Lately, I’ve been remembering back to one day of my solo journey in August of 2024 on the Camino. I started that trip in Porto, Portugal and covered 158 miles in 14 days in order to reach the Cathedral in Santiago, Spain.

On my third day, with the goal of walking 16-miles of that Portuguese Coastal Path, I was starting to feel weary from walking alone and the stress of getting lost. I wasn’t terribly lost, I just couldn’t find the way to my lodging in the village of Fao; the signs weren’t in plain view. A man, who’d just finished mowing his lawn, had mercy on me and helped me figure out how to get to my lodging that was just blocks away. The neighborhood had been like a maze and I was challenged by my ‘directional confusion’.

That night when I fell into bed, I realized I was feeling emotionally and mentally exhausted from having to do everything by myself. I prayed for God to provide a walking partner the next day. It would be another 16 miles and it would help to have someone beside me.

The next morning, refreshed and ready to go, I climbed the steps to a pedestrian bridge over the river. A young woman, maybe late twenties, with a wrap on her right knee, was ahead of me. When I caught up to her, we spoke and I slowed down to walk beside her.

“You go ahead,” she said. “I’m really slow.”

“That’s okay,” I responded. “I’m fine to go more slowly. After my day walking alone yesterday, it would be nice to have company.”

She told me her name was Franzi. She spoke great English and I was grateful. She was a lawyer from Berlin. We walked a steady pace on the path by the shore until it started to rain. We found a cafe and sat under the umbrellas, enjoying the ocean breeze and talking about our lives. Soon we got to the challenges of dating–and even at very different ages, we shared a lot of the same past experiences.

When the rain stopped, we continued on with frequent rest breaks. Franzi explained that it wasn’t her knee that was giving her trouble, rather blisters on her feet. While she was a runner and used to vigorous exercise, she felt the weight of the backpack pushing down on her feet in the boots had led to the problem.

We walked through the villages and she stopped as often as me to admire the flowers. During the heat of the afternoon, we saw a sign for a Pilgrim’s Cafe and stopped in to get escape the sun and rest in the cave-like coolness. We were welcomed by the owner, David who wore a Vietnam Veteran shirt he’d been given by a pilgrim. In fact, the entire cafe was covered with pennants, flags, all kinds of gifts he’d been given from those walking the Camino. Not only did he bring us the soft drinks we ordered, but a plate of “biscuits” or cookies, orange marmalade, and peanuts. Later, he brought us a bottle of wine and two glasses and said, “Drink.”

How touched we were by his kindness, by his hospitality toward pilgrims.

We walked out of the village and up into the hills, grateful for the shade of the forest. Eventually, Franzi said she didn’t think she could walk much further. Her blisters were growing more painful with every mile. We came upon a beautiful stream and stopped to rest.

“I have to get my feet into that cold water,” she told me.

She took off her boots and then her socks. I couldn’t believe all the blisters. How had she been able to walk so far?

I joined her, ready to relax my feet in that cold stream. How peaceful it was to just sit and watch the flow of the stream. If I’d been walking by myself, I wouldn’t have taken the time to do that, pushing on to get to my lodging before dark.

Fortunately, I’d packed medical tape and gauze and she was able to bandage her feet and switch into her hiking sandals. We hiked into the next village where we spotted a bus pulling away from the market. The clerk told us there was one remaining bus that day. We caught it and breezed down the road past the miles we would have had to walk–probably 8 of the 16.

She apologized for keeping me from experiencing the portions of the Camino I’d missed. But I was grateful for the time I’d had getting to know my new friend from Germany and being present to the riches along our path: conversation over coffee, leisurely lunch in the Pilgrim’s Cafe, stopping to look at the flowers, sitting by the stream in the heat of the afternoon. I wasn’t pushed to keep a schedule so I could be present, enjoying the moment.

That was an important day worth remembering.

Wishing you the best as you savor the moments,

Connie