Why the Camino?

Good question!

At various times over the past few years, I’ve tried to devote some effort to managing my weight and improving my fitness. These periods of activity have tended to last for a handful of years, but each has been followed by prolonged periods of relative sloth and inactivity. At the moment, though, I’m in the third year of a healthful cycle and, happily, there’s no end in sight. It’s been made up of lots of training (averaging around 30K running a week), a few half marathons (Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne and New York City with more to come), several distance walks and some other bits and pieces.

My distance walking career over the past couple of years has taken me to the Blue Mountains near Sydney (the 45K 'Six Foot Track' three times), Tasmania (the six day Overland Track), New Zealand (the Milford Track, twice, and the Routeburn Track) and to the north of England. There, I walked the 315K Coast-to-Coast track from St Bees in the west of England to Robin Hood’s Bay on the North Sea. For 13 days in September 2014, I followed the track through the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales and the North Yorkshire Moors. Like all the other walks, it was a wonderful experience but that one really whetted my appetite for longer distance walking.

Through that period, I’d come to hear, vaguely, about the Camino but had never bothered putting it on a ‘to do’ list. There were a couple of reasons for that. First, I’d only been to Spain once - for a very short time while Eurailing around Europe in 1990 - and wasn’t at all impressed with the place. Madrid, particularly, felt very unwelcoming - unlike northern Europe and Scandinavia where I tended to gravitate to. Second, I’m not an especially religious person and certainly not Catholic, so the apparent focus of the Camino on that side of things wasn’t an attraction.

It wasn’t until seeing the excellent documentary film “Walking the Camino” in mid-2015 that I changed my perspective about it and decided it was a walk that I wanted to do. I suppose my main motivation was a physical one - can I push myself, day after day, to grind out 800K in the height of a brutal Spanish summer? But I’m also open to the spiritual side of the walk that so many writers and bloggers talk about - the almost mystical transformational capacity that days and weeks of trudging along the Camino seems to confer on otherwise unsuspecting pilgrims.

As for finding the time, mid-2016 appeared to fit with the scheduled end of my 18 month Masters of Public Administration program at the University of Sydney. Coincidentally, there was also a window of a few weeks in my running program between the Gold Coast half marathon (probably my favourite race) on 3 July 2016 and Sydney’s iconic City to Surf 14K race (which will be my 23rd) on 14 August 2016.

Voila!

So after searching and booking various international flights to and from Europe (via Singapore and London), and train travel to the start, that leaves me with precisely 34 days to walk the 800 kilometres from St John Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela, before immediately heading home to line up to run the City to Surf early in the morning after I arrive. By that time, I imagine I’ll probably have to remind myself not to take my walking poles to the start line.