Gail Rast had walked 370 miles in 31 days. She had trudged through mud, ascended and descended thousands of feet in elevation, and ducked her head through many a rainstorm.

Now with just about a week left in her walk, Gail was stuck.

The 59-year-old Australian was soloing the 514-mile Camino de Santiago del Norte along Spain’s picturesque northern coast. On May 31, 2023, Gail had reached the Puente de los Santos (the Bridge of Saints) and couldn’t take another step.

The bridge is 2,000 feet long, more than five American football fields and takes about 10 minutes to cross on foot. It soars high above a river that feeds into the Bay of Biscay, and the only thing between pedestrians and the drop below is a waist-high barrier along a narrow walkway next to speeding traffic.

“I just stood there and went, ‘Holy shit, I can’t do this. I just can’t do it,'” Gail said. “I just stood there in shock. There was no one around, and then I started crying and I’m like, ‘What am I going to do?'”

She couldn’t think of anything.

“There was no way to take a taxi, that wasn’t even an option,” she said. “And what am I gonna do, swim across the bloody river?”

Out of nowhere, a man on a bike appeared and saw her distress.

“He said, ‘Are you OK?’ And I said, ‘No I’m not. I’m doing the Camino and I can’t get across this bridge,'” she said.

The Spaniard quickly made a suggestion.

“How about we go together? You hang onto my bike and I’ll walk by the edge and I’ll take you across the bridge,” he told her. “And he did. He took me across the bridge, and I was absolutely terrified.”

Once across, Gail said she gave him a big hug and told him: “You’re my Camino angel. I couldn’t have done that without you.”

It’s one of the most beautiful experiences Gail had on the trek, which lasted 35 walking days with five rest days peppered in between.

“These are the things that you remember, people’s kindness,” she said.

Another reason the memory stands out for Gail is because it’s the only time in six weeks on the trail that she felt scared. Every other day, Gail was in her element, romping around in the mountains, making friends with people across the world, connecting with herself and eating some of the best food on Earth.

Getting started

Gail is relatively new to long-distance hiking and solo travel.

She had done some traveling alone in her 20s but between her marriage and career, Gail no longer was jetting off on adventurous holidays by herself.

As her 50th birthday approached in 2013, she knew something had to change.

“It was a very difficult period in my life,” she said. “When you approach 50 you start to think about stuff … I felt this yearning to sort of remind myself that I am still an individual and I am still independent and self-sufficient and resourceful.

“I just went, ‘I need to do something for me,'” she remembers. “I’ll be married 25 years next year, and life had become a bit of a routine and I wanted to do something exciting and adventurous.”

Around that time, she happened to see the 2010 film “The Way,” starring Martin Sheen. It follows a father’s unexpected journey on the Camino de Santiago after the sudden loss of his adventure-loving son.

“When I watched that I sort of thought, ‘Wow, this is exactly what I’m looking for, an experience like this,'” she said. “I just did it.”

Gail decided to go on the exact same route depicted in the film, the 500-mile Frances route of the Camino (there are seven major routes).

It was Gail’s first long-distance trek, and she made a lot of beginner mistakes.

For starters, she was in the wrong shoes. She was wearing hiking boots but hadn’t gotten them fitted properly and they were hampering her progress.

Gail said she was also undertrained.

“I really threw myself in the deep end,” she said. “I really wasn’t prepared, logistically or physically … I did everything wrong and I was a bit naive.”

Gail pushed through intense foot pain mile after mile, dead set on finishing what she started.

“I said, ‘Nothing is going to stop me from this Camino,’ but it was a really silly thing to do,” she said, adding that she had to undergo surgery as a result. “For eight months I couldn’t walk or hike or run.”

In retrospect, she would have started with a shorter trek and worked her way up. But now she’s a pro.

In addition to the Frances and Norte routes, Gail also has done the 174-mile coastal Portugues route and the UK’s 190-mile Coast to Coast walk. Combined, she has walked 1,378 miles on four treks. That’s almost double the length of the entire state of Texas.

She’s grateful for every step. Between the foot disaster from her first trek and an ankle injury just before she was scheduled to do the Camino del Norte in September 2022 (she rescheduled it for May 2023), she knows there’s no guarantee she’ll complete a trek.

In fact, going into the Norte route, she said she had decided that she would stop walking if her body told her something was wrong.

“In March my foot was still bothering me and I thought, ‘I’ve just got this yearning,'” she said. “It’s like an addiction or a calling. I started hiking again for about 3 or 4 kilometers and then I built up to 8 or 9, and then I said, ‘I’m just gonna do it. I’m sick of hearing what the doctors say, I just want to do it.'”

To prepare, Gail started a new exercise routine that included a lot of yoga, balancing and strength workouts.

“And then I booked it,” she said. “Less than two months before I left, I said to myself, ‘I’m going to give it my best shot but if my foot lets me down, I will pull out.’ I had a really different attitude this time. I learned from the first one there’s no point in being that determined because you end up paying for it.”

Gail said she didn’t allow herself to think that she was going to finish.

“Even when I was on the trail I’d meet people and they’d say, ‘Oh, how far are you going? Are you going to Santiago?’ because not everyone does the whole thing. And I never ever said, ‘Yeah, that’s where I’m going.’ I would always say, ‘That’s my plan,’ or ‘God willing,'” she said.

It wasn’t until the last day that Gail truly believed.

“I went, ‘Oh my God, I’ve actually done this,'” she said. “I really didn’t think I’d be able to do it.”

Her unexpected success made for an emotional arrival at every Camino’s end point: the main square in front of the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela in far northwestern Spain.

“You should have seen me. I was a basket case,” she said. “When you walk towards it you can see the spire of the cathedral and I’m already started to get choked up at that point. And when I walked into the main square I just totally lost my shit. I just broke down and cried.”

Having done several other treks, she knew there’d be a few tears but had no idea it would be that powerful.

“When you walk 800 kilometers over five and a half weeks, of course you’re going to be a bit emotional but I was really a mess,” she said. “I wasn’t sad but it was just this barrage of emotions that came spilling out. People came up to me and said, ‘Are you OK?’ And I’d say, ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, I’m great.'”

Empowered

Through all of Gail’s solo trekking, she has found what she started looking for when she turned 50.

“It’s like this feeling of freedom and independence,” she said. “After being in a relationship for more than 25 years, you forget that stuff. You lapse into this partnership.”

Gail is in a perfectly happy marriage but doing treks has “reminded me of who I am.”

“It’s a reminder of what I’m capable of,” she said. “When I travel with my husband, I get reliant on him. ‘Oh yeah, can you grab the bag, can you get the suitcases on the train? Oh, can you figure out where we need to go?’ And I just sort of hand it over to him.

“But when you’re on your own, you don’t have anyone to do it,’ she continued. “I had to pull my own bloody suitcase on the train and I had to figure out where the bloody hell I was going. And it just makes you feel very empowered. Really empowered.”

So what’s Gail’s next adventure?

First up is a three-week trip with her husband to Vietnam and Cambodia. Then they’re going to Norway for their 25th wedding anniversary in March. And then, she’ll go on her next big solo adventure.

Gail is planning on walking a 260-mile section of the Via Francigena, which begins in Canterbury, England and ends in Rome. Gail is doing the section that begins in the picturesque Tuscan town of Lucca.

She said she’s most most looking forward to all the Italian food along the route.

‘Do it’

Gail has some advice for women who are interested in solo traveling or trekking.

For one, she said every woman should know that nervousness is normal.

“Even though I’ve done this several times, I still get that feeling,” she said. “A few days leading up to when I’m flying out, I feel a bit nervous. Like, ‘I’m going to be on my own and I don’t speak a lot of Spanish.’ I really think that is a healthy, normal feeling.”

And that feeling will help keep her safe, she said.

“It’s a good thing because it actually reminds you to stay alert and on your guard because at the end of the day, you are alone,” she said. “But I was not at all worried about my safety while I was in Spain. It just made me be sensible about it.”

Gail recommends doing exhaustive research before a solo trip to full understand what to expect. And then?

“Get out there and do it,” she said. “I think a lot of people just go, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t do it on my own.’ And they tell themselves that they can’t. But they really can.”