Love legends abound on the Camino. A good young friend of ours found her camino family on day one, but tearfully had to watch them go on without her after intense blisters forced her to stop. A few days later, the young Dutchman who had caught her eye circled back to find her, apparently just as sad to lose her. A year later they are back here hiking a section to celebrate their one-year anniversary.

I already introduced you to Fermin - the host with the gentle grounding handshake - but not their love story. Susie had sold everything in Australia, purchased an old building, and spent over a year completely renovating it into an albergue. A month after opening, in walked a young Spanish pilgrim who had always wondered why all these foreigners were passing through his town with backpacks. He came to find out, and instead found Susi and never left. Twelve years later their love still infuses Casa Susi with warmth and welcome and hope.

Hope, however, is found much more easily than true love. Sommer’s trail fling was “fun, but he was too young” and somehow resulted in the loss of her favourite socks. Fatima had to reject a marriage proposal written in the sand after a single day together with a romantic young man who’d watched a bit too much Netflix (“I think he just had it in his head that we was going to propose on the Camino - he even had a ring - and I was the last woman he met.”) And remember Weibke meeting Derek in the mountaintop hut during an overnight storm on the first day? Well, after a few days she wondered if she’d let That True Love Story get away, so at every hostel she asked if he’d been there and finally she found his name and number in a registry! But rather than cue the Hollywood ending, his response to her text message was a cursory, “How did you get my number?!!!”  Apparently it takes more than just a Camino full of young hopefuls to find a true love match.

These young (and not-so-young) hopefuls are drawn to Sarah and me. We are among the very few couples walking together, and the young singles find our obvious love and compatibility reassuring/inspiring. Many other people walking alone wish their partners could be with them were it not for work, time commitments, health challenges, finding it hard to travel together, or simply a lack of interest. An older woman who drives the camper van each day to meet her husband at the end of his hike explains, “I don’t do up, I don’t do down, and I don’t do long distances.”

I am thankful to have a partner who shares and inspires this kind of adventure, has worked hard to have the necessary health and strength, and whose company I genuinely enjoy. We give each other space when needed (though her initial prediction that we’d probably walk apart sometimes has never been necessary), respect when one needs to sit or another needs to run up a hill to explore a castle, and enjoy the same kinds of shortcuts and hostels and quirky people. Today, we are respecting that we both need an extra day of rest in Astorga to enjoy a foot massage and spa, explore the bishop’s palace built by Gaudi, and indulge in a $12 breakfast buffet that keeps us stuffed the entire day.