Leadell
Canadian Company of PIlgrims
- Time of past OR future Camino
- Via Francigena (planned, 2023)
We recently finished walking the Camino Invierno. It is a beautiful route, though some of its stages are long and difficult. In order to make one long day into two shorter ones, we deviated from the established route from Monforte to Chantada and stayed in Escairon instead. This broke a 31km day with no intermediate stops into two stages of 19 and 15 km, which is much more doable for us. The route was straightforward but not marked at all. Escairon is a lovely little town with lots of services and it deserves to have a camino going through it. However, on the alternative route we took out of Escairon to Madredagua , we saw at least 12-15 large dogs, some in groups of 2 or 3, all of them loose, over the course of about 5 kilometres. All of those dogs came out onto the road and barked at us, sometimes surrounding us. One was particularly menacing and followed us closely, barking loudly, over about 250 meters. During all this time we did not see any people in the villages and farms where these dogs were loose. We found it very frightening. We have walked many caminos in Spain and have encountered many dogs. In general they are chained or fenced; if they are not, they usually bark but don’t leave their property. I think most dogs along the camino are used to seeing pilgrims walking past. This was not the case for this 5k stretch. For this reason I would find it hard to recommend the detour to Escairon, even though the route is very beautiful. I would only walk that way again if I was with a large group! I don’t know what the solution is, but it probably involves education of both pilgrims (what to do when you encounter a dog that menaces you) and dog owners.
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. As you can likely tell from my posts, typing on my iPad is hit or miss 
! And I have read the forum guide so many times. Should have known you covered it 
