Twenty-four hours on the Camino: up in the pre-dawn, coffee and croissants two hours and 15km later, then another 20km and a large, late Spanish lunch, sightseeing in an old town, washing socks, night in a dormitory and away again before dawn.
Hel Loader and Scott Wilson suffered heat, thirst, shin splints and humungous blisters on the Camino de Santiago. But they enjoyed tapas, jugs of Spanish wine, fireworks and the feeling of being part of something far bigger than themselves.
They walked hundreds of kilometres, met a lot of people and witnessed glorious scenery and history.
Many pilgrims are Catholic - not them. But Hel said finding machines that dispensed cold beer in pilgrim auberges (hostels) was "a very religious experience".
After their first big walk in 2004, they weren't thinking of doing it all again. "Once you stop walking, there's a relief at having stopped and then there's the emptiness of not having 35km to walk today."
There's such a thing as "walking sickness", they discovered, where people don't want to stop.
"You meet people who have it and they just give up things and walk the world."
Hel and Scott have been living on a rural Wanganui property since 2013, and are keen trampers. They've done a lot of tramping in New Zealand. They knew its gorgeous scenery but also its wet and mud, and turned their minds to walking in Europe. Both are history nuts, and Hel is intrigued by engineering.
"In Europe you can walk on Roman roads. You sleep in Templar castles, you cross medieval bridges. There's just that level of history that you don't get in New Zealand."
They researched walking Roman roads, but found many had been turned into motorways. The Camino kept coming up in their searches.
They started it on the best known path, taking off from southern France, crossing the Pyrenees and heading west across northern Spain to Santiago. They didn't know that 2004 was a "holy year" when St James' birthday, July 25, fell on a Sunday. The Camino was packed as they headed across the Pyrenees, following in the footsteps of many of the marauding armies of history.
They loaded up like good Kiwi trampers heading out for a month - heavy boots and 25kg packs. Their fellow pilgrims were wearing sneakers and shorts, and they soon realised they could do the same. "In Europe there's a village every 15kms with a bar. Our kids thought we were on the longest pub crawl known to man."
Pilgrims usually stay in auberges provided for them, and Spaniards have long, late lunches, followed by very late dinners and partying in the plaza. The auberges shut at 9.30pm, just as the Spanish dinner hour begins. Hel and Scott fell into a new rhythm. Get up early in order to get to the next auberge mid afternoon, claim a bed, have a big lunch and then do some sightseeing. They usually skipped dinner.
Spanish food was great. Lunch could be a garlic soup with pork knuckles and an egg cracked on top of it, "packed with flavour and carbohydrate" and washed down with a jug of Spanish wine. Hel is vegetarian and lived on Spanish omelettes with potatoes and bread - simple peasant food.
They walked 35 to 50km a day and lost 10 to 20kg each trip. "You actually have to be fat to start with, otherwise you can only manage 15 to 20km a day."
Walking was mostly on roads, sometimes busy ones. The path was marked by yellow arrows.
Pounding those hard surfaces in boots makes feet swell and toenails fall off. Within a fortnight it gave Hel a blister so big she could see the bone. She was taken to a military hospital near Burgos to recover, and the doctor told her to grease her feet to avoid blisters. It sounded odd but, combined with good walking shoes or sandals, it worked.
At the hospital she spent one of her most memorable Spanish evenings, the night of a festival. "The Spanish do fireworks like nothing else. This was four hours of fireworks, set to a Beethoven symphony, down by the river. It was pretty magical."
They reached Santiago that first time, and returned to Spain in 2008 to walk the Via de la Plata from south to north through the middle of the country. It's six weeks and 1200km. Parts of it are on Roman roads, and it's still Hel's favourite Camino.
"We wanted something more isolated, more open and alone. It's also less religious and more challenging, and water is a big issue."
They crossed Roman bridges and explored fortified medieval towns, getting a feel for the real Spain, a poor country. There were fewer pilgrims and they saw the same people every night at auberges. One group was travelling with wine and food and would have a big lunch under a tree, then a sleep, before walking again in the late afternoon. It was so hot they had to carry and drink at least three litres of water a day. "There was a couple of days where we ran out of water, and you do go quite mad," Hel said.
In 2010, Hel and her daughter Fran walked the "English" route, from El Ferrol on the northern Spanish coast to Santiago, and then carried on south through Portugal to Lisbon, more than 1000km. They started in November, and walked south into winter.
The auberges were closing, and in Portugal they sometimes stayed in accommodation for bombeiros voluntarios, volunteer firefighters.
"It's very hilly and very wet, and poorer than Spain. It was quite wooded, and it rained on us every day. It was an interesting route, and would have been a lovely walk in summer."
Scott wanted in to the next Camino, which he and Hel walked in 2012. It was the Camino de Levante and they started on the east coast of Spain at Cartagena, aiming to cross the country diagonally and meet up with the Via de la Plata. That route was 1400km and the hardest of all. Temperatures were around 35C during the day, there was no shade and no water and sometimes 75km between settlements.
"You can't walk 75km and carry enough food and water to do it. It's really a cycle route."
They had to sleep in the open a lot. "There were snakes, and we would use the GPS to find ruins and empty farm houses."
On that trip Scott lost so much weight and tightened his pack straps so far that he collapsed and had to go to hospital. They cut the trip short at Medina del Campo, 800km in, and finished their European break in a completely different way. "We went to France and ate duck confit and creme brulee and I did extensive champagne tastings. It was a different kind of pilgrimage," Hel said.
There was no shortage of suffering on their long treks. "Walking on rock day after day introduces you to your feet in a way you will never forget."
Even when washing clothes every day, people got smelly. "Towards the end you start to smell pilgrims coming."
But there were so many good memories to balance the suffering: sunrise for example, after two hours of walking.
"I swear you could feel that light wash over you and make you glad to be out on the road. I still miss that," Hel said.