Walking the Camino 2023

This is the year. I plan to will walk the Camino Santiago in 2023. I’ll walk the St. James Way from St. Jean Pied du Port in France to Santiago, Spain to earn my compostela. As I go along, I’ll be adding content to my blog. Watch this space.

2023 February 22. In the words of a friend…. I have committed. Plane tickets purchased, pilgrim credential ordered. I’ve spent a small fortune at REI over the last couple of years getting “stuff” for the trip – now it’s time to take inventory and figure out what else I might need.

2023 February 24. Training. I started my training last summer, gradually building my walking stamina up to about 11-12 miles a day without backpack. Winter’s been cold and tough so I haven’t been able to accomplish my daily (or every other day) walks for the past 4 months. Maybe once a week or so. Something about the cold (or very cold) weather reduces my interest in daily walks. That is changing as weather gets warmer.

So yesterday was my first “elevation hike” of the season with full backpack. About 400 meter elevation gain over about 3 kilometers of horizontal distance. And back down again, for a total of about 8 kilometers. And yeah, I feel it today. So today will be a rest day – and tomorrow’s supposed to be between 0 and 4 degrees (C), which will probably mean 2 days off. But I’ll pick up again Sunday.

Definitely some nice views from the top of the mountain yesterday.