Camino de Santiago de Compostela

[JeanneA]

Hello again all, thank you for your help so far!
I have another question. My three daughters (all in their 20s) and myself will be walking together. Two of them and I will be walking from SJPP with the third joining us in (S) for the last week of the walk. She will be bringing my 2 year old grandson. I thought that we might either bring our or purchase a charriot along the way for him. He could then walk, run, ride...whatever. Has anyone brought a child or does anyone have any suggestions/recommendations, or experiences they could share that might be of benefit to us? Our family has recently suffered a tragedy and it is important that we do this pilgrimage together.
Thanks for your consideration again.
JeanneA

[sillydoll]

JeanneA - it looks as though nobody else wants to reply to your query!
I think that it would be wonderful for you four 'girls' to walk the last week of your camino together. Imagine that - 3 generations walking to the tomb of St James! I'm sure it won't be a first, but its not all that common.
Having a 2 year-old on the route will present with challenges that need to be thought out before you go. These are the things you'll need to contend with:

1) The difficulty of the terrain which is sharply undulating through fields, forests and across a couple of rivers. I don't think a wheeled chariot or push chair is the answer. One of those sturdy child carriers would be much more practical. You could buy one at any large outdoor store in Spain and post it ahead to Sarria. Address it to yourself as follows:
Leanne A
Lista de Correos
27600 Sarria (Lugo)

2) Walking with the two-year old. There really aren't many places where he could 'ride' alongside you and even on the small roads it would not be safe to do so. Better to take turns to carry the little one in a carrier when he is tired.

3) Accommodation: The albergues (pilgrim refuges) are not the place for a baby. They can be noisy, cramped, no privacy, lights on until 10h30pm or 11pm with exhausted pilgrims who would not take kindly to a crying toddler when they are trying to sleep. Better to plan ahead and pre-book accommodation before you go. I'm sure Ivar can help you with this. With four adults sharing it won't be very expensive.

4) Backpacks: If you stay in hotels or inns you can have your luggage carted from one place to the next - leaving you three girls with small daypacks to carry the essentials - especially the little one!

You could take 7 days to cover the last 100kms and earn a Compostela. The baby won't qualify for one yet as he has not yet taken his first communion, but they will certainly give him the other certificate.

This is obviously important to you so good planning will make it happen!
Buen suerte,

[Anniesantiago]

When I walked in September of.. 07?... we meet a woman with a young child in a stroller. It was one of those sturdy hiking strollers. She carried her gear on the stroller with the child.

I think it's doable, but will present challenges. Lodging is one. Some tough climbs and rough trail are another.

Good luck! Let us know how it goes!

[megi]

My response isn't Camino specific, but when I'm hiking, I quite often see Czech families with very young children in what i assume are the sturdier hiking push-chairs that people are talking about. They are often three wheeled so that they turn more easily. I see people even pretty high up in the hills and a ways from civilization with their kids riding happily along. Obviously the Camino has different challenges, but it certainly seems that the hiking with a push-chair part is possible. Best of luck, and I wish your family peace in healing from your recent tragedy.

[Susanna]

Hi There,
Just noticed your question. There is a story of a couple who took their 2 year old on the Camino in a recent CSJ bulletin ? September 08. I will find the correct one and confirm that.
Regards,
Susanna

[Susanna]

Hi JeanneA,
I found the article it is in the June Edition #102 2008. Robert Sellick wrote the article Martin was the child's name but no mention of Mother's name. It took them 9 weeks and they managed to stay in Albergues mostly. it's a 41/2 page long piece. If you are unable to get it from CSJ I could scan it and send to your regular email.
Regards,
Susanna

[soulmiles]

Jeanne!

it is a wonderful experience for a 2-year old to walk on the Camino! My partner Miriam (miriam.colboc@hotmail.fr) did the entire Camino del Norte with my 2-year old daughter Roma Tsé-Wa. She had purchased an off-road buggy (chariot) made by Kettler, I believe.

I know also of pilgrims who have done the Camino Frances with babies in a sling.

So go do it and let the baby discover!

Be Well & Be Blessed!

[JohnnieWalker]

Last week I met a family with a less than 1 year old. They had adapted a baby seat inside a rucksack so the child could also enjoy the view whilst being carried!

[notion900]

Just bear in mind...
If you are walking for 6 or more hours a day with a small child in a pushchair or baby carrier, that's a long time for a child to be immobile. Sure they can look at things along the way, but is it really fair on them? On a full camino of several weeks I would worry for the child's health in being cooped up so much.
In refuges, a child would need to be on absolute best behaviour to avoid seriously annoying other pilgrims who need their rest. I never saw children in the refuges at all, and think that anyone walking with children would probably need to stay in private accomodation.

[peregrina nicole]

A possible solution might be to do the Camino on by bike rather than on foot and have a tow carriage for the child. When we did the Frances, we met a woman who was doing this with her child. When she had a difficult bit of uphill to do and was struggling with the bike. She pushed the bike uphill and the kid walked.

[Rebekah Scott]

There are a remarkable number of father-son pairs on the camino lately, the boys are usually about 10 years old. All the ones I met were doing just fine, both hikers and bikers. For whatever reason, a preponderance of these are Italian.

We´ve seen a few extended family groups: grandparents and their children and grandchildren, all traveling the camino together. Most have backup vehicles and stay at private accommodation. And a preponderance of them are French.

I´ve not seen many babies or toddlers out there.
REb.

[Salangoney]

I am planning to walk el camino with my 12 yr old son in late October for as long as it takes. Would love to hear from anyone who is going at the same time or has suggestions of places to avoid/ or stay off season.

Deb (Somerset, UK)

[Dynaflow]

Last week I met a family with a less than 1 year old. They had adapted a baby seat inside a rucksack so the child could also enjoy the view whilst being carried!

You may be referring to us. We would have been somewhere between León and O Cebreiro the week before you posted, an American couple with a little blond baby.

My then-girlfriend/now-fiancée and I walked the Camino with her one-year-old son, from Roncesvalles to Santiago, over about five weeks this June and July. While there were certainly challenges in taking the baby along, above and beyond what a typical peregrino would expect to face, we still managed to have an immensely rewarding experience, make friends, keep up with the pack, and generally have a good time -- and that goes for all three of us.

We had a few important factors going in our favor from from the beginning that made the trip (which included not just the Camino itself, but also trans-continental and trans-Atlantic flights and exceptionally long bus rides from and to Madrid at either end) much easier for us than it could have potentially been. The most significant of these was that the baby has a very easygoing, mild, gregarious temperament and was able to graciously tolerate things like the constant changes of scene as we went from albergue to albergue, the incessant and invariably loud attention of rural Spanish women over the age of 60 (especially in Galicia ... hmmm...), and having to spend several hours each day sleeping, sightseeing, or happily babbling to us while strapped into a backpack.

The second and third major factors had to do with how my fiancée had been raising the baby. For the baby's first year, he practically lived on my fiancée's back in an Ergo (http://www.ergobabycarrier.com/), accompanying her when she walked to and from work, school, and everywhere else. He was thus extremely comfortable with being in a backpack for long periods of time (though only when it was actually on somebody's back). You might want to consider using a lighter baby carrier like the Ergo to get a child used to being carried around that way before you take him or her on the Camino.

My fiancée had also practiced Elimination Communication (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elimination_communication) with the baby from the time he was a newborn, which meant that he rarely soiled his diaper along the trail (and if he did, it was usually our fault for misinterpreting or ignoring his signals that he had to go). This eliminated the need for us to carry large quantities of bulky disposable diapers; the two cloth ones we brought for him to wear on the trail (just to be safe) were usually sufficient to deal with any accidents.

Finally, we had in our favor the fact that human adults are naturally predisposed to find babies cute, and smiling, happy babies doubly so. The baby, far from being "not appreciated" by our fellow peregrinos, became kind of a mascot to the others in our cohort along the Camino. He would spend his afternoons and evenings exploring the albergues, playing with us and the other peregrinos (who were not above competing with each other for the baby's attention), and generally having a grand old time being everybody's friend. In fact, more people knew his name than ours: in one town, we accidentally followed an old, faded arrow onto a side street that the Camino had apparently been rerouted away from. Two Korean peregrinas behind us noticed that we had strayed from the correct path and, in order to call our attention to the matter, they shouted the baby's name; they couldn't recall either of ours.

As for equipment, we necessarily had to carry heavier than average loads. After all, we were packed for three and carrying one. My fiancée carried the majority of our stuff in a full-sized women's hiking backpack, while I carried the baby and some of our heavier-but-less-bulky items in a specialized, baby-carrier backpack made by Sherpani (a discontinued predecessor to http://sherpani.us/product.aspx?bO3FscouH=1&GQd0EjaqX=6&pmdoXJC4W=149) that we picked up on clearance from REI -- though if I had it to do over again, I would have spent the extra money and bought a Deuter Kid Comfort II (http://www.deuterusa.com/products/productDetail.php?packID=kidcomfortII&sub=family&tert=family). Our average pack load, child included, for me and my fiancée was somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 kilos apiece, and may have been as heavy as 17 kilos on a few occasions (Sundays in the deep countryside mainly) when we had to haul enough food to feed all three of us for the following day.

To help my occasionally-problematic ankles support the rather excessive weight, I walked the Camino in my heavy-duty, military-issue Corcoran jump boots (http://www.uscav.com/Productinfo.aspx?productID=7615&TabID=1), which ended up performing stunningly well. Those parachute boots left my feet in much better condition at the end of the day than much lighter and springier shoes left the feet of many other peregrinos who were carrying lighter loads. I did have some painful but not catastrophic difficulties with my left knee for the last 120km or so, but I would blame sliding around on the the crumbly, slate-strewn hillside trails of western León and Galicia for that long before I would look to load or footwear. My fiancée, who has the constitution of a Sherpa, alternated between a pair of low-top hiking shoes and a pair of Teva sandals and walked the Camino with nary a problem.

Fortunately, we didn't need to carry heavy jars of baby food or anything like that; the baby was more than happy to eat what we were eating -- in fact, he insisted upon it. His beginner's set of teeth was able to handle tortillas, which he loved, and other soft foods with ease, and we would just chew or mash anything he couldn't handle on his own for him. His mother was also still nursing him; and so any nutritional deficiencies of the local diet; which in some areas seemed to consist solely of white bread, coffee, sugar, and ham; could be made up with breast milk.

Albergues were surprisingly tolerant of letting a baby spend the night; we were only given the "there's no room in the inn" treatment once, by an extremely agitated hospitalero who seemed convinced that a baby would somehow "contaminate" his refugio and refused us a place to sleep for the night, despite protests by other peregrinos who knew us that the child wouldn't be a problem (here's looking at you, Refugio Tradicional de Castrojeriz). Oftentimes, we were even given special consideration at albergues, such as being assigned bunks somewhat separated from where the majority of the peregrinos were to sleep so that, if the baby woke up at night crying (which he did from time to time, usually because he had to pee), he wouldn't disturb anyone else.

Even when we were thrown in with the main group, though, the ten or twenty seconds of the baby's crying before my fiancée or I could get up and rush him to the bathroom to take care of his problem was less disturbing to fellow peregrinos' sleep than the near-constant presence of multiple people whose snores could demolish entire city blocks if suitably concentrated, packaged, and deployed.

In the end, when we made it to Santiago, the Pilgrim's Office was nice enough to put the baby's name into an annotation on our Compostelas, so there's a record of him having done the Camino along with us (does riding on my back for 800km count as traveling to Santiago a caballo?).

We're not sure what sort, if any, of a lasting impression the trip has made on the baby, but he seemed to enjoy himself immensely while we were on the road in Spain. There's only one thing that's odd about him now that we can attribute directly to our walk on the Camino. He was starting language acquisition in earnest at the time we hopped on a plane to wing our way to Spain. Even though we're back in the California now, he still gets very insistent, for example, about wanting a drink of "ag'ga" and likes to call our attention to any four-legged "peh'oh" or "gah'oh" that happens to walk by. It seems that, while my fiancée and I brought home Compostelas and seashells for souvenirs of Spain, the baby brought home Spanish words.

[JohnnieWalker]

Fabulous post - thanks. And it may very well have been you!

[Bridget and Peter]

In refuges, a child would need to be on absolute best behaviour to avoid seriously annoying other pilgrims who need their rest. I never saw children in the refuges at all, and think that anyone walking with children would probably need to stay in private accommodation.

I am uncomfortable with the suggestion that children should, at best, only be tolerated if they are on their 'best behaviour'. This forum is full of examples of people in refuges who annoy other people - by snoring, getting up early and rustling plastic bags, shining torches in sleepers' eyes when they go to the toilet in the middle of the night, insisting on talking boringly about their particular obsessions, traveling in big groups, etc. Usually someone steps into the thread and suggests that a pilgrimage is a good time to learn to get along with all sorts. Why should children not be accorded the same respect and kindness? And their parents who may feel like pariahs reading the above?

Finally, we had in our favor the fact that human adults are naturally predisposed to find babies cute, and smiling, happy babies doubly so. The baby, far from being "not appreciated" by our fellow peregrinos, became kind of a mascot to the others in our cohort along the Camino. He would spend his afternoons and evenings exploring the albergues, playing with us and the other peregrinos (who were not above competing with each other for the baby's attention), and generally having a grand old time being everybody's friend. In fact, more people knew his name than ours: in one town, we accidentally followed an old, faded arrow onto a side street that the Camino had apparently been rerouted away from. Two Korean peregrinas behind us noticed that we had strayed from the correct path and, in order to call our attention to the matter, they shouted the baby's name; they couldn't recall either of ours.

I am delighted to hear that your experience was quite different! Also intrigued by Elimination Communication which I will be sharing with my daughters and daughter-in-law - who are already heavily into attachment parenting, breast-feeding and so forth - in my day we did all this but had to fend off suggestions that we were 'spoiling' them - recent research into the chemistry of the brain suggests quite the opposite!

Sorry to go off thread - to return to the thread - babies and children traveling the Camino with parents who are well tuned into their needs will benefit enormously from the experience and I for one would be ashamed if us older pilgrims spoilt it for them.

[Dynaflow]

Just to visually show what we did:


Here we are with 100km to go.


This shows the layout of the babypack fairly well (this was taken in Pamplona).


Here we see the Little Guy enjoying himself on a hiking break on the trail somewhere between Pamplona and Obanos ...


...with the hospitaleros at Nájera...


...and with a group of what I think were Scouts of some sort at the albergue at Monte de Goza.


For the typical sunny, summertime weather we encountered on most of the route, we made sure to put a hat on the baby so he didn't get sunburned. If the morning was cold, we would put a sweater or his fleece jacket on him and then switch it out later for his t-shirt once the day got warmer, as it almost invariably did.

The toy was a gift from a hospitalera in Zubiri. We tied it to one end of a cord and tied the other end of the cord to the frame of the backpack. That prevented the toy from disappearing behind us forever when the baby tired of playing with it and, as babies will do, tossed it over the side. The baby also used the cord for a fun game he invented, using it to whip the toy at my head like a flail, all the while laughing maniacally.


For exceptionally cold mornings (this was coming down from O Cebreiro) we swaddled the baby in a sleeping bag before putting him in the pack.


For rain, we improvised an arrangement with a couple of ponchos that kept both baby and backpack dry (this was taken while we were waiting for the Pilgrim's Office in Santiago to open for the morning). It's hard to see in this picture, but we are using the sun hat to keep the hood of the baby's poncho solidly on his head, which prevented water from dripping down his neck from the higher parts of the pack.

[KiwiNomad06]

What wonderful photos you have shared, and what a wonderful account of how you walked with your baby.
I met a couple of families in France walking with their children for a week or so, some carrying all their gear and some car-supported so they didn't need to carry much. And I met several families with older children/teens walking from Leon onwards. But I only met one couple with a baby, and sadly they gave up in Estella. There had been quite a bit of rain, and the father had gained a sore back carrying all the gear plus many nappies. I am sure that your account of how you managed the whole situation to walk with your baby will be very useful reference for others thinking of doing the same.
Margaret

[JohnnieWalker]

'Twas indeed you! we met in the Pilgrims Office where I gave yo uthe name of the priest in the Cathedral to talk to in answer to your enquiry.

Nice to meet you again and wonderful photographs.

[Dynaflow]

'Twas indeed you! we met in the Pilgrims Office where I gave yo uthe name of the priest in the Cathedral to talk to in answer to your enquiry.

Nice to meet you again and wonderful photographs.

Ah, I had a feeling you might be the Scottish gentleman with whom we spoke. It's nice to meet you again too, and thank you for your help that morning in the Pilgrim's Office.

Unfortunately, we were not able to accomplish that other mission while we were in Santiago. The priest you recommended sent us to another, apparently higher-ranking priest, who told us that we could not get the baby baptized at the Catedral without presenting some kind of documentation, the Spanish name of which we didn't understand. The priest suggested that we call our home parish in the United States and have them fax this mysterious, lost-in-translation document to him -- even though it would have been the middle of the night on the US west coast.

It wasn't until after we had left Santiago that I realized what he was probably asking for was the Spanish functional equivalent of a copy of the baby's state birth certificate, which we had with us but didn't think to pull out at the time. That small disappointment couldn't mar our sense of accomplishment at having completed the Camino, though, and we left Santiago quite happy.

[JohnnieWalker]

Good to meet you again!

I suspect what they were looking for was a copy of the parents' baptism certificate - an almost impossible request given the timing and distances involved.

I well remember your arrival in Santiago and I'm glad to encounter you again. I think your advice will be of great value to other people who are put off taking younger children on pilgrimage. Everything is possible and the people I have spoken to who have done this relay similar stories of albergues generally being welcoming and other pilgrims being accommodating.

Best wishes

John

[Rebekah Scott]

this thread wins the "Most Delightful Photos" prize for the week. So says Me.

This is one lucky baby, to be blessed with such caring and thoughtful parents.

Reb.

[skilsaw]

A beautiful account and photos showing it can be done.

I tried a holiday of day-hiking in the Canadian Rockies when my son was 11 months old. He didn't agree with riding in the kiddy carrier for 4 or 5 hours per day. We abandoned the holiday after 3 miserable hikes and sleepless nights in our two man tent. I just didn't have the karma for it.
David, Victoria, Canada

[Anniesantiago]

Great photos and post! Thanks!