Beginning again

In exactly five weeks time we will be in Barcelona. The hotel is booked, though bookings for the train for the journey to Irun won't open for a week of two yet. Five weeks tomorrow we'll be on that train heading North to the coastal route of the Camino Santiago. It'll be hot but I hope not too crowded, at least until we join up with the Camino Frances at Arzua, which is about 40 km from Santiago. We should be doing that about 4 or 5 weeks after we start. Sometime in the next week or two we'll need to go through our Camino gear and see what needs replacing.

After walking the Path of Miracles we'll be doing a few other things, including a pilgrimage to Auschwitz. I've looked at the best ways of getting to Krakow and we're trying to figure out how to fit all we hope to do into the time available. In the next day or two we'll have a schedule, will have decided between train and EasyJet for getting about in Europe, and will have made the necessary communications with the people we're hoping to visit. All that is the easy part.

The tricky bit is that five weeks out our fitness levels are nowhere near where they need to be. What with one thing and another there hasn't been a lot of time for taking long walks. But I'm not stressing unduly about that. Our GP assures us that Clemency's sternum will be OK in time, and although she won't be doing a lot of long walks in the next month I think her residual fitness will be up to the task. This time around we have a good deal of flexibility in terms of time and we'll be taking it pretty easy on the opening stages. I hope.

Clemency and I sat last night, each with our devices on our laps companionably looking at hotels and train timetables and scanning the Internet for cheap internal airfares. And, after all that has been going on for us, individually and together, finally allowing ourselves to look forward and to be excited by this next great adventure.

Comments

Kate said…

Lovely! This reader looks forward to it too!

3 June 2015 at 13:29

Kathryn said…

How exciting. A friend of mine is walking the Camino at present and is having a wonderful, if challenging time.

4 June 2015 at 14:07

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