Friday, 27/05

Stayed on Tuesday night in an albergue (hostel) attached to a really nice hotel. We had an excellent pilgrims menu in the hotel dining room.... 3 courses, bottle of wine, bottle of water for 12 euros each. The dormitory slept 40, th biggest we had stayed in, but it was quiet and everyone was shattered, so by about 10pm everyone was asleep.

Left Wednesday morning straight up a hill and had a 12 km walk before second breakfast where we met Larry and Desi and an American couple (Mary and Joseph. We walked with them into Atapuerca where we had decided to stay on Wednesday night. Rolled into the village at about 12.30, so only about 5 and a half hours walking today. Checked in, showered and went off to find lunch. Lunch was long and full of great conversation and it was really good to spend time with these guys while sitting down rather than walking.

We were in a room for 6 in Atapuerca and Heather had a bed! Woken up at 5 by some extremely noisy Italians who decided they wanted to be away early!

We've booked 2 nights in a hotel in Burgos for Thursday & Friday, to give the legs a rest.

The walk into Burgos was hard with quite a lot of road walking, but got here about 2.30 after just over 20km. Met up with the international group we keep on meeting for tapas in the evening. Aussie couple, American couple, Canadian couple, and 2 Dutch and 1 Danish ladies.

We've spent this morning in the cathedral which is just incredibly beautiful. now time for siesta. Off at 7am tomorrow.

Where we are 24/05/16

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Tuesday Afternoon

Sunday night was another multi national meal culminating in an Italian guy and I going out for a pint with a young German guy who had just walked away from his father's business because he hated it. We naturally gave him the benefit of our experience and hope he takes all the advice on board and ignores it.
Only did about 17km on Monday cos we were a bit knackered and ended up in a rather strange place which was run by a piano playing Enya freak. Had a super pilgrim's menu at a local bar with an Irish lady and then ended up back at our hostel having drinks with another collection of people who we had never met before.

22km today. We keep running in to Larry & Desi from Sydney who we met on the first night. We've never actually stayed in the same place as them since but we keep meeting.

The walking is great. It's rolling countryside, very green with loads of poppies and cornflowers in the field edges. There's still quite a bit of snow on the mountains in the distance. The best bit has been the evenings. The friendliness of the other pilgrims/walkers is amazing. It's so easy to strike up conversations with anyone. We've spent an hour this afternoon with a 73 year old German lady who is doing the Camino a week at a time. Thank goodness loads of people speak English, but it makes you despair of language teaching in English schools.

Sunday Afternoon

Got into Logrono on Friday evening and had a super night. The city was full of people of all ages till late. Had pintxos (tapas but northern) and an all round good night.
Set off walking to Ventosa (about 20Km) at 7am and arrived at about 1pm. The walk was lovely. Hot and sunny and the countryside was beautiful. Went out to eat with a group from the hostel we were staying in. Aussies, americans, Canadians, Germans and a couple of others. A good time was had by all.
Left Ventosa at about 7 this morning and we've walked about 25km to Ciruena, a strange place which has been built on an old village, but most of the houses and apartments are still for Sale. Eating in the hostel tonight. 2 courses with wine for 7 Euros. More later.

TGV

Whizzing down through France. Left Paris at 7:30 and we're now south of Bordeaux. Love French railways!
I run at 1:30 and Logrono at teatime.
Excited!!

On our way at Last!

First blogpost of the holiday from the 10:09 to Euston. Train packed and had no seats booked, so we're sitting separately, but on our way.
Felt quite unsettled at the beginning of the week, but yesterday and today I've been cool, calm and collected. Walked our of the flat at 9:45 as planned. The only thing I know I've forgotten is the little blue plastic bits to unbung my hearing aid tubes!

Last Training Yomp

Last training run today, before the big day on May 19th. As those of you who went on geography field trips to view limestone countryside will know, this is Malham Cove, one of the wonders of the northern world. We did 11miles with full pack and seemed to manage OK. The test will come on the 4th or 5th consecutive day of walking.
While we won't be watching Liverpool beat Sevilla in Spain as this is played the night before we leave, we will be there for the Champions League final, hopefully in Burgos, where we will attempt to find the Atletico bar in which to watch Diego Simeones men put one over Real.
The next post will be from somewhere in France, assuming Eurostar or the hotel in Paris have weefee, unless of course we poison ourselves with permethrin, which we intend spraying the sleeping bags with to keep the bedbugs away!

Only 4 Weeks To Go

Thank goodness. I'm bored with training. I'm bored reading forums(a). I'm bored with guide books. I WANT TO GO........ NOW!!!!!!
Out tomorrow on the 14 mile Burscough Loop with a full pack but no hills 'cos the Lancashire plain is like that. You know....... plain. We were hoping to do High Cup Nick, which I will do this year, but we could only do that on Sunday due to commitments tomorrow morning, and the forecast for Appleby on Sunday is cold and wet, so we are postponing.
No other news of a Camino related type.
Have to say that the deaths of Victoria Wood and Prince is continuing the loss of artists of incredible genius that started in January. RIP both. Having been a newsagent for more years than I care to remember, the Victoria Wood song with the line 'beat me on the bottom with my Woman's Weekly' has to be one of my all time favourites. It works better because I can remember the little old ladies who used to buy it.

Trial Packing

Just 7 weeks to go. Settled on Logrono as the start point and booked a hotel, so we can stop wondering if that's the right decision now!
I did a trial pack last week and the pack weighed in at 10.5kg (TOO MUCH!!). We did a 20km circuit at Rivington on Easter Monday and I carried a smidgin under 10kg (STILL TOO MUCH!!). So this afternoon I have re thought what to take and got down to just over 8kg (MUCH BETTER). Heather however was still carrying a bit too much, so we took the sleeping bag that Heather was carrying out of her pack and put it in mine. I now have just over 9kg (OK) and she is carrying 7 and a bit (ALSO OK). We are both now trying to work out if we've forgotten anything.
I've gone back to reading the Camino blogs after getting fed up with po-faced Americans and (strangely) Aussies and New Zealanders. They are all still there. I'm slightly concerned that 4-5 weeks in the company of Trump supporting yanks might be too much for my equilibrium. I'll try to stay chilled.

Our hotel/hostel in Logrono.

So many socks, so little time!

After a beautiful 2-3 days in the Lake District walking and the discovery (by us anyway) of Downham near Clitheroe and  the rather wonderful Assheton Arms, we now have only 10 weeks to go. Above you see Loughrigg Tarn with The Langdales in the background, and below my niece -in-law (?) Jenny at the Fairy Bridge near Downham.

So we leave on May 19th, 10 weeks tomorrow. For the last umpteen months Heather has been practising walking with a full ruck sack, packing said ruck sack, deciding what to take, testing dry bags, deciding what not to take. I suppose sometime in the next few weeks I'm going to have to join in.
We are both REALLY looking forward to starting out. We seem to have made quite a few people jealous of our railway journey to Spain, possibly more than are jealous of the walk.
I am really looking forward to the communal nature of the walk. The prospect of meeting people from all over the world in a situation where we are all, to an extent, dependent on each other is quite exciting, if a bit scary. The spiritual side of the walk..... the pilgrimage.... will also be interesting. Although the pilgrimage is nominally Catholic, I wonder if the encounters with people from different religious or non-religious backgrounds will be more meaningful spiritually than the pilgrimage's connection with organised religion. I already feel that there is a difference between religion and faith and I suppose I wonder if this anarchic 4-5 weeks will widen the perceived difference or narrow it.
However all this is still to come. First I have to decide how many pairs of underpants to take!

The final Piece of the Jigsaw

Got the last 2 pieces of the travel jigsaw sorted. Southport to London and Paris to Irun (Northern Spain). It's 234 miles approx from Southport to London and 500 miles approx from Paris to Irun, and guess what? The English bit of the journey is going to cost almost exactly twice as much as the French part, which is more than twice as far!  It will be interesting to compare Virgin with the TGV.
So we're now totally committed. We just have to decide where to start the walk from now. Logrono is still favourite. It feels like it's suddenly come much closer.
We have a few days in the Lake District  next week, and the weather forecast looks OK. Looking forward to getting a bit of walking in, after a pretty sedentary few weeks, due to the dreadful weather and loads of work....... NOT complaining Martin!

Rain, rain and more rain!

The weather is still dreadful. This afternoon it just poured and poured so no walkies. Also loads of work on as I do a complete revamp of one of the websites which I maintain. http://luxuryhandles.co.uk is going to look beautiful and hopefully do another substantial increase in turnover for Master Lock and Safe. All this means training, at least for me, is on hold with just 15 weeks to go!
The remaining tickets become available on Feb. 19th and last week we received our 'credencia', the passport that needs to be stamped daily to prove that we are actually walking the Camino and not getting the bus! Heading up to Ambleside at the end of February with Sue & Dave to (hopefully) do some walking, but I'll have to try and do something before then otherwise I'll never keep up with Dave!

My New Bluetooth Keyboard

I've just received a rather dinky folding bluetooth keyboard from those tax avoiders at Amazon. I thought that if I was going to blog while we were walking the Camino, I really needed a keyboard and at 25 squid, this looks ideal. Problem No. 1 is I can't find the pound sign, but the keyboard itself is great.
Blogging on the phone looks fairly straightforward too, although you only appear to be able to put images in the blog at the beginning. So, all in all, pretty good for the price.
Now, I wonder if I can post this to Facebook?

18 Weeks to go!!!!!!

Another milestone last weekend when we booked our return flights. Got a great deal with Iberia Express. Santiago to Madrid to Manchester for £65 each. Just need two more train tickets now and they become available next month.
Also got a rather wonderful app for my phone on which you can plan your route, get links to the hostel websites, and see what facilities are where. It's called Camino Pilgrim, it's free and it looks pretty good to use in conjunction with the guide book.

January's not been a good month for British icons. Lemmy, Bowie and Alan Rickman all dying in a 2 week period is a bit much really. I did, however, wonder what David Bowie would have thought about the plight of Syrian refugees being pushed to 2nd place on the BBC news by a long piece on his death. I suspect he would have thought it was a case of scrambled priorities, as I did.

While on the subject of news, I saw our illustrious Minister of Transport (can't remember the non-entities name) announcing that the A591 in Cumbria wouldn't be back in use until May after it fell into a river during the floods at Christmas. I can't help thinking that the government don't appreciate that getting about in the Lake District can be quite tricky even when all the roads are open what with mountains and lakes in the way and Heaven knows what the effects on tourism will be. We're going up to the Lakes for a couple of days in late February, so we'll be doing our bit for the local economy.

Happy New Year

New Years day is a day to look back and look forward. Not at the same time obviously. Looking back while moving forward could also be dangerous.......... better have a drink!
2015 was a year of mixed emotions. Lovely holidays and time spent with good friends and with my brilliant family. Juergen Klopp. The loss of loved ones, worrying diagnoses and some dreadful happenings around the world. 2015 also brought its share of, as we like to call them on Merseyside, daft gets and arseholes. All in all, I suppose it was a pretty normal year. 2015 was, of course, the year I started a blog and actually continued with it past the third post. It was the year of the Paris attacks. It was the year Brendan Rogers told me, for the last time, that my football team were 'outstanding', despite what I had just seen. It was the year our stewarding team at church actually became a team and pulled together and supported one another. A year when work hit and then exceded (just) targets. And I'm sure I could list loads of other things that happened.
And so we move forward into 2016. 20 weeks today we will be starting our Camino from Logrono (we think). 360miles ish. On January 3rd we will be lunching with my 2 sons and their wives at Northcote Manor in what may just become a tradition. Grandson Nick won't be joining us this year as he is skiing with school, which is a shame. New, higher targets will be set for work ( I expect). As for the rest, well, we just don't know what the future holds and for that, I thank God. The last thing I need at this stage of the year, is a list of stuff to worry about or anticipate. The thing I do have is hope. I hope we finish our Camino. I hope the staff at Northcote don't burn the roasties. I hope the good friends and brilliant family remain so and that the daft gets cast off their daft getdom (only got a small amount of hope for that last one). I hope Herr Klopp does the business at Anfield. I really, really hope we get to live in a more peaceful world than of late and that our politicians can think creatively about actions which might solve some of the world's problems rather than just reduce them to rubble.
Happy New Year to all and thanks for reading the blog. Please feel free to comment, criticise or slag off as you feel appropriate