standard pilgrim meal, but usually a better...
My knees are fine, especially the new one, but plane tickets to Spain for Easter are quite expensive now, and we came across a really good offer from KLM... So Pieterpad it is for the Easter of 2025 - I am sure I will miss the Nazarenos and tapas bars, but expect to have a nice walk anyway.
We walked from Paris to Angerville in February (short distances because of at that time fairly recent knee replacement) and have just taken advantage of the Black Week sales to buy tickets back to Paris NEXT February. We're still doing fairly short stages, but the knee is working well. Not...
I think the one thing I wish someone would have told me the first time is this: "There are shops in Spain. You do not need to bring anything "just in case"."
My son and I walked from Cadiz to Seville in December some years ago - I posted about it here. No other pilgrims, but a nice walk.
Our stages were MUCH shorter than yours!
I enjoyed Vía Augusta - there were cheap hotel options, but no albergues (we walked in December). With the exception of the day we walked through a farmyard with a dead sheep in a ditch and some really protective dogs, it was an easy walk, with acceptable signposting and lots and lots of birds...
I´ve walked the Via Serrana but not the Via Augusta from Cadiz. The Via Serrana is beautiful but goes through some very significant mountains for a couple of days.
The Augusta is dead flat...
I would recommend Vía Augusta from Cádiz to Sevilla first, and then continue along Vía de la Plata for as long as you can...
Augusta is lovely, you walk through a bird sanctuary most of the time.
We walked Newcastle-Carlisle several years ago - used a touring company, because some stretches are really not very accessible, and had B&B-keepers pick us up and deliver us back on the walk. Six great days, improbable amounts of rain (we walked in July), and sooo many Roman forts...
I got a new knee in October last year and walked a week in February and another in April this year. I shortened my stages a bit, but on the whole, things went fine.
I love my titanium knee!
I joined the forum in February 13, 2005. When my husband, our son and I walked in to Santiago at Easter in 2005, we bought Ivar a drink in a bar. If that happened nowadays for all the arriving pilgrims, Ivar's health would be very, very bad...
Too warm. Walking in Northern Spain in March, I tend to start my days wearing a t-shirt, a thin fleece jacket and a rain jacket, with gloves, scarf and wooly hat. I have never needed an extra layer under my zip-off trousers, while my husband occasionally wears a set of long underwear - the kind...
The list of which albergues are open in the winter will be here: https://www.aprinca.com/alberguesinvierno/. Hotels and hostales will often be open, especially if you pre-book - many owners live in the villages and won't mind making some extra money in the off season.
I quite like getting sellos, but only from places where I actually stopped for a reason. Some of my stranger sellos over the years were not from bars, restaurants, hotels and albergues. Among the odd ones: shoe shop, electronics shop (had to replace my heating coil), police station (picked up...
In a similar situation some years ago, I phoned the ayuntamiento a couple of weeks in advance and asked very, very politely if they knew about anything. We slept indoors that night, in the guest room of a friend of a friend of a friend of the employee I talked to.
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