I had set off on foot from Lisbon five weeks earlier. I wanted to see what it would be like to walk every day and forget the world. The first two weeks I saw very few fellow peregrinos (pilgrims) on the path. As I moved north the signage on the paths improved, and I began to bump into other peregrinos, although mostly in the evenings. After Porto there were a few more, but the majority who start their Camino in Porto choose the coastal route, and I was on the inland route, which is quieter and calmer though growing in popularity. From the Spanish border at Tui the inland route became progressively busier. The coastal and inland paths converged by the sea at Arcade and, with only a few days to go to Santiago, the walk intensified. At 9am each day the path was thick with people but as the morning wore on the faster walkers moved ahead, and the slower walkers fell behind, and everything fell into a steady rhythm. The walk was the focus, but the conversations with fellow peregrinos who walked at your speed were the icing on the cake.

Now arrived in Santiago’s central square I made a video of the cathedral – too big for a photo to do it justice – to post on social media for the friends who had loyally followed my progress. I was sad it was over. Even five weeks wasn’t quite long enough. I realised I was tired. My back ached, as it had begun to do towards the end of each day’s walk. What I really wanted was an ice cream and a lie down.

I don’t know why I like walking so much. Perhaps it’s hereditary. My father was a hiker when he was young. I wonder if it quietened his mind as it quietens mine. An ex-boss of mine once complained, ‘she has ideas all the time!’ The practice of following a route, with a fresh view on every turn of the path, leaves less room for the noise of an overactive brain. I don’t get on with meditation. A friend sent me some recordings to try, and I thought to myself, ‘I can do the dishes while I listen to this.’ But I’ve found I do get on with walking.

For many people the Camino is a spiritual quest. Spiritual doesn’t necessarily mean religious. People find their own meaning. Many come again and again because of what they get from it, trying out the different routes. For the busier routes it’s often the camaraderie in the hostels and on the path, the communal meals, the challenge of finding somewhere to sleep when you decide you’ve walked enough for the day.

That was not for me. I wanted a calmer experience. I had arranged this through a company. All my accommodation was booked, my timetable organised, my belongings moved by car every morning at 9am. All I had to do was the actual walking. That’s not to say it was all smooth sailing. I got lost, particularly in the first couple of weeks, where the signs are few and far between and other people were scarce.

A taxi was booked to take me out of central Lisbon, to avoid the main roads and junctions, to start the walk on the boardwalk by the river. It was late, by three hours, but once that was sorted out, and I was started north, all that was forgiven and forgotten. In those early days, as the built-up areas and industrial estates of greater Lisbon disappeared behind me, I reached an expansive area of flat farmland. I was puzzled by the villages I passed through. On my left would be a row of small houses with uneven numbers. On my right a man-made concrete mound stretching through the village and beyond. Eventually I realised that the even-numbered houses had been demolished to make way for the mounds, which were flood defences against the river on the other side.

As I pondered this, and other mysteries (why do such small villages need such massive churches?) I frequently wandered off the path or failed to notice a turning. The advice in such cases is to backtrack to the point where you went wrong, but who wants to do that? The app told me whether the true path was to my right or left, and I’d look for cut-throughs. I became more keen on sticking to the path after reading the advice for an encounter with a wild boar.

‘If you encounter a boar do not attempt to pass it, walk away quietly. If it looks like it will engage with you, do not run. The boar may take it as an invitation to chase you. Climb a tree to a height of at least two metres.’

Walking I can do, tree-climbing is not a skill I ever acquired. However, boars like to snooze during the day and get out and about at night so stick to daylight and all should be OK.

I also read that there are wolves in Portugal, but I did not encounter them either, thankfully. Just barky dogs and the odd cat.

Back to the churches. It is of course the whole point that it’s a pilgrimage, built around Catholic beliefs. As I continued North through the towns and villages, I often saw signs of religious celebrations: banners and flags being put up or taken down, loudspeakers outside the Templar church in Tomar; flower-strewn streets in Redondela; fireworks in Padron. Perhaps there is some symbolism in always being there just before or just after these events since I’ve always been on the edge of religion, interested in learning about it, but never falling in.

One not so religious festival I was relieved to miss – although also intrigued by – was in Azambuja. As I headed into the village to start the day’s walk, I saw the main streets were spread with sand, access to side roads blocked with solid wooden fences, ancient banners hanging from balconies. There would be a bull-run that day. My host the previous night had warned me to ‘watch out for drunk people’ but I missed that too.

Azambuja was by far the liveliest village I walked through in Portugal. Many of the smaller villages were silent and empty, beautiful old houses crumbling. Friends who live in Portugal say the young have gone to the cities. I also heard that the owners of those old houses are often reluctant to sell them, but don’t have the funds for restoration.

I had started my journey later in the year than I intended, and it was becoming hot. On the warmest days I rose early and aimed to get the walk done before the hottest part of the day. When I reached larger towns or cities, I’d spend the mid-afternoon at the local air-conditioned self-service launderette where I invariably found a kind local person willing to explain to this village idiot how to work the machines.

Waiting for my washing to dry I had thinking time. They say the Camino will give you what you need. I pondered this. Presumably not the two kilos lost, seven blisters found, grazed shin from walking into a stone table, or the bruised ribs from slipping on the path and landing on my walking pole.

Nor was my experience improving my paltry efforts at speaking Portuguese or Spanish. I had copied some key phrases from Google Translate into my phone notes: an explanation that egg yolk gives me a migraine and I must avoid eating it; a request for a small bottle of sparkling water, or some chilled white wine please (depending on the time of day).

By far the most used of my stored statements was this: ‘you have been very kind, thank you so much’, because what the Camino gave me, was people.

Kind people:

• The guesthouse owner in Azambuja who explained that the place I was looking for, with the same name, was yet another kilometre further along the road and, on seeing my face, said, ‘I’ll get my car.’
• The lady whose garden I complemented as I walked by who signalled me to wait while she went indoors and emerged with a bag of homegrown nectarines, pressing the bag into my hand with an insistent ‘eat’.
• The lady with the café in Valada who told me she wasn’t doing food and then made me an enormous cheese and ham sandwich.
• The taxi driver who dropped me off where I had stopped walking the day before, who talked to me on the way about the Portuguese novelist who was born there, and who found my much-needed Tilley hat in his car and came back to find me along the path. Who then showed me the eaves where the swallows nest every year as they dashed and swooped around us.
• The medical receptionist at the hospital (with my bruised ribs) who was frosty at first, but after a while seemed amused by my inability to follow instructions. When I left – armed with a satisfactory x-ray and a prescription for painkillers and anti-inflammatories – I said, ‘you like me now’ and she laughed. ‘Yes, I like you’, reaching out to shake my hand.

Quirky people:

• The bistro owner in Coimbra who admitted the French fries were overcooked, before I even ate one, and brought me a glass of wine as compensation.
• The man who explained to me, in mime, that I must eat the right things to be strong for my walk. I guessed banana straight away, tuna took a little longer, but his impression of a chicken laying an egg was so good I could hardly get my words out.
• The quinta where I had to make an appointment with a glass of wine – I booked it for 7.30 to go with the cheese sandwich I’d brought, there being no restaurant, and it turned up, reluctantly, at 8.25.

Camino people:

• The American family who appeared on the path to Porto from Coimbra and generously included me in their evening plans all week.
• The young man from Colombia who wanted to be a monk who spoke to me of God and Jesus. ‘Are you preaching to me?’ I asked. ‘Yes’. He replied, looking hopeful. ‘It’s not working,’ I replied.
• The man from Germany who, over a morning’s walk and lunch, told me what he was looking for in life, having come to terms with his past.
• The Spanish woman who had come to get away from the stress of divorce who I would often see paused on the path, staring into the distance.
• The older Portuguese man who waited for me on the path after I had fallen and walked with me for an hour even though I was slowing him down.
• The French lady with a toy hedgehog attached to her backpack which would sway drunkenly as she walked. I eventually pointed this out to her, and we laughed loudly – in front of the open doors of a church where Sunday mass was being conducted.

Then there was the woman in the Casa Rural where I was the only guest. She grilled fish for my dinner and set up a table for me in the garden. She was shy and concerned that people sometimes thought her – inexplicably to me – unfriendly. She liked that my name is Dorothy.

‘Wizard of Oz’ she said, ‘you’re following the yellow brick road!’

‘Yes’, I laughed, the arrows on the Camino route are indeed yellow.

‘You’re finding companions along the way,’ she continued.

Without really thinking I heard myself say, ‘We’re all looking for something, and eventually we’ll learn that the answer was there all along.’

She nodded, vehemently.

What did I learn? I learned that solo does not mean alone. In 35 days of solo walking, I exchanged a hello/bom dia/hola, with every person I passed. I stayed in a different place every night and often my hosts, who had been strangers, hugged me when I left. My five weeks alone were full of wonderful people. When I reached out, the world was there.