GETTING SERIOUS

Full packs went on this morning to walk the Witches Falls section of Tamborine National Park.  With only 20 days to go before boarding the plane, it’s time to get serious about training!  Although there’s still a bit more weight to go into the packs, today we felt comfortable and did the walk with relative ease. 

However, with departure time fast approaching, we’ll have to start walking 20km distances every few days over decent sized hills, carrying our full pack weight, if we are going to be ready for this Camino.

TRAINING

We’ve been clocking up the kilometres around our local streets and on bushwalks wearing our day packs.  Haven’t yet started to train wearing our full back packs, but that is about to change.  The hard training we undertook prior to walking the Camino Frances across northern Spain in 2014 proved invaluable and I’m certain that I would have struggled at the start of that walk if I hadn’t trained.

Gone are our pedometers and homemade computer templates to record daily distances used for last year’s training.  Instead, we have both invested in a ‘Fitbit’, a device worn on the wrist which displays the time, the steps walked each day, the kilometres walked each day, and the equivalent number of floors walked up each day.  At the end of the day, the data from this device can be wirelessly transferred to a computer or phone.  The ‘Fitbit’ program appears on the screen by way of a ‘dashboard’ which not only displays your daily stats, but also identifies the level of your activity throughout the day as either mild, moderate or intense.  We love our ‘Fitbits’ and have found that by wearing them constantly and checking our step totals throughout the day, we’ve become motivated to continually strive for higher step counts.

The computer program also has a fun component which gives out virtual badges for new achievements such as the ‘Skyscraper Badge’ for climbing the equivalent of 100 floors in a day, or a ‘Trail Shoe Badge’ for walking 30,000 steps in one day.  I recently received my ‘London Underground Badge’ for walking 402 km since strapping on my Fitbit!

We recently had a break from walking the usual local streets by taking off with our caravan for a couple of weeks to bushwalk in Girraween National Park near the Qld/NSW border and Torrington State Conservation Area in northern NSW.

Steve relaxing in camp  -  Girraween NP

The Granite Arch  -  Girraween NP

Bald Rock Creek  -  Girraween NP

Bald Rock Creek Circuit  -  Girraween NP

Mt Norman Track  -  Girraween NP

view from Castle Rock  -  Girraween NP

the climb to Captain Thunderbolt's lookout
Torrington State Conservation Area

Torrington State Conservation Area

Mystery Face Rock  -  Torrington State Conservation Area

Our Fitbits, showing Steve's 18,000+ steps for the day,
sitting atop our guide book,
 which although written in French, is proving invaluable

WALKING THE CAMINO

Walking the Camino Frances changes your life in some way.  I have yet to meet a 'pilgrim' who disagrees with this statement.  Some walk for precisely this reason, whereas for others, including ourselves, this was not the original intention.  The daily ritual of rising early, lacing up your boots, swinging your pack onto your shoulders and stepping out into the quiet countryside to follow a path that has been walked for centuries, along the way passing places of outstanding cultural, architectural, artistic or religious interest, changes one's concept of how travel should be.  Life becomes simplistic and mesmerizing, but never, ever boring!

Walking the Camino can also be one of the most shared and collective experiences of your life, if you allow it to be.  We met people from all over the world, some only briefly but with whom we shared an incredibly close bond, some we will be glad to never meet up with again, and others with whom we still keep in contact and now consider good friends.  For the first two weeks of the Camino Frances we walked with our niece Anita.  We parted with Anita in the beautiful city of Burgos as her limited time on the Camino was over and it was time for her to make her way to Madrid for the flight home.  The memory of our goodbye on the steps of the hotel on that cold early morning was, for me, one of the most poignant of the whole journey.

There is also the challenge of carrying a pack with all your current worldly possessions for eight hundred kilometres, including across two mountain ranges, in all weathers, whilst trying to maintain some semblance of orderly appearance.  Then at the end, having coped with all these challenges, feeling invincible and incredibly fit, not really wanting it to end, proud of your achievement, yet at the same time astounded that you actually succeeded.

And then, on the horribly long flight home, which you vowed on the horribly long flight over never to undertake again unless you could afford business class, you begin to think about perhaps walking it again, or perhaps walking a different Camino, because from this time on, walking through a country is the way you want to experience it.

And so, on the 18th April 2015, after much research and planning, Steve and I will board a plane for another horribly long flight in economy class to Geneva, Switzerland for a two day stop over before catching a train to Le Puy in France to begin our second Camino.

Anita and Wendy at Roncesvalles
about to take their first steps on the Camino Frances

Steve and Anita - first day on the Camino Frances

Anita - Steve - Wendy

Meeting Jane and Hanna - our American friends

Steve, Wendy, Anita and our friend Diane from the USA
sharing a bottle of vino tinto
with Luca, a French peregrino

Anita and Steve walking the Camino Frances with our
Aussie friends Ian and Robyn

one of the many beautiful towns along the Camino Frances

Watching the sun rise over the Meseta

Wendy walking towards Cruz de Ferro (the Iron Cross)

the 'Iron Cross' - 1,504 metres above sea level

Steve on a cold bleak day

Wendy at the 'Monumento do Peregrino'

Arriving in Santiago, Spain



 
Praza do Obrdoiro and Cathedral, Santiago
journeys end 

journeys end celebratory drinks!

THE PLAN

In a few weeks, Steve and I will set off on our second Camino.

In April / May 2014 we walked across northern Spain following The Way of St James to the city of Santiago, a 42 day journey of approximately 800 km. This time we will be walking a French section of The Way of St James from the Town of Le Puy in south central France near the Loire River, to the village of St Jean Pied de Port, again a journey of approximately 800 km.

The are four pilgrim paths across France and the one we have chosen is called Via Podiensis (often referred to as The Way of Le Puy). The pilgrim path across Spain, known as the Camino Frances, begins where the Via Podiensis finishes, at St Jean Pied de Port.

When Steve and I walked the Camino Frances last year, we started from the Spanish town of Roncesvalles instead of the French town of St Jean Pied de Port, some 25km away in the French Pyrenees. Our reasoning behind this choice was due to the fact that the John Brierley guide book stated: "This first stage is one of the more strenuous and is a veritable baptism of fire into El Camino and Spain" and "This stage represents one of the steepest ascents of the whole pilgrimage!"  I thought that I would struggle carrying a pack over the hardest part of the walk at the very beginning, so we opted to catch a taxi from St Jean, over the Pyrenees to Roncesvalles in Spain.  I still believe that was the right decision even though I regret not having walked that section.

However, on this Camino, as St Jean is the last town on the Via Podiensis, the plan is to walk over the Pyrenees into Roncesvalles.  By that stage we would have walked 800 km and, hopefully, be fit and strong, making the challenge of that stunning section of the Camino a joy to undertake!

From Roncesvalles the plan, if we feel up to it, is to retrace our steps through the first days of the Camino Francis to Pamplona, the lovely Spanish city where the 'Running of the Bulls' is held.  From here we will take a bus to Madrid for a few days of R&R before flying home to Australia.




The beautiful village of St Jean Pied de Port in the French Pyrenees



Starting out on the Camino Frances
from Roncesvalles, Spain, April 2014

Pamplona, Spain, our planned destination after walking
The Way of Le Puy