I have a guidebook for the Via de la Plata that is sparse on detail, descriptive passages, possibly exaggerated, that might make Etobicoke look like a garden city, and divides the journey into 'manageable' stages. Although to date I have enjoyed immensely the landscapes, rolling hills and flatlands hypnotically beautiful, looking ahead there are consecutive stretches of 40 kilometre [...]
This is not what I would call the usual holiday. It is sometimes a test of endurance especially with the present heat, unusual for southern Spain this early in April. I'm not feeling that I have to prove anything. What I like is the camaraderie of people walking the Camino. We might walk alone during the day because everyone [...]
I seem to be fighting with technology again. Prepared my blog postings for the last three days and then lost it in space. In the big picture, it's just a champagne problem, so just take some deep breaths and move on. I'm sure you will forgive me for not posting on time. It's just an aggravating factor. The walking [...]
Madrid and Seville are behind me now. I've stopped being a tourist. I'm a traveler now. Where am I going? Where are any of us going? I could say I am walking to Santiago de Compostela but that seems too difficult. My journey is 1000 kilometres. It sounds an impossibly long way to walk and there's little consolation from [...]
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 [...]
My next door neighbour here in Madrid seems to live in a gated community. I had to forgo any formal wear on this trip so it's unlikely I'll get an invite from King Felipe V1 It's been a long day of travel - Toronto to Amsterdam, a four-hour stop and then a connecting flight. With such a brilliant location [...]
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 [...]
When I mention that I'm walking the Camino, people sometimes will ask me whether that is the pilgrimage route that passes from the French side of the Pyrenees across into Spain and then westward to Santiago de Compostela. That is not incorrect. This is the route that now upward of 300,000 walk every year and, included in that number, [...]
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 [...]
I'm continuing on with the account of the journey of my first Camino as this is the setting for my book entitled "My Camino Walk - a Way to Healing." It is available as an eBook with Kindle, Kobo and iTunes and will be available as a print book later this year, accompanied with some of my many photos. [...]
