Behind Grimter, there’s me

My name is Noel Viana and I am from Ourense. A village boy at heart, although I have always lived in the city, which is quite common in Galicia.

Before this I worked in hospitality. I trained as a waiter and then spent four years in kitchens, and three years behind a bar and a stove. I took one thing from that which I still use every day: when someone has been walking for eight hours and arrives at their lodging, what they need is not a brochure, it is for everything to be sorted.

Then I joined a family business doing luggage transfers and taxis. That is where I really learned the Camino, from the inside. Driving the routes every day, collecting backpacks first thing at one hostel and dropping them at the next by midday, crossing paths again and again with the same people along their journey.

Little by little I realised I could put together the whole trip, not just move the luggage. That is how Grimter was born.

When you do that for years, you learn things that are in no guidebook. You know which places treat pilgrims well and which just fill beds. You know which stage looks short on paper and then feels endless because of the climbs. You know where you will not find an open bar and which village needs booking months ahead because there is only one house. And you learn to spot the pilgrim who will arrive fine and the one who has planned two stages too many and will end up with wrecked knees.

You also see the other side, what happens to people. On the Camino you meet people coming from a loss, a divorce, a job that stopped making sense, and people who simply wanted to walk. Almost all of them reach Santiago different from how they set out. You get used to being there for that without getting in the way, which is a big part of the job.

I work mostly on the Vía de la Plata and the Camino de Invierno because they are the routes on my doorstep and the ones I have travelled most. They are also the loneliest and the hardest to improvise: few services, limited lodging and long empty stretches. That is exactly why they benefit most from good organisation, and why I enjoy preparing them most.

I am still the one who organises every Camino, one by one, and who answers the phone if something goes wrong. I keep learning and use technology to work better, but what makes a trip go well is not any tool: it is knowing the ground and being there.