Opinion: ‘Be warned – the Camino gets into your brain and can be hard to shake off’ [Video]

WE SET OFF, the five of us, from our hotel in Santiago de Compostela at the crack of dawn and we kept on going – until we reached a café at the end of the street where we had coffee and toast and several croissants to sustain us on the first leg of our journey.

It was just as well that we did that, as it turned out.

We crossed the spacious cobbled plaza in front of the Cathedral, seeing it almost totally empty for a change: at all other times of day it would be thronged with people either recovering from their marathon trek or welcoming others of their party arriving after them.

Even the perennial bagpipe player was not in evidence, which must have been of considerable relief to the still sleeping guests of the pricey parador beside the plaza.

We exited down some steps beside the parador …