Polka-Vita

Well… hello again.

If you’ve somehow found yourself on this little corner of the internet, you may notice that things have been rather quiet around here.

For approximately eight years.

Oops.

I started Polka-Vita years ago as a little place to share bits of my life, travels, fitness and whatever else I happened to fancy writing about at the time. I enjoyed it. I wrote a handful of posts. I had every intention of continuing.

And then, quite simply, I didn’t.

Life happened. I started flying, travelled more than I ever imagined I would, social media changed approximately 47 times, and Polka-Vita quietly sat here gathering digital dust while I continued faithfully paying for it every year.

Apparently, some part of me wasn’t quite ready to let it go.

So here we are.

I’m not going to pretend I’ve spent the last eight years desperately yearning to return to blogging. I haven’t. But somewhere along the way, I realised I actually missed having somewhere to properly document things — beyond a 15-second video, an Instagram story that disappears the next day or 20 photos dumped into a carousel.

And earlier this year, I did something that felt particularly worth documenting.

I walked across Spain.

So… I decided to walk the Camino

More specifically, I walked the Camino Primitivo – around 320 kilometres from Oviedo, through the mountains of Asturias and Galicia, before eventually arriving in Santiago de Compostela.

On foot.

With everything I needed strapped to my back.

For 13 days.

Because apparently going on a normal holiday and lying next to a swimming pool was simply too straightforward.

Before I went, I knew the Camino would be physically challenging. I knew there would be mountains. I knew my feet would probably hate me. I knew there was a reasonably high chance of spending several consecutive days absolutely soaked.

What I didn’t quite anticipate was how completely the Camino would consume my little world while I was on it.

For those 13 days, life became incredibly simple.

Wake up.

Pack backpack.

Find coffee.

Walk.

Find food.

Walk some more.

Question every decision that had led me to voluntarily climbing yet another hill.

Keep walking.

Find somewhere to sleep.

Repeat.

And I absolutely loved it.

320 kilometres later…

There were beautiful days. There were miserable days. There were days when I felt unbelievably strong and others when my body very firmly reminded me that walking ridiculous distances every day does, in fact, have consequences.

There was rain.

A LOT of rain.

There were mountains, tiny villages, questionable meals, incredible meals, albergues, cafés, endless conversations with complete strangers and long stretches where the only company I had was my own brain.

There was also the small matter of my right shin eventually deciding that it had had quite enough of this Camino nonsense.

But somehow, every morning, I got up and carried on.

One of my favourite places was A Fonsagrada, and one of the things I loved most about the Primitivo was just how wild parts of it felt. There were moments where I would stop, look around and genuinely think:

How the hell is this my life right now?

Just me, my backpack and miles and miles of northern Spain ahead of me.

And perhaps that’s what I loved most.

My everyday life can be incredibly fast. I’m cabin crew, which means I’m constantly going somewhere. Airports, hotels, different countries, different time zones. Sometimes I wake up and genuinely need a second to remember what city I’m in.

The Camino was technically another journey, but it felt completely different.

There was nowhere to rush to.

Santiago wasn’t going anywhere.

The only way to get there was to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

The Camino Bubble

One of the strangest things about the Camino – and something I hadn’t expected at all – was just how completely it became my entire world.

And not just mine.

Everyone’s.

I met some incredible people along the way. People from completely different countries, different backgrounds, different ages, all walking for their own reasons.

Some I’d walk with for hours.

Others I’d keep bumping into several days apart, somehow repeatedly finding ourselves in the same tiny Spanish village.

And despite knowing almost nothing about each other’s normal lives, for that little period of time, we all had one enormous thing in common.

The Camino.

It created this weird little bubble where the outside world almost stopped existing.

Not because we were disconnected.

I had my phone. I had data. I could have opened Instagram or TikTok whenever I wanted.

I just… didn’t really care.

I couldn’t tell you what was happening in the news. I wasn’t lying in bed scrolling TikTok. I wasn’t particularly interested in what everyone at home was doing.

There simply wasn’t the time – or, more importantly, the mental energy.

Life had become very small.

Wake up early.

Try to find some breakfast and, crucially, coffee.

Put on the same hiking clothes you’ve been rotating for what feels like approximately six months.

Walk for six, seven, sometimes eight hours.

Find somewhere to sleep.

Shower.

Wash whatever desperately needs washing.

Prepare everything for tomorrow.

Find a pilgrim dinner.

Sit around a table with people you’ve possibly only met that afternoon and discuss the important issues of the day: how brutal that hill was, whose feet are falling apart, how far everyone is walking tomorrow and whether the next town has somewhere decent to eat.

Then go to bed because you’re absolutely knackered and you’re getting up early to do the whole thing again.

That was life.

And there was something incredibly freeing about it.

Even documenting the Camino sometimes felt secondary. I obviously took photos and videos – thank the universe I did – but there were so many moments where I simply forgot.

I’d be walking through somewhere beautiful and realise later that I’d barely taken my phone out.

Because I wasn’t watching the Camino happen through a screen.

I was just… in it.

And perhaps that’s one of the reasons it stayed with me so much.

For 13 days, I wasn’t thinking about algorithms, work emails, what everyone else was doing, what I should be doing next or the approximately 700 other tabs that normally seem to be open inside my brain.

My biggest concerns were considerably simpler.

Where am I sleeping tonight?

How far is the next café?

Is it going to rain again?

And is my shin supposed to look like that?

For a little while, the Camino was the whole world.

And weirdly, the world felt plenty big enough.

And then I arrived in Santiago

After 13 days and roughly 320 kilometres, I walked into Santiago de Compostela.

And it was strange.

You spend almost two weeks thinking about this place. Following yellow arrows. Looking for shells. Watching the kilometres slowly disappear.

And then suddenly there it is.

You’re standing in front of the cathedral with the backpack you’ve practically developed a personal relationship with, looking considerably less glamorous than you perhaps imagined you would when picturing this moment before the trip.

But I’d done it.

I’d walked there.

Every hill. Every rainy kilometre. Every sore muscle. Every why the fuck did I think this was a good idea? moment.

All of it had brought me there.

And I was ridiculously proud of myself.

So what does any of this have to do with this abandoned blog?

Quite a lot, apparently.

Because when I came home, I realised I had so much I wanted to say about it.

Things I wish I’d known before I started.

What I packed.

What I absolutely did not need to pack.

How much it cost.

Where I stayed.

What walking the Camino alone actually felt like.

The stages I loved.

The stages I would quite happily never walk again.

The people I met.

And all the tiny things that don’t really fit neatly into an Instagram caption or TikTok.

So I remembered that I already had somewhere for exactly that.

This place.

Polka-Vita never really became anything enormous the first time around. There isn’t an army of readers who have spent the last eight years wondering when I’m going to make my triumphant return.

Thankfully.

That would be a lot of pressure.

It was simply something I enjoyed doing for a while, and then stopped.

But I’m older now. I’ve travelled a hell of a lot more. I’ve walked across Spain twice. I’ve collected stories from places I never imagined I’d visit when I originally started this blog.

And I’ve realised I’d quite like somewhere to put them.

So I’m giving this another go.

No dramatic promises about posting every Tuesday at precisely 7pm.

No declaration that I’ve rediscovered my lifelong calling as a writer.

Just me, resurrecting my little corner of the internet and seeing where it goes.

And it feels rather nice to be back.

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Buen Camino.

Next in The Camino Diaries: the full breakdown of my 13 days on the Camino Primitivo – the route, stages, distances, where I stayed and what I’d do differently if I walked it again.

Patty x