I awoke early in the crazy ghost-town Albergue keen to get the hell out of there.

I quickly got my things together and almost ran downstairs, right into the ‘eccentric’ Albergue owner.

For all his craziness I must admit that he was very kind that morning and forced me to take some apples with me.

With an armful of fruit I headed back onto the Camino de Santiago.

It was an extremely dark morning. It was one of those moonless nights that make you picture murder movies.

Since I was leaving from a town with only one small albergue I was completely alone… And every rustle I heard in the bushes next to the badly marked trail made me picture my own murder along the Camino.

I managed to make it to the big town of Santo Domingo de la Calzada alive and celebrated with coffee and (another) spanish omelette before joining the much busier path onwards.

There were many people in front of me leaving town but about an hour later I realised I was completely alone… And hadn’t seen another person or a yellow arrow for far too long.

I turned around – no one.

I was lost.

Getting lost on the Camino de Santiago is actually a pretty hard thing to do. Unless you are foolish like me and leave at ungodly hours of the morning with only a small crappy bicycle torch to guide the way.

I started crying and retracing my steps. Eventually finding my way back to other backpack carrying, hiking-pole bearing pilgrims. I had never been so happy to see so many lame-looking hikers before (no offence to the lame looks – I was committing a number of fashion crimes myself).

Now that I was back with ‘my people’ I could relax and enjoy the days walk.

The weather was much nicer than yesterdays misty sky misery but unfortunately most of the day’s route followed a busy highway, (every now and again diverting off through dead fields of sunflowers).

After another long day on the trail and keen to spend the night in a bigger town than the creepy ghost town the night before I ended my day’s walk in the beautiful town of Belorada where I started asking around to see if any beds were available.

Once again I found myself in a very ‘full’ town and it took some sweet talking of a lovely lady at one of the last allergies to convince her to let me sleep on a mattress on the floor of one of the rooms.

Stoked with my mattress situation I washed up annd headed downstairs.

Before I headed out I got talking to a couple of people in my Albergue. First there was Hans from Sweden. He was a lovely man who I just wanted to give a big hug (even before he told me he was a ‘hugger’) who had formed a small group with a bunch of other solo pilgrims and then there was a lovely Canadian lady who was hiking the Camino de Santiago with her son but unfortunately having some serious foot trouble.

Talking to them both made me realise that the Camino de Santiago must be a very different experience for those sharing it with someone they know from back home or people they connect with on the trail. It made me kind of melancholy as a solo pilgrim and I wondered if I would find ‘my people’.

I ate my picnic dinner alone in the towns square. As nice as it would be to be sharing this experience with others I realised there was also something wonderful about being able to spend so much time alone and think about things that usually I did not have time to even question in day to day life. I was learning a lot about myself and in a world where it is easy to be conditioned to dislike so much about yourself I was finally starting to appreciate some qualities about myself that I had never appreciated before… Because I had now walked over 240km all by myself and I was starting to feel awfully proud.