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Walking path condition in May

John wong

New Member
Time of past OR future Camino
2018
Hi,
For those of you who walked the Primitivo last May, how was the condition of the walking paths? Was it muddy, dry, impassable in some areas, etc.?
My group will be walking the Primitivo in May 2019. One person who lives in Barcelona had been hearing about that it’d been raining a lot in Northern Spain in May 2018 and he was concerned about muddy and impassable paths.
He also asked whether it would be better to follow the highway in such conditions. Is there an alternative route following the freeway?
 
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We walked starting Middle of May for two weeks. It was fine. There was nothing impassable. There are some areas that are always muddy around Tineo but nothing that my boots and gaiters couldn't handle. It's an easy trail to walk. Just make sure you carry water as many sections don't have fountains for very long stretches. You will have make the call as to weather when you are.
 
@John wong, welcome to the forum. This is a really great source of all sorts of information about the caminos. Members have a real depth of knowledge of all the routes. The one thing they don't have is prescience. May 2018 was very wet in some parts of Spain, unusually wet which is probably why your friend heard about it. The media rarely reports that "everything is about average for the time of year". As @alaskadiver has said, some bits of the Primitivo get muddy in the wet. From my own experience some bits get very muddy; but not impassable. Or at least not impassable without some care & attention and some mud to clean off your boots later on. May 2019? Who knows?

Are there alternative road-side routes? Yes. Local roads parallel the camino with remarkable coincidence but unless you are determined to keep your boots clean at the expense of dodging traffic you might want to follow the way-marked paths. As recent posts have reminded us: "Dust, mud, sun and rain is the Camino de Santiago". Who would have it different.
 
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Nothing close to impassable this past May. Some areas you’d need to walk along the side ....
 
Nothing close to impassable this past May. Some areas you’d need to walk along the side ....

Depends how you define impassable (and yes I was wearing trail runners not boots)

From La Espina the track was very wet and very muddy - heavy rain plus churned up by livestock and 4x4s - in the worst stretches you were hemmed in by uneven stone walls / barbed wire on the left and earth banks / branches on the right

Having endured this on-and-off for some 8km I decided to find a path down to the left that got to the main road some 3km before Tineo - fortunately there then was a footpath / cycle path all the way into Tineo

But I should say that I wouldn't have enjoyed walking on the main road prior to that as there were lots of lorries
 
Hi,
For those of you who walked the Primitivo last May, how was the condition of the walking paths? Was it muddy, dry, impassable in some areas, etc.?
My group will be walking the Primitivo in May 2019. One person who lives in Barcelona had been hearing about that it’d been raining a lot in Northern Spain in May 2018 and he was concerned about muddy and impassable paths.
He also asked whether it would be better to follow the highway in such conditions. Is there an alternative route following the freeway?
Hi John,
I walked the Primitivo the first week of July 2018. There were sections even then that were very muddy. I was wearing runners as this was my fourth camino and had no problem on previous caminos with mud. On the Primitivo I remember one particularly bad section and other sections that were muddy enough as well. The weather then was dry but there are sections which are quite shaded and hence it takes quit a while for them to dry out. There was agricultural activity-tractors and cows being herded as well which added to the mud. Bon Camino.
John.
 
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