Counting down

Time to say goodbye to my little house.

More than ten months has gone by since I decided to walk the Camino de Santiago. The wait to get started has become agonising over the past few weeks, but now there's only two days to go - I'm packed and ready.

On Monday I fly to Auckland and then to Singapore, arriving at 9pm local time for a two-day stopover.

Wednesday night I'm off to Frankfurt for another two days, flying to Toulouse on Saturday June 1 and getting a train to St Jean Pied de Port. I start walking the next day (Sunday), with a 28km stretch, including a climb to 1500m - possibly the hardest day of the 42 days I'll spend on the walk.

I've done quite a lot of reading and Googling and it seems there'll be three aspects to the adventure.

Firstly, the physical act of walking more than 20km every day. I'm not too worried about that. I've done a lot of walking over the summer and I'm taking the soft option of having my bag transported every day. I've also avoided the bunkroom battle by having a single hotel room booked every night. That has the disadvantage of having to keep to a schedule.

Secondly, there's the tourist thing - the scenery, eating and drinking and discovering a different culture.

Thirdly, there's the internal landscape. Thinking about life and maybe (or maybe not) making decisions about a path for the next 20 years. Giving up work and all the other things that give shape to your life (including a large part of event organisation and involvement) can make life seem a bit empty. That hasn't happened yet, but it might. And what about relationships? It's nice to live alone and it's also nice to have someone to be close to. Solitude is good, loneliness is not - what's the balance?


I don't know what I'll do with this blog. Maybe I'll add to it every day, maybe every week, maybe hardly at all. I won't be doing a whole lot of emails or Facebook postings, so just keep an eye on this address for updates.

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