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.