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!