March 20: Oh, the Humanity!

While taking a tea break while making a powerpoint on Oregon for class on Friday, an incoming email makes me smile, and makes me thankful.  It’s another email from a campsite in England, along the Southwest Coast Path, agreeing to let me pitch my tent for free.

When I first starting sending out emails appealing to sites to let me stay for free, with my teeny tiny tent, I felt hopeful, like why couldn’t this work, right?  Staying in a campsite sounds cheap, but a lot of cheap nights over 4 months accumulates quickly, and I can use all the help I can get.

Then I got a few reject responses, and I felt a little foolish: there are of course, many, many other charity walkers out there, which is a GREAT things of course.  But it also kind of wears off the novelty.  I was afraid if I wasn’t one-of-a-kind, then no one would be really interested in helping me.

I sent out only a few emails in the first batch, testing the waters a little bit, before deciding to commit several more hours to looking up emails, locations, and entering it into a spreadsheet.  Although I was feeling a little bit down from some of the first emails, I few campsites did agree, and the warm, fuzzy feeling that gave me was enough to try again.

Good things I’m a stellar internet researcher, because organizing this trip has been only partially physical.  Sure, I’ve been working to get back in shape for the summer, but as spring unfolds I’ve been spending even more time at the computer, researching the trails, transportation, how to raise money… every little detail, I want to know.  Knowledge is power, after all.

So research I did, looking up campsites and hostels, and hoping some of my favorites would respond in the affirmative.

I have gotten some negative replies.  I really do understand.  Business is business, and I’m a stranger, raising money for a country far away from all of us.  I’m walking during the height of the tourist season, and in many eyes, I’m just a nuisance.

But I keep getting positive responses, from campsites big and small, and especially the YHA hostels, which are all willing to let me pitch a tent in the yard.  People are messaging me, happy to help me out.  Me, a stranger.  I think I have to believe that most of all, people want to help.  They want to be kind, and I have a premonition that the best thing I will experience on this trip is, simply, kindness.

 

Updates, March 13: It’s Official

I bought my plane ticket today!  For the first week of June.  So this is happening.

Although La Coruña had tricked me into thinking it was spring and now has decided to play winter for a few more weeks, somehow it is now mid-March.  Upcoming weekends have been penciled in with hikes, adventures, my dad’s visit, and then suddenly it’ll be the beginning of June.  And after a week of hitchhiking and seeking out mountains across the north of Spain, I’ll be flying out of Barcelona.

So in the meantime, I’m going about, in what seems like a bit of hopelessness, trying to find accommodations along the paths that will let me camp out for free.  Right now I’m researching the Southwest Coast Path, which will take me about a month to walk.  I read that most landowners along the path will let you wild camp if you ask politely and leave early in the morning.  That’s all fine and good, but I’ll still need a few places along the way to take a shower, wash some clothes, and use some wifi.

The first email reply I received back apologized that they wouldn’t be able to help me, because they receive many requests from other charity walkers requesting free accommodation.  Well of course, there must be tons of other people walking for charity.  And we all have the same idea of asking for a free place to stay.  Suddenly, the whole idea seemed a bit naive and I felt silly for spending all that time collecting names and addresses.

Then I got a second email from YHA Minehead, which read that I might indeed be able to camp for free, and my hope in humanity was again restored.  After all, I told myself that even if I found only a few places allowing me to camp for free, that those dollars/pounds/euros really add up.

Here’s hoping for more friendly strangers!

Cheers

Marisa