My second day in Madrid was spent with two hours of the early afternoon at the Prado Museum. There's a limit to how much one can absorb in one visit, especially if one is also feeling a little jet lagged.  I spent the remainder of the day walking to north, south, east and west of the City so have completed my daily quota in distance if one were to regard this as some sort of a competition. I must have been at one moment in the wrong area of town because I'm still trying to understand why a twenty-three year old Spanish woman with excellent English is trying to interest me in spending time with her. I have never had as much difficulty telling someone that she is wasting her time.  I have been enjoying the tapas in Madrid but, [...]

I decided to make a trial 15 kilometre walk through the Don Valley in Toronto with backpack. The night before, I threw into it what I thought were the necessities of a seven-week walk and weighed it: twenty-two pounds. The rule-of-thumb is 10% of body weight. Eating ten loaves of bread for the next five days is apparently not a viable option. Walking group of Camino aficionados I  admit the pack was a little on the heavy side. But for some reason I didn't want to take the train. No train anytime soon So, the answer is to lose six pounds of unnecessary baggage. Out goes the large bottle of painkillers. After all, I didn't need them on my last Camino walk. Out goes the large tube of toothpaste, the extra pair of...everything. Two sets is [...]

People have always asked me whether I have trained in advance of walking the Camino. It has always sounded like a good idea to gradually build up to walking up to between twenty-five to thirty-five kilometers in a day. My reality is that circumstances have got in the way that prevented me from doing that. After booking my transatlantic ticket the first time, I started to experience knee problems that made it inadvisable, according to my podiatrist, to do any other preparation than increase cardiovascular capability.   I will admit that I am not very disciplined when it comes to physical activity. That is partly because I look in the mirror and see reflected back a smiling seventeen-year-old. Why should a teenager have to practice? At that age, I was a competitive cross-country runner and achieved adequate results without practice. That was [...]