Apologies for the awkwardly-worded title. I’m not sure how best to articulate my question. I was watching a recently uploaded YouTube video series by a guy walking solo along the Camino Francis. He was about two weeks into the walk, and was sharing with the viewers some of the experiences he had been having recently. He commented that he’s walking slower than most, as he’s taking a lot of photos and video. As a result, the people that he had started walking with and had made friends with at the beginning of the Camino were several days ahead of him now. He said that the people he’s meeting now are in their own little groups or cliques that they formed at the beginning of the Camino, and they tend to stick together, leaving him feeling like an outsider. He seemed quite frustrated at that moment and said it was “like f’ing high school”.
Question - is there value in adjusting your walking schedule to ensure you stick with the same basic group you started with? I appreciate there are too many variables involved to answer that question, but I guess I’m wondering if any others had experienced something similar to what I described above.
P.S. the frustration the guy was feeling seemed short-lived, and he was fine after that. He may have just been having a bad day and was over-stating the issue. But humans being human, it’s certainly behaviour I’ve seen in many other circumstances - a group of strangers thrown together form their own small groups, and they can be somewhat exclusive. So it’s not inconceivable that what this guy experienced is a common phenomenon.