Day 6: feet go mental.

put in about 28km today, having started at six. Will post a few details later. Took my shoes and socks off at the end of the day and was greeted by this:

On day 7 I got up after an anxiety racked night and took the decision to abandon my Camino and come home. I wouldn't be able to walk for at least 3 days which meant I would have ended up bussing too much of the route. And more importantly to me, it would have meant walking without my Camino family Suzy, Sam Sami, Lee and Angelo, who have been so good to travel with and helped me so much.

Ciraquai to Villamayor

Not a very good night's sleep as the village bells rang the quarters all night.
So tired when we started at 7am, having had some breakfast.
Passed through Lorca and Estella, making good time before the heat hit.
After Estella is the wine fountain at Irache. Had a quick slurp and then carried on towards Villamayor. Suzie want to take an alternative route, but it didn't actually end up in Villamayor, and there were no facilities, so she walked with us.
A tough ascent to Villamayor. Got there for about 3 o'clock, just as the heat really started to hit.
Stayed at an aubergue run by a Dutch religious group.
Distance: 24km
Expenditure: €29

Day 4 Cizar Menor to Ciraqui

Up at 6 this morning and away by 7. First job of the day getting to the ascent of Alto de Perdin. Took about two and a half hours to het to the top . Had some breakfast while I waited for my friends who had stopped to have breakfast. The ascent was quite long with some steep bits towards the end.
Once we had taken the obligatory pictures with the statues at the summit, we started making the descent toward Puente La Reina. At first it was very steep and made up of loose rocks, which I find challenging, but after a while the gradient decreased and the surface improved.
Although we have left the Pyrenees, there is still quite a lot of climbing hills and going down them again. So it was yesterday, and on the final descent into Puente la Reina, I managed to do something to one of me leg muscles just above the knee which had made descending hills quite painful.
We had lunch in Puente la Reina, and then carried on, planning to do about 5km and then stopping. Alot of the towns in this region are built on hills, so we had a steep climb into where we wanted to stay only to find that there was not enough room at the albergue.
We therefore had to carry on another 3km to Ciraquai, where we found space.
Paid a visit to the farmacia to pick up pain killers blister stuff and volterin for my pulled muscle...€26! Then to the shop to pick up some food, which we had at the albergue.
Rubbish night's sleep as the village church. bells rang the quarters...all night!

27km travelled
expenditure: €50

Day 3 Larrasoana to Cizar Maior

They say there is nothing like a good night's sleep, and last night was nothing like one. Got back from the pub just before the hostel was locked up for the night, and then waited for a couple of girls to also come back.
By 11 they hadn't arrived so I assumed they had made othr plans, and went to bed.
The room I was stayin in was unbearably hot, with no open window, so I only managed to get about an hour's sleep, at which time I went outside to get some air, and there they were. Let them in and then went back to my room to sleep. Slept a little while bu then woke up and had to get up due to the heat. Ended up outside for about 2 hours pacing up and down. Come 6am I started to get ready and went into town to meet some people and start walking.
Was feeling anxious but it was bubbling under and I managed to survive until we reached Pamplona and I had a bit of a melt down. Fortunately I had my Camino family to help me, and I managed to start walking again.
Finished in Cizar Minor and stated at the Albergue run by the Order of Malta, just €5.
Got a good night's sleep.
KM today: 20
Expenditure: €20

Day 2 Roncesvalles to Larrasoana

Having conquered the Pyrenees today was going to be simple...or so I thought. Buy instead of 20km uphill then 5km downhill like yesterday, today was characterized by a series of ascents and descents. Some of the ascents were quite tough, if relatively short, while some of the descents were quite treacherous, being over loose stones and rocks.
Today I made it to Lorrasoana, where I hooked up with some fellow pilgrims and enjoyed the offerings of a local bar.

Day 1 St Jean PdP to Roncesvalles

Woke up about 0545 and got ready before breakfast. Filled up with water and started to walk about 0715. It was very hard work. The temperature was only about 20 degrees, but it was very close, and almost immediately I start to sweat profusely! Over the first 8km up to Orrison I drank about 2 litres of water.
Had a coffee and tortilla at Orisson and filled with water again, and then started back on the uphill slog
Remained very hard for the next 2 or 3 hours
..again drinking lots of water I was perspiring. As I climbed higher, a pleasant breeze developed which made things more comfortable.
Eventually made it to the highest part of the climb. Checked my feet...had a small blister on the side of my big toe. Taped it up and then started the descent into Roncesvalles via the longer road route ad I didn't want to risk turning am ankle on the forest route.
Checked in ay the albergue, showered and washed my clothes. Then the pilgrims' menu at a local restaurant.
km walked today: 30
Money spent today: €28

Day zero London - St Jean PdP

so this morning I got up at early o'clock to get the 0701 Eurostar to Paris. About 12 hours later I arrived in St Jean. Not what you would call an exciting trip. Lots of sitting down on trains and a bus puncuated by waiting for trains and a bus. Result: Backache!
Found my lodgings easy enough, got my Credencial stamped at the pilgrims' office and got something to eat. Bedtime now. Tomorrow the adventure really starts.

 London

 Paris

 Leaving Paris

Why the train was a bus...repairing the branch line to SJPDP

OMG - I'm leaving tomorrow!!

Hello,
It's been a while since I posted anything on here; life (ie work) has gotten in the way of most of my plans for getting ready for the Camino. The last time I walked any real distance was back at Easter. Notwithstanding that, tomorrow (Thursday 23rd) I'll be getting up at about 04:45 and making my way down to St Pancras International to catch the Eurostar to Paris Gard du Nord; from there I'll cross Paris to Montparnasse to connect with the TGV to Bayonne and then onto St Jean. The whole trip will take about twelve and a half hours.

My bag is all packed and weighs in at 9.5 kg without water & food; my from skin out weight is about 12.5kg. This is a bit more than I was hoping for - a couple of days ago it looked like I was going to manage about 8kg in the rucksack - but less than the maximum I envisioned.

Anyway, I'm going to get some Zzzzzzzz in now. I'll be trying to post at the end of each day between now and the end of my 500 mile wander.

The Peak District

Today we returned from a 2 night trip to the Peak District. We stayed in a youth hostel in Youlgreave, near Matlock. The room was a little small...in fact I think a prison cell would be bigger...and the bunk bed a little short, with the result that my neck and shoulders started to hurt after the first night due to the way I ended up sleeping.

Our cell.

Anyway, enough of that. We went up to Youlgreave on Thursday, taking in the joys of a motorway service area, and an hour long hold up due to an accident on the M1. Needless to say, the walk we were considering didn't happen. Instead we had an early supper at the excellent Bull's Head pub next door to the hostel, had a walk around the village and then had an early night.

Yesterday we got up early and prepared for a 10(ish) mile walk in the hills. This was my first walk in preparation for the Camino with my new Osprey rucksack. Glad to say that it performed very well. I'm continuing to use sock liners and walking socks over a dressing of petroleum jelly. Seems to be working in preventing blisters so far.

Usually we'd stop somewhere for lunch, but even in the town we did pass through towards the end of the walk there was not a pub to be seen! So after a walk along the banks of a river, we got back to Youlgreave, and lunch at the Bull's Head.

A restful afternoon was followed by live music in...you guessed it...the Bull's Head.

This morning it was raining, cold, and blowing a gale. We had planned a walk, but my neck was giving me gyp. So instead we drove up to Matlock and took a trip on a restored railway.

New sandals!

So today I squeezed in a cheeky 5 mile walk along the tow path of the river where I live
on the Herts/Essex boarder.

Parndon Mill, Harlow.

Partly the reason for the walk was to keep in the habit of putting some miles into my legs and improve my fitness. The other reason was to start wearing in the new Keen walking sandals I bought this week.

When I'm actually walking along the trail on the Camino, I plan to be wearing my hiking boots; my right ankle has never healed properly from a fracture when I was a teenager, and it requires the support offered by my boots. Once I've finished walking, however, I don't want to be weighed down by the things; I also need shower shoes, and since they are made of synthetic materials, they should dry off nice and quickly after a shower.

Starting to get into the walking habit



Hello! On Sunday 23rd March I at last started my training for the Camino Frances in earnest. Jackie is in a walking club and occasionally leads walks. In order to give the impression that she knows what she is doing and so that the walk doesn't go horribly off course, she usually goes over the walk on her own a week or two before hand. This coming Sunday, the day the clocks go forward so we all get an hour less sleep, Jackie is leading a 10 mile walk along the North Downs Way, just south of London.

So on Sunday, having negotiated the Kafkaesque experience of the British railway system (Sunday) with its "planned maintenance" and rail replacement services (a bus) we arrived at the bottom of Box Hill in darkest Surrey.

The walk started nicely, crossing a river between the road and the trail over these stepping stones, which thankfully were not too slippery.

After this we got to the base of the hill proper and started to climb. The climb was seriously steep; so steep in fact that steps had been cut into the hill - about 200 of them! Photographs cannot do justice to how energy sapping a climb it was. Needless to say, it took us both a few minutes to recover our breath when we got to the top. A reminder to me how important it is to lose some weight and get fitter between now and when I start the Camino.

Here is the view from the top of Box Hill - well worth the goldfish out of its bowl breathing experience it took to get up there!

After the climb, the trail pretty much stays at the same height for some time as it traverses the hill, skirting around the site of a former quarry, including this lime kiln.

Some downward travel was then followed by another really steep and long climb to the summit of another hill, where we eventually stopped in this rather ornate shelter for a quick rest.

Those are my Pacer Poles leaning against the front column - really glad I've got them! Soon after our restart, we passed the remains of a fort, stopped for a bite to eat and then descended back down to the railway station and home.

A bit of an update...

Hey there! It has been a couple or three weeks since I posted anything here, so I thought I'd give a little update. I'm now in possession of a pair of Pacer Poles. Haven't had a chance to do anything with them, except set them to the approximately correct length. My plans to do weekend walks have been toast due to the demands and resultant fatigue of work. But this Sunday I shall definitely be leaving all that behind me and going for a cheeky 10 miler in the North Downs. Not sure if I'll take my pack with me yet...but will definitely take the poles!


Only 9 more work day get ups until the Easter break, so I'm really looking forward to our trip to the Peak District. I really need to get some hill walking embedded into my training as on the first day in particular there are some pretty challenging climbs and descents on the Camino.


My plans to lose weight weren't going so brilliantly last week; I started to creep back up to where I started. This week all I have eaten has been muesli for breakfast, fruit, salad, and instant noodles. Haven't had any bread, alchyhole, pasta, curry, fried food, or tatties all week. If I haven't lost weight since Sunday I think I'll just give up!!


This week I've been thinking that if I enjoy and survive the Camino Frances in July/August I might just try doing the Camino Ingles in October...

Packing list

Everyone likes a list and prospective Camino de Santiago pilgrims are no different. After bedbugs and snoring, the packing list is probably the most talked about topic. Weight being an important factor, each item is weighed to the nearest gram to ensure that the magic 10% of body weight barrier is not broken. In preparing for one's Camino this race to lightness could almost overshadow the whys and wherefores of dragging one's lardy arse across Northern Spain. Not wanting to rock the boat - I live on a boat so know of the terrible consequences of rocking them - I have more or less decided on the items I shall be taking...probably...so naturally I wish to share with the hordes of people following this blog in baited breath. Here goes:


Osprey Kestral rucksack
Saloman GTX4 walking boats...did I say boats?...well they are size 12, but I meant boots.
Pacer poles
Sleeping bag
Silk sleeping bag liner
Walking sandals
Shower shoes (flipflops)
3 pairs of walking socks
2 pairs of sock liners
2 pairs of underwear
2 tee shirts
1 long sleeved shirt
1 pair shorts
1 pair convertible trousers
North Face w/proof jacket
Removable fleece from jacket
Buff
Pen knife
Tooth brush
Toothpaste
Tiger balm
Plasters
Vaseline
Ibuprofen
Antacids
Antiseptic wipes
Germoline
Soap
Spork
3 dry bags
Marmite (you can't get it over there, y'know!!)
Phone & charger
Tubular elasticated bandage (in case of knee issues)
Sunscreen/moisturiser
Travel towel
Travel clothes line
Sewing kit
Some duct tape
Toilet roll
Ear plugs
Plastic trowel (in case I need to dig a small hole...)


That's about it...probably...seems like quite a lot to me...maybe I need to prune it a bit...as long as I take the Marmite!

Kit and making training plans

So this week the sleeping bag I'm taking with me arrived. It weighs about 900g, so I'll definitely be using it! If you ask 10 different people about whether to take a sleeping bag on a summer camino, you'll probably get 11 different answers. I enjoy a good night's sleep, so if having a sleeping bag makes that more likely to happen I'm willing to carry it with me.

 

It's a rectangular affair, which for me has 2 advantages over the "mummy" style, which most sleeping bags seem to be these days. Firstly it is a lot less restrictive of movement; when I move in a mummy style bag, the bag tries to move with me, which means I often end up being tangled up and getting into a claustrophobic panic trying to untangle myself. I'm hoping that with this bag, that is less likely to happen.

 

Secondly, this bag has a zip along the side and at the bottom so that I can turn it into a double sized blanket if I need to.

 

I also got a Swiss Army knife during the week with a very important attachment - a cork screw.

 

It being the beginning of the month, I've just been paid so now I'm like a kid in a toyshop with half a crown burning a hole in my pocket. In terms of kit which is not dependent on my physical size (this week I lost nearly 1.5kg by the way) the only thing on my shopping list is a pair of poles, so I'll be investing in a pair of Pacer Poles this week. I have a bit of a dodgy knee which occasionally decides to give me gyp and I'm hoping that walking with a pair of poles will lessen the impact on my knees.

 

I've only got about another 144 get ups until I set off on this journey, so I really need to start thinking about getting into walking shape. Work is hell at the moment and I have little time to myself during the hours of daylight during the week which means I need to start using the weekends to get some miles into my legs between now and the Easter break. So every weekend for the next 4 weeks I'm intent on getting a 10 mile walk into what little spare time I have.

 

Speaking of Easter, we've just booked a couple of nights in the Derbyshire Peak District to get some serious walking done. I'm also planning to use the Easter break (I have 2 weeks off work) to get some 30km walks along the towpath of the river where I live.

 

 



Practical pilgrim session

So earlier today (actually yesterday now) we went to a session organised by the Confraternity of St James here in London. As I mentioned in a previous post, neither Jackie nor I do the God thing. We're not what you'd call evangelical atheists - personally I find the antics of Richard Dawkins rather tedious - but at the same time we tend to avoid organised religion, its followers in groups of more than 2 and its agents. So it was with a little anxiety that we pitched up to the meeting - an anxiety only heightened by having to cross south of the river!

Fortunately, considering the meeting was held on church property, belief in himself was barely mentioned. Instead the emphasis in the first session was more on the spiritual nature of dragging yourself and 10kg of kit across Northern Spain. There was then a q&a session with a panel of experienced caminoists, before the gathering split into groups more relevant to the Camino they are intent on doing.

After a short break, there was then a presentation by Elaine Hopkins on how doing the Camino had affected her life. After this highlight we left as there was talk of blessing clamshells.

All in all worth the trip to the Badlands across the river. Got some solid practical advice from people who had done lots of Caminos, and picked up the csj guide to accommodation on the Camino Frances.

The cost of my Camino so far.

If you visit the Camino forums, blogs and you tube vids, the received wisdom is that one should allow about €35 per day to maintain a degree of comfort on the Camino. What is talked about a lot less is the cost of preparing for the Camino. Of course, a lot of the stuff you might have already and you'll be able to keep on using it for other trips.

Not being heavily into trekking, however, I'm having to invest quite a bit in quality kit which I'm confident will last the trip. I'm not sure that I really want to contemplate the enormity of how much I've already spent...but there is little point in living in denial! So here is a quick idea of what I've spent so far. Where possible I tend to get stuff at Go Outdoors, as we have a discount card there which cuts 10% (or more) off their prices. So here goes:

• Saloman Quest 4D GTX boots £125
• Osprey Kestral 38 rucksack £90
• Osprey hydration bladder (2l) £23
• Walking socks & liners £50
• Sleeping bag £39
• Swiss Army knife £23
• Dry bags £13
• Sporks £4
• Travel towel £13

As well as this stuff - and there is probably other stuff I've forgotten about - I've also spent £34 on getting to Paris, £17 on my Camino eve accommodation in St Jean, and £70 on my flight back to the UK from Santiago. So all together that's a total so far of...gulp...£501...and I haven't taken a single step on Spanish soil...

Credenciales, weight, and other stuff.

Hello,
Been a bit busy with work, but now I have a few days off, so time to write here and hopefully get into a routine of posting regularly.
This week my Credencial del Peregrino arrived from Santiago, courtesy of Ivar at the Camino de Santiago forum, a really useful resource if you are thinking of doing the Camino by the way. The Credencial (aka the Pilgrim's Passport) is a little booklet which a pilgrim gets stamped each day at hostals, churches, bars etc along the way as proof that they have completed the pilgrimage.

The more I start to prepare for my Camino, the more I think about weight. Both in terms of the kit I shall be carrying along the way and what I actually weigh myself. At the moment I'm thinking of a From Skin Out weight target - ie including the clothes I'm walking in and any water/food I'm carrying - of around 10kg. If I was to start tomorrow I would be at 7kg, including water. But I wouldn't have any clothes to wear except socks and walking boots, so I probably wouldn't get too far! The clothes I'll be taking with me I shall buy just for the trip (and any future Caminos of course), so will be quite a significant investment in "technical" clothing which wicks moisture and dries very quickly. Which brings me to my personal contribution to the gravitational pull of this planet as the clothes I buy need to fit me when I leave!

Today I weighed myself. It's something I've been putting off as I know I'm overweight. I'm 6 feet 2 inches tall, so I still appear to carry the weight OK but far too much of me wobbles! Today I weigh 105.9 kg. 20 years ago I weighed nearer 80 kg. A sedentary lifestyle and an appreciation of decent food means that I'm dragging the equivalent of an extra 25 bags of sugar around with me compared with when I was in my 20s, and my waistband has increased by a full 10cm! So today I'm starting a "lifestyle" change to help me lose 25kg by mid June. As I'm going on a "pilgrimage" (more of why I'm actually doing this as soon as I've worked it out for myself!), I suppose a little deprivation of what I enjoy - beer, wine, rum, curry, bread, chips, chocolate, cake, anything with a rich sauce, anything fried or roasted in fat, etc - is in keeping with the spirit of being a pilgrim.

Tomorrow we are going to a "Practical Pilgrim Day " organised by the Confraternity of Saint James in London. Not sure what to expect - hopefully not too much "God bothering" as neither of us do that. Instead we're hoping to pick up a few tips and maybe meet some people doing the Camino at the same time as us.

My name is Ian, and soon my feet will hate me.

Back in the summer of 2007 my other half Jackie and I toured northern Spain by a rather clapped out 900cc Yamaha motorcycle, which I later ended up scrapping when the MOT inspector I took it to laughed at the thought of testing it...but that's another story.

Anyway, while we were in Spain we accidentally came across the Camino De Santiago, aka the Way of St James, a pilgrimage route to the city of Santiago de Compostela in the north east corner of the country. On and off, and purely coincidentally, we ended up following the route of the pilgrimage to its terminus in Santiago.

Pilgrims in Santiago de Compostela



In the 3 or 4 years which followed that holiday we talked about walking the Camino, or at least part of it; then other things took over, like they do, and it kind of fell off the bottom of the list of things we thought about doing. Especially when we bought a narrow boat which meant that we spent most of our holidays travelling the English canal system at a very sedate speed...but that's yet another story.
At the beginning of this year, and having decided that my fixed holidays - I'm a teacher of mathematics at a secondary school on the fringes of north east London - meant that Japan would either be unbearably hot or very cold, the thought of doing the Camino de Santiago occurred to us again. And that is why about a week ago we made our travel arrangements to get to and from the Camino.
What makes things a little complicated is that while I shall be attempting to walk the whole of the Camino Frances, from the foot of the Pyranees in France to Santiago, a distance of about 800km or 500 miles, Jackie will be joining me for just the final 120km, starting in the town of Sarria. The plan is that I arrive in Sarria on the same day as she arrives and we then walk on to Santiago together. Considering that the walk to Sarria will take me some 24 days or so, actually meeting up in Sarria might be quite challenging!
So that is a rough outline of why on July 23rd 2015 I'll be climbing onto the Eurostar to Paris and then on to the small town of St Jean Pied de Port on the Franco-Spanish border to start the long walk to Santiago on July 24th.
Between now and then I'll be in training to get into shape to walk 27 - 30km a day for the best part of a month. That and getting  together the stuff that I shall be taking.