THE END - Takeaway and Reflections

This is my last blogpost to reflect on this journey, what I learnt in this past week and what I can recommend to others thinking about doing a Cammino.

This is the map of the whole Cammino.

Let's get started. 

Let's start by evaulating the expectations I had in the beginning and my goals. 

Evaulation of my expectations and goals

Firstly, I expected a great deal of pain, and I did have a great deal of pain 😄 mostly in my feet and in my legs, and on the last day in my shoulder. 

I expected multiple blisters, and I do have around 8 blisters now, two of them cover basically 20% of my feet (but are not painful anymore). 

However, I did not get lost once!!! I'm very proud. This is due to the amazing AllTrails app though, if I had been just following the trail signs I would have most definitely got lost. I met multiple people during the past week as hoped, but a lot younger than I had expected. From what I had heard about the Camino, I expected a lot of pensioners. However, I didn't meet any. As for my Italian, I think it got better, I was told I have a natural pronounciation in Italian, so I'll might develop my language skill further. 

Takeaways and Observations

As this Camino is very young (only 5 years old), it is not well known, even among locals (none of the local people I talked with knew about the Camino). This is something I personally loved because it makes the Camino very authentic. For this reason I feel like I really came out of my comfort zone in many ways, whether that's solving problems on my own or communicating with locals who speak no English and using only hand gestures and Italian to ask something. I feel that I 100% became more independent because of this. I also loved that despite many parts of the world nowadays (like South East Asia) where everything is built for tourists, this really was a hidden gem that's still undiscovered. However, because of this if you do the Cammino Materano, you will be alone a lot, and will have to do things on your own. If this makes you uncomfortable, then maybe a more visited Camino is a better choice. 

It's interesting that this trip improved so many skills in depths I had not expected. As I said, my independence, but also problem solving skills and thinking under pressure. Half of the days I had to walk quickly to get to the next town before the thunderstorms and had to navigate while being nervous. I had challenges like meeting wild aggresive dogs or being left alone in a middle of a field in a thunderstorm where I had to quickly come up with a solution to get to safety. Communication skills, I am now more confident in communicating with strangers in general, asking for help and make myself understood with language barriers. And finally resilience and adaptability. There were two days in particular, day 2 and day 3 when I questioned the purpose of the Camino and had to push myself to keep going. Had to adapt to the pain in my feet, the weight of my backpack, the hunger and the thirst. This experience made me feel like I can do anything I set my mind to, and nothing can stand in my way, which is an incredible feeling. 

Another observation as a solo female traveller is that Italian men flirt and check you out a lot. I never felt unsafe because of this but is something to keep in mind when planning a solo Camino here as a female. 

One more thing I noticed was how much joy I find now in everyday things that I had taken for granted before. When walking, the most basic life things like being able to sit down, drink water, find shelter, or being able to sleep felt like the most special things on Earth. It was nice to get some perspective about how lucky most of us are to be able to get access to these things easily. 

Recommendations 

As for recommendations, I think anyone could do a Cammino. I did zero training apart from cycling at home regularly to get around places. But you need to keep being resilient and not give up after a hard day or when your whole body aches. You need to be a bit crazy to do a Cammino really 😄 (some of my friends don't understand why I voluntarily did this to myself). 

This Cammino was one of the biggest adventures of my life and it taught me even more than I had expected. Thank you for following my blog and I hope you enjoyed reading it. 

If you, kind reader, have any questions or want advice or just want to talk to me about your favourite animal send me a message on Instagram: sara.chilton 

or my email: ch.sarah97@gmail.com

Over and Out. 

Sara 🪷