Comment: Island Rail Corridor is great for slow tourism
A commentary by a Victoria resident.
I first walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain in 2013. That year, many of the hamlets and villages I walked through were well past their best-by dates, scattered with abandoned houses, empty of children, and predominantly silent.
We could walk an entire day and not see a single other backpacker until we stumbled into a dusty, iron-bunk furnished albergue with industrial quality facilities and dry bread with jam for breakfast.
I went again in 2015, and many of those abandoned houses were undergoing renovation, the sound of construction competing with church bells and the clatter of young families rejuvenating their birthright with a strong entrepreneurial bent evidenced by the splurge of cafés, tour groups and old mills converted to bed and breakfast.
By 2019, when I went back for a third time, the volume of slow-traffic tourist trade forced advanced booking for accommodation (unimaginable in 2013), with a range of options from high-end pensions with individual bedrooms and ensuite to newly built dormitories........
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