Camino Blocktober: Where are we now?
By Lala Steyn and Dawie Bosch.
From 1 October, we are walking the Camino Primitivo from Oviedo to Santiago de Compostela as our Blocktober Camino — carrying the Blocktober message of movement, connection, conversation and solidarity with survivors of gender-based violence.
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| Walking the Camino |
This page is our running Camino diary. We plan to update it when we have time with where we are, how far we have walked, and possibly a few photographs and impressions from the road — including the people we meet and any connections we make with organisations working against gender-based violence in Asturias and Galicia.
Our latest update will always appear at the top, so you can quickly see where we are now. Earlier days will follow underneath as we make our way towards Santiago.
So, if you would like to follow our progress, bookmark this page and check back regularly.
Our progress:
17 October – Arzúa towards Santa Irene (walking 19 km)
We began the morning at Fogar de Lecer, where we interviewed Paula Tapia García, one of the owners and a woman entrepreneur. She spoke about her experience of building a hospitality business, the challenges women face, and offered a message of encouragement to survivors of gender-based violence: “You are capable of this — and much more.”
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| Paula García spoke of enterprise, resilience and hope |
The short Blocktober video below introduces her story, with a fuller blog to follow:
Today's walk to Santa Irene was shorter than some of our earlier stages, and a welcome opportunity to enjoy the countryside at a gentler pace. Despite the greater numbers of pilgrims on the Camino Francés, we found the walking pleasant, much of it on shaded paths away from tarmac roads, through rural Galician scenery. It was a welcome contrast with some of the hard-surfaced and more tiring stages behind us.
At lunch we enjoyed local Arzúa-Ulloa cheese and met Lee, a Filipino now living in Barcelona. The conversation ranged widely. He has lived and worked in Spain for three years and spoke about the pain of encountering barriers and prejudice as a migrant, whether deliberate or unconscious.
We discussed the prosecution of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. This brought to mind the unrest in South Africa following Jacob Zuma’s imprisonment. Lee suggested that holding the proceedings outside the Philippines probably helped reduce the risk of similar unrest there. We also spoke about housing and political tensions in Spain.
We learned about Santa Irene’s small historic chapel and a spring traditionally associated with soothing pilgrims’ feet — an appealing thought after more than two weeks on the Camino.
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| Supper at the lovely Albergue Santa Irene. |
That evening at Albergue Santa Irene, we shared a table with pilgrims from different parts of the world, each with their own reasons for walking. Anne-Marie, an older French pilgrim on her twenty-ninth day, valued the chance to meet people, enjoy nature and have an adventure. Peter, from Denmark, had walked for 34 days and still looked remarkably strong. One of the young women from California, on her fourth Camino but walking only a weekend section this time, introduced us to her Spanish friend Jaime, who was on his first. She spoke of the freedom the Camino gives her, took a keen interest in Blocktober and asked for a card.
16 October – Melide to Arzúa (walking 15 km)
We set off from Melide on a cool, sunny morning after a breakfast of coffee, yoghurt, gluten-free muesli and fresh orange juice. The Camino Francés was now noticeably busier than the Primitivo, with more walkers and cyclists and people from many countries.
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| Dawie treating Manuel's blisters. |
After we started our walk, we met cyclists from Ecuador and Venezuela, who teased us that they expected to reach Santiago today while we would take three days.
We stopped to admire and film an especially large Galician hórreo, one of the long, narrow raised granaries traditionally used to dry and store crops while keeping rodents out. We compared it with the broader, more square-shaped hórreos we had seen in Asturias. We recorded a short explainer, see video below:
Galicia’s raised granaries preserve harvests and tradition.
We passed Castañeda, historically associated with lime kilns where blocks of limestone carried by medieval pilgrims for more than 100 km from Triacastela were burnt to produce lime for the construction of Santiago Cathedral, and then reached Ribadiso. There we saw the twelfth-century stone bridge and the former pilgrim hospital — a reminder that the infrastructure of the Camino has been serving travellers for centuries.
We walked on to Arzúa and our accommodation at Fogar de Lecer. We tried scallops for the first time — the shell that has become the symbol of the Camino — and found them delicious and beautifully prepared.
15 October – Palas de Rei to Melide (walking 16 km)
[Photo selections for 15 October:; (2) one of our fungus/mushroom photographs taken along the Camino.]
Early in the morning we received disappointing news from Ralf Jürgens, human rights activist, that he had developed a high fever and had to cancel our visit. We had arranged to meet at Do Picho near Palas de Rei. Do Picho’s work connects art with wider human rights concerns, including addressing LGBTQI issues. We wished him a speedy recovery and hoped to speak virtually once he was well.
We had made the diversion from Melide back to Palas de Rei for this meeting. Illness and changed plans are part of life — and the Camino. We set out on foot towards Melide, turning the disappointment into an opportunity to cover some of the distance we had missed after the Los Hospitales mountain crossing.
It was striking to retrace on foot a journey that the bus had covered in about half an hour the evening before. Walking the roughly 16 km took several hours. That contrast between modern speed and the slower experience of travelling on foot brought us back to the history and meaning of pilgrimage.
The growth of the Camino is astonishing. Around 650 pilgrims received Compostelas — the official certificates awarded in Santiago to pilgrims who complete the pilgrimage requirements — in 1985, compared with more than half a million in 2025. The Primitivo represents only a small fraction of today's pilgrim traffic. We will post a blog of our reflection, “An ancient path, a modern journey”, with more about Camino history.
At Melide the Camino Primitivo joins the much busier Camino Francés. The difference was immediately apparent: where our Primitivo stages could be quiet, we could now look around and would often see a dozen other pilgrims at once.
As the Camino del Norte joins further ahead, the flow towards Santiago will grow.
Along the way we kept crossing paths with four women pilgrims from the Philippines. When we stopped to chat, they asked where we were from, and our Blocktober T-shirts soon became the subject of conversation. We explained why we were walking and what Blocktober is about. They were enthusiastic and encouraging, and we exchanged information so they could find out more.
Along the way, we passed a beautiful, simple house that served as the office of a women’s co-operative producing herbal preparations and natural oils. We hoped to pop in, but there was nobody around. A large, friendly dog was keeping watch. A postwoman arrived, equipped with a clever little trick: she carried dog biscuits on her rounds. Between our limited Spanish and her explanation, we gathered that the treats helped her befriend the dogs she met along the way. Rather than barking or threatening to bite, they greeted her with enthusiasm. A small, delightful example of a practical approach.
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“If people stuck together like bees do…” — beekeeper Isidro Pardo. |
As we approached Melide, we came across a magnificent mural of the Galician beekeeper Isidro Pardo Varela. It carried a message that spoke directly to the spirit of our Blocktober walk: “I'd like to make a human hive; if people stuck together like bees do, the world would be a better place.” After the disappointment of our cancelled meeting, his words were a moving reminder of the strength we can find in solidarity and looking after one another.
14 October – O Burgo de Negral to Melide (walking 26 km)
This was a long, hot walking day — not especially difficult terrain, but a real slog. We began in beautiful mist; later the sun came out and it became very hot. Much of the route was on hard surfaces, including small roads, and our aching knees increasingly reminded us of every kilometre. The day's theme was resilience: on some days life feels wonderful; on others you simply have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
One quiet, meaningful moment came at a beautiful river, where we left stones for family members who are unwell, with wishes for their recovery.
We kept enjoying the apples and walnuts on the way, while Lala longed for a tortilla. We eventually found one after roughly 22 km.
We were heading to Melide so that we could take a bus back, against the direction of the Camino Francés, to Palas de Rei. We had arranged to meet Ralf Jürgens at Do Picho on the 15th and planned to walk the section back towards Melide the following day. This diversion would also help make up some of the distance we had missed after heavy rain and knee pain earlier in the Camino.
At Melide the bus stop was poorly marked, although Google Maps led us to the right place. A friendly local man, waiting across the street in the shade, confirmed the stop and chatted to us. He advised us to watch an older man sitting across the road: when that man stood up, the bus would be arriving. It worked exactly as he said. The man's local knowledge and generosity were a welcome reward after a tiring day. We arrived in Palas de Rei exhausted, found a small restaurant serving a delicious gluten-free pasta meal with homemade ice cream, and collapsed into bed, ready for the planned interview the next morning.
13 October – Lugo to O Burgo de Negral (walking 25 km)
We stayed two full days in Lugo since the 13th was the first day we could meet Aliad-Ultreia, a local NGO working with women affected by gender-based violence, trafficking and sexual exploitation. We met Paula Castro Meilán, a young psychologist whose warmth immediately set the tone, and Bernadine from the Saartjie Baartman Centre joined us from Cape Town by video.
What struck us most were the similarities across very different contexts. We spoke about machismo and toxic masculinity; the links between gender-based violence, drugs and alcohol; and the way substances can also become a means of coping with the consequences of abuse. She explained their experiences of prostitution, sexual exploitation and trafficking, including the vulnerability of migrant women from Latin America.
Aliad-Ultreia is much smaller than the Saartjie Baartman Centre and has a more limited accommodation component, but the underlying challenges and much of the support work felt remarkably familiar.
Bernadine described how the relationship between Blocktober and the Saartjie Baartman Centre developed organically, and how much survivors and staff value walking on Table Mountain, being in nature and SISSA’s community-based OptiFit exercise programme. Paula was particularly interested in that physical dimension of recovery.
Aliad-Ultreia already takes a holistic body-and-mind approach, including therapeutic yoga, but for her the conversation opened up ideas about possibly adding walking, nature and exercise to that work.
We left with a strong sense of solidarity: different countries and different scales of organisation, but many of the same problems, values and possibilities for learning from one another.
After the meeting we left Lugo for the roughly 25 km walk to O Burgo de Negral. Much of the first 15 km was on hard surfaces — not steep, but tiring on knees, ankles and joints. Reaching a forest track later in the day felt like a relief and a return to the kind of Camino walking we enjoy most.
At O Lar do Alecrín that evening we met three Colombians — Daniel and Adriana, the parents, and Gabriel. Daniel and Adriana are both recently retired pilots, and we had a wide-ranging conversation about walking the Camino and many other things. They spoke very critically about recent changes in Colombian politics and about their experience of the previous president, which prompted us to reflect on some of our own experiences during the Zuma years in South Africa. It was another example of how the Camino opens space for conversations that move quickly from the personal to the political.
We will add a link to our article with more about the Aliad-Ultreia meeting and our videos about our interview with Paula.
11–12 October – two days in Lugo (walking 21 km in the city)
Arriving in Lugo over the weekend meant waiting until Tuesday for our meeting with the local women's organisation. The delay gave us time to rest and explore the city. It was already a time to rest, and we could experience the San Froilán festivities and explore a city in which layers of history sit unusually close together.
The great physical presence is the Roman wall. We walked the circuit of about 2.1 km around the old city. What makes Lugo so remarkable is that the wall still forms a complete enclosure, unlike so many old walled cities where sections were breached, demolished or reused once the fortifications were no longer needed. Yet it did not survive untouched. Our reading about the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century conflicts around Lugo took us into struggles against the bishop and the church-linked feudal order. For us it was striking to think that these challenges to feudal power came centuries before the broader dismantling of the feudal system that had kept many people in conditions of servitude.
Inside the walls, Lugo Cathedral left a very different impression. We were overwhelmed by the sheer richness and ornamentation: carved walnut, marble, paintings and religious objects in gold and silver, with rubies, diamonds and other precious materials. This made us reflect on the immense wealth and power accumulated by the Catholic Church over centuries. The audio guide assumed quite a lot of knowledge of Catholic traditions and architectural terminology. At the same time, we noticed many visitors praying and lighting candles, a reminder that this is not simply a historical monument but remains a living place of faith.
San Froilán brought another side of Lugo to life. We watched a medieval-style parade and traditional dancing, with the old city becoming a stage for music, costume and public celebration.
We also met the Welsh couple again for supper. They asked about our Blocktober T-shirts, which led to a long conversation about Blocktober and the Saartjie Baartman Centre. We found a great deal of common ground in our values and outlook. As another unexpected South African connection, all three of their children will be travelling to South Africa in March for a cousin’s wedding.
Our accommodation produced a different kind of reflection. We had booked via Airbnb a room in someone’s apartment partly because we hoped it might give us a more personal connection with a local resident. In practice, our host kept very much to herself and we hardly got to know her at all. It was the one place on this Camino where we stayed in somebody’s home but did not feel the warmth we had encountered so often in pilgrim accommodation — an interesting reminder that staying in a private home does not necessarily create connection.
10 October – Vilar de Cas to Lugo 19km
We walked about 16 km from Vilar de Cas to Lugo. Before leaving A Pociña de Muñiz, we recorded a short video interview with José, the owner, who told us how the family opened the albergue in 2018 by converting a long-abandoned ruin beside the family home, with the help of an architect cousin and the artistic eye of José’s wife. His father remembered the building as a ruin from his own childhood, and José’s research established that it had stood derelict for about a century. He also discovered that it had once been the village blacksmith’s forge. The result is a beautiful albergue that has helped make Vilar de Cas a stopping point in its own right, rather than somewhere pilgrims simply pass through on the way to Lugo.
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| An emotional moment, asking for protection. |
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| Sharing chainsaw art with the artist. |
Later we stopped at El Descanso del Peregrino, where a local artist had turned fallen trees into carved sculptures and seats. We were offered coffee and freshly cut melon and watermelon, left a donation and were given Camino shells. The artist also asked for a photograph for Facebook, which meant Blocktober unexpectedly appeared on a local Galician Facebook page before we continued into Lugo.
9 October – O Cádavo to Vilar de Cas 17km
We deliberately split the long O Cádavo–Lugo stage, walking about 15 km to Vilar de Cas. We chose the longer Vilabade branch, passing the historic church of Santa María de Vilabade before continuing through Castroverde.
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| A local connection to Spain’s women’s right to vote. |
In Castroverde we came across a monument to Manuel Cordero Pérez, a socialist politician and trade unionist who worked alongside Clara Campoamor in support of women’s voting rights in 1931. Opposition came from various quarters, including some progressives who feared how women might vote. From a South African perspective the timing was striking: it was another 63 years before all adult South Africans could vote together in 1994.
At A Pociña de Muñiz we met two Mexican pilgrims, and the conversation ranged from the freedom of walking without advance bookings to Mexico’s relationship with Spain, Indigenous peoples and who benefited from local mining. It was another reminder of how quickly Camino conversations can move from practicalities to history and identity.
That evening fourteen of us sat around one table for a wonderful communal meal. A Welsh couple spoke about the slow food movement and regenerative farming, avoiding supermarkets in favour of local produce, weekly food boxes, and producer co-operatives that can give small farmers a fairer share of the final price. They pointed out symbols they recognised from Wales and possible cultural or language connections with Galicia; looking at the map, we found ourselves wondering whether this was because of the old Atlantic links from a time when travel by sea was often easier than travel over land.
8 October – A Fonsagrada to O Cádavo 26km
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| Parts of a dolman, over 4000 years old. |
Along the way were more layers of Camino history and landscape: Santiago da Fontaneira, the hill at A Pasada and Campo da Matanza — literally the “Field of Slaughter”. Our research turned up two very different explanations for the name. Local history tells of African soldiers being slaughtered there during an Islamic incursion, while historians trace the name instead to a slaughter in Roman times.
7 October – Grandas de Salime to A Fonsagrada 27km
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| Galicia welcomes us with rain as we cross the Asturias–Galicia border. |
We left Grandas de Salime for A Fonsagrada on a long stage that carried us out of Asturias and into Galicia. Along the way we stopped at the small Ermita de San Lázaro de Padraira, a seventeenth-century chapel on the site of an old pilgrim leper hospital — another reminder of the systems of care that grew up around the Camino.
Crossing the Asturias–Galicia border was a milestone, although Galicia welcomed us with heavy rain. Almost immediately we began noticing a striking difference in how the Camino itself was maintained. On the Galician side there appeared to be much more deliberate attention to drainage and protecting the path against water erosion, whereas in Asturias we had seen very little of this. After days of rain and steep, exposed paths, the effect on both the condition of the route and the walking experience was hard to miss. We stopped at O Acebo for something to eat before continuing through the wet and cold towards A Fonsagrada. As we walked, we also reflected on how Blocktober 2026 is doing so well through collective leadership from many including Jean, Clare, Janeen, David, Janet, Peta, Trish, Stephen and Nancy. And how special to see Bernadine and Siba all smiles at the blockhouse again.
At Casa Cuartel that evening we cooked supper in the communal kitchen and spent time with Florian, a 25-year-old German pilgrim who had lived with a family in Lebowagkomo, Polokwane, Limpopo, as an exchange student. He had progressed well in learning Sepedi to communicate with his host mother, and was sad that COVID cut the exchange short before he could learn as much as he had hoped. We talked about South Africa, apartheid, GBV, the hopes of his university years and the unfinished work that remains to build democracy in South Africa.
6 October – across the Los Hospitales route 26km
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| High on Los Hospitales — one of the wildest stretches of the Primitivo. |
Our initial plan for Day 6 was ambitious: to walk about 40 km all the way to Grandas de Salime, if possible, because we had not been able to find accommodation before that town. The route took us onto the high, exposed Los Hospitales section. We passed the remains of the medieval pilgrim hospitals at Fonfaraón and Valparaíso, and near Laguna de la Marta encountered an even older layer of history: a small reservoir associated with Roman gold-mining works. Wild horses greeted us.
Somewhere on that long mountain stretch, Lala saw a fallow deer leap across the path. It appeared and vanished so quickly that she felt a spirit had crossed her path. She does not yet know whose spirit it was.
From the ridge we continued via Puerto del Palo, Montefurado and Berducedo towards the Grandas de Salime area. It rained heavily and, after 26 km, Lala decided that with her knee starting to pain, pressing on would risk injury, so she called it and we took transport to Grandas de Salime. We plan to make up the lost 14 km with a future diversion to an artist retreat.
It was one of the most exposed and memorable stretches of the Camino so far, and sending our heavier luggage ahead proved a very sensible decision.
5 October — Campiello towards the Hospitales route 9km
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| Into the woods. |
4 October — Tineo to Campiello, in the rain 14km
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| Testing the poncho — with a little MacGyver engineering underneath. |
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| Wagon tracks made over many centuries. |
3 October — Salas to Tineo 23
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| Remembering six young men killed in 1936 in Salas |
We had considered delaying our departure to experience more of the festival in Salas, but rain was forecast and we decided to walk. Ironically, by the time we reached Tineo at about 17:00, the rain had still not arrived. Near La Espina we stopped at a memorial connected with six young men who were detained and later killed in 1936. It prompted a conversation between us about Spain’s history of repression and South Africa’s own history of people killed, disappeared or never properly accounted for.
The day also acquired a more personal drama when Dawie realised, several kilometres later, that he had lost his new prescription spectacles near El Pedregal. He backtracked and enlisted other pilgrims in the search. Rafael, who was heading back that way, promised to keep an eye out for them.
2 October — Grado to Salas 24km
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| Leaving a message in a pilgrim book. |
We met Ruben, a young British pilgrim in financial services who is using a sabbatical for some remarkable journeys: he had already run from Norway to England for charity and was finishing his break by walking the Camino. We also spent time talking to Jim, an American pilgrim, about politics, society and the world we are walking through. We reached Salas for the night.
1 October — Oviedo to Grado: we start walking 27km
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| Setting out from Oviedo — the first yellow arrows towards Santiago de Campostela. |
30 September — Oviedo: an unexpected Blocktober connection
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| A Blocktober conversation with Antonio at UGT in Oviedo. |
Before even taking our first Camino step, Blocktober produced an unexpected connection. Walking through Oviedo, we noticed a banner at the offices of the UGT trade union speaking out against violence against women. We went inside and met Antonio.
Antonio told us about UGT’s work and its regular public actions against gender violence, gave us information to take with us, and offered to connect us with colleagues working specifically on equality and women’s issues. It was an encouraging reminder, even before starting the Camino, of what can happen simply by noticing a sign and walking through a door.
29 September — we arrive in Oviedo
After travelling from South Africa, we arrived in Oviedo, the historic starting point of the Camino Primitivo. We had a day to recover, prepare our packs, explore the city and make the transition from months of planning the Blocktober Camino to actually being here. Two days later, the walking would begin.
