Hiking sticks are a waste of energy and one more thing to lug around and are totally unnecessary. They're already walking on flat, level ground, much of it paved, most of the way anyway.
You supposedly only need them when going uphill or downhill on rocky or tricky terrain, but I always found them to be an impediment even then.
I'm giving you pearls here. You're welcome.
We got a job.
What kind?
...The Forever Kind.
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this ruined the whole film for me.
shareI honestly did question the room while watching the film, "are those sticks necessary?" and the response i got was "yes... they help you walk".
I remained skeptical, but opted not to press the issue further.
Well, I learned how to walk when I was about 6 months old. Most people did.
We got a job.
What kind?
...The Forever Kind.
More pearls: you DO need a roll of toilet paper. There are many places along the way that have bathrooms, but the TP situation is dicey. I stole two rolls from my hotels every day just so that I could donate one at one of the stops. Also, there are long stretches, 4,5,6 miles where there are NO bathrooms, no bars, cafes, hostels, etc. And I did the bare minimum 100 kilometer walk.
It IS strenuous (for a middle-aged out of shape desk jockey like me - but there are several older people doing it, and I survived well enough.) If you want to get the flavor of doing this, I would suggest that you do the last 3 days, arriving in Santiago de Compostella on the third day. The forests are pretty, the little towns and the ancient churches are charming, walking with the other pilgrims was nice, but it's really the same scenery day in day out. Maybe even two days would suffice. I got press-ganged into 8 days. I can think of 100 better ways to spend 5 days in Spain... but that's me.
Hanging out in the plaza in front of the Cathedral while the pilgrims enter is a really unique experience. I highly recommend it. There are large youth groups from all around the world coming in, and they enter through a tunnel at one end of the plaza, and they're always singing some local song of their own, and you can hear them getting louder and louder as they get closer, and they go to the middle of the plaza and start dancing, and everyone in the plaza cheers for them. The rest of the town is pretty neat also.