Trevor Huxham

As you head down a curve of the busy San Pedro street, you catch your first view of the twin bell towers of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela—and you catch your breath. Petite hatchbacks rattle across the cobblestone as your feet seem drawn farther down the path, although that might just be gravity pulling you downhill toward the old zone. You cinch up your backpack’s sternum strap for the final approach of this multiple-night pilgrimage. For not the first time on your Camino, you lose your sense of direction as you enter Santiago’s old town: granite flagstones at your feet, stone-and-graying-plaster houses on either side, and overcast skies above disorient you—yet your eyes eventually lock on to a spray-painted yellow arrow on the side of a building. Once you’re back on autopilot, you start to reflect on why you started this crazy, 70-mile-plus hike in the first place. Rúa de San Pedro, Santiago de Compostela Maybe you hiked from Sarria farther inland as a cheap and hea...

If you happen to find yourself in Santiago de Compostela and have run out of things to do , I’d recommend going on day trips to check out more of Galicia’s beautiful cities and natural wonders, from the “Glass City” of A Coruña and Roman-walled Lugo to the pristine beaches of the Cíes Islands and the natural hot springs of Ourense . You can reach some really exciting places on a one-hour train ride, but if you know how to drive stick shift, it’s best to rent a car and head out west to hug the coastline until you reach the Atlantic Ocean. Lighthouses at Muxía The historic fishing villages of Noia and Muros will whet your appetite for Gothic architecture and seafood tapas, whereas coastal Carnota has kept an entire beach reserved just for you. Just around the corner, the Ézaro waterfall is the only point in mainland Europe where a river empties into the sea via a waterfall. The cherry on top (the shrimp on the paella?) is without a doubt Fisterra, also called Finisterre,...

The Camino de Santiago phenomenon has completely taken Spain by storm over the past decade or so. This pilgrimage route originated in the early Middle Ages, fell out of popularity, and only recently has enjoyed newfound popularity with modern-day pilgrims, who are drawn to the trek by religious devotion as much as they are by adventure. The Camino or “Way of St. James” terminates in Spain’s green northwestern corner, in the rainy city of Santiago de Compostela —the purported burial place of the Apostle St. James. While the most popular route—the French Way—trickles across north-central Spain from the Pyrenees toward the Atlantic coast, there are also around a dozen or so other trails that thread routes across the diverse quilt that is modern Spain. Some are brief, requiring less than a week on foot—the English Way, for example—while others recall the great overland trips from Roman times—like the Vía de la Plata that starts in Sevilla. During the three years I spent working in...

When I lived in Santiago de Compostela , Spain, and taught English , my bilingual coordinator, Fran, and I would carpool every day out to the small town of Boiro on the Atlantic coast. After leaving Santiago, we would exit onto a two-lane highway and pass through one farming community after another on our way to Padrón , where we would pick up the coastal expressway and blast through wooded hillsides to the school where we worked. That first leg of the commute never really sat right with me, as it involved a lot of stop-and-go traffic, steep hills, sharp curves, roundabouts, and low speed limits, and I was always eager for us to finally get out of Padrón and onto the autovía . But these days I’m grateful for the opportunity I had to get to know this small slice of rural Galicia (albeit from the passenger window of a car) since the two-lane highway we would take each morning merged with sections of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route. We would see pilgrims trudging along on the...

I finished the Camino de Santiago almost two years ago, arriving in Santiago de Compostela a weary, dazed pilgrim who couldn’t get his bearings straight in the monumental old town. The skies were overcast, the cold weather chilled my shorts-clad legs, and all the plazas in this very gray city seemed to blend together; safe to say, it wasn’t the best of introductions to what would become my favorite place in Spain. The next morning, I ended up getting the hell outta Dodge by starting the Camino de Fisterra , the extension hike that takes you to Spain’s Lands End on the Atlantic Ocean. Santiago had left a bad taste in my mouth, and I even regretted my decision to transfer up to Galicia for the coming school year. If I’d had a better first impression of Santiago, I wonder if I wouldn’t’ve left the endpoint of the Way of St. James as disappointed and confused as I was. So I’m writing this post today to give future pilgrims something to use when they finish their Camino, so they don’...

After walking 115km (72 miles) along Spain’s Camino de Santiago  pilgrimage route in June, I finally arrived at the end point to the Way of St. James: the city of Santiago de Compostela. Hooray! It was an amazing feeling to look up at the Baroque façade of the cathedral in the Praza do Obradoiro on that gray Sunday morning, but my journey was not finished yet— there were three more days left! Fisterra, at last Although my Camino across northwestern Spain formally ended at the cathedral of Compostela, I decided to take the plunge and continue walking 89 more kilometers west, all the way to the ocean. Three long, hard days later, the Atlantic was in my sights. What the Camino to Fisterra is View this post on Instagram 89km (54 miles) and a nasty blister later, I made it to Fisterra, or Spain's version of Lands End. I just...don't want to walk for a month now >.< // #fisterra #galicia #spain #travel #hiki...

Between June 5th and 9th of this year, I completed a major life goal by walking the Camino de Santiago,  the ancient pilgrimage route that runs across northern Spain and ends at the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela where the remains of St. James, son of Zebedee (a.k.a.,  Santiago ), are reportedly buried. Me having finished the Camino Although ostensibly a religious route, the Camino is as much adventure and traveling as spiritual exercise. I only hiked 115km of it, but trekking 25km or more each day was a pleasant challenge and introduced me to the beautiful countryside of Galicia, the northwest region of Spain. I’m sure most of you have a lot of questions about this pilgrimage, so in this post I’ve tried to answer most of the basic questions you may be asking. I’m sure to have missed some, so ask anything not in here in the comments below! So, what is this Camino ? An hórreo  or granary, a very common sight in Galicia The legend goes that in the 1s...