I should have been on the camino today – with a group of friends. Needless to say, we’re not.
Last year I told my local hiking club that I wasn’t going to take a group on the camino again, so if they wanted to come, they had to book it all themselves individually. Which they did.
When we couldn’t go, we decided to postpone to next year. And if we can’t go next year, we’ll postpone again to the following year.
Places like Orisson, Roncesvalles, and two other places that we’d prepaid, happily changed our dates. We cancelled all our other bookings for this year.
But things have now changed.
Some places are converting their small dorms to “family rooms”, and I could foresee that solo pilgrims might have a problem pre-booking anything other than a private room.
So, in some places I’ve booked those “family rooms”; in other places I’ve booked complete dormitories; and in a couple of places I’ve booked the entire small private albergue for my group only.
All these places have been delighted to do these “block” bookings for me for next year. It’s NOT what I wanted to do, but it’s better for the albergues this way.
My hiking buddies are also happy that they don’t have to do all their own bookings themselves again.
So, yeah, we’re all booked, and just hoping that our country will let us out in 10 months time . . .