Hello from Terre

Hello everyone. Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers being sent our way. Things are going well, and since Jim has hit most of the high points, I will only add a few thoughts.

We have both eaten pulpo, which is octopus in red vine. Don´t freak out mom. Jim liked it very much. My impression . . . it does NOT taste like chicken. The breads are fabulous, and French fries fried in olive oil accompany almost every meal.

We have seen some incredible countryside, we have seen beautiful birds that we have never seen before. Until a couple of days ago, there were storks (who have huge nests on rooftops) everywhere. The land we are in now, Galicia, looks like the shire in Lord of the Rings. It is truly breathtaking.

Everyone hug your washer and dryer daily and tell them how much you love them.

I love you all and miss you. We are well.
See you soon.
Terre

On the road, again...

Just Waylon, Ramon and the boys.....

¡Hola! We are signing on from a cibercafe in Palas de Rei (population 2000: Salute!) We have walked in this morning from Ventas de Naron, where we stayed in a Refugio and ate next door at the Restaurant Labrador. (No, that was not on the menu). We were the 3rd and 4th in the queue and met a very nice couple (Manuel and Reme) from Barcelona and were joined by a fellow from the previous two days walk, Ramon. Manuel speaks excellent English and Reme/Ramon a little less so, so dinner was in Spanglish for our benefit.

The walk this morning was good, with rolling hills up and down small river valleys. Wonderful countryside covered in farms and stands of Eucalyptus, which they grow and harvest here. We passed a ´village´ of one house today.

We have stopped here for the day, found a nice hotel (25€ per day!), washed our clothes, eaten lunch, and walked around a bit. We have even bumped into old friends....

Tomorrow we hope to move on to Melide. From there we have mostly smaller towns until Santiago, so we will try to check in tomorrow and then perhaps Santiago. The 27th is our target for arriving into Santiago.

Soul-searching, foot washing, Sarria

After dinner Terre and I assessed our foot situation and decided to book a train to Sarria. That´s considerably down the road, but still more than the 100 KM (62 miles) of walking required to obtain a certificate. Our train to Monte de Leon leaves in a couple of hours. We transfer there an hour later on a carriage to Sarria. We will arrive late, so we probably won´t get in the albergue/refugio there, but instead will book in a hostal or hotel. We worked out a rough 9 day walk from there to Santiago. After this message, I´ll be running some simulations to get 9 and 10 journey models.
[And yes, I am avoiding talking about how disappointed we both are, but we both agreed this is best.]
Aside from that, Astorga is very beatiful - small and compact, with lots of little alleys and side streets, squares for sitting around, and a fantastic cathedral.

Astorga

Quick update from a cyber cafe in Astorga.
We spent two nights in Leon after travelling something like 1 & 1/2 days.
Then we walked to Villadangos de Paramo, 13.5 miles for our first day. Not bad, and the refugio was nicer than I imagined. We have met many people on the walk, including Tasmanians, Kiwis, etc. So far, we are the only Americans. Others have told us we are the only Americans they have seen since France.

Astorga

Today we walked to Astorga, 16.8 miles. Absolute murder. We made it to Hospital de Orbigo early and decided to push on. Very tough - the road was more like a dirt trail with river stones embedded in it. Unpleasant doesn´t begin to describe it. At the end of the day we met two new folks who walked us to the Albergue (municipal quasi refugio). Not a bad room and the shower had hot water - who can complain? But today has taken its toil and, at the very least we are extending the walk to 14 days instead of 13 to reduce the future walking day distances. Or, we may have to bail on walking and play tourist instead.

The Pilgrims Depart

We took the pilgrims to the airport on Thursday morning. It's been two days since we've heard from them, so we think a dragon ate them somewhere in the Spanish countryside. Maybe it was a vegetarian dragon who thought that they were an exotic kind of squash, and so his stomach will be pumped by a friendly village doctor. We can only hope....

Valladolid

Loaded Packs

Somehow I don't think this is what Terre had in mind when I said, "With all my earthly goods I thee endow." Just for reference, Terre's is the one on the left that guys would call 'purple' (that is, eggplant), while mine is just plain blue.

Mine came out at about 20 lbs, while Terre's is slightly lighter.

It's 8 o'clock (2 AM London, 3AM Spain). Tomorrow starts early.

Camino planner

For those of you playing along at home, I've updated my Camino France Route Planner. I've used it to model the consequences of trying to walk a certain number of miles per day. [ Hey, different people handle stress in different ways. ]


EDITOR: currently offline.

At any rate, I wrote this little tool, which is now a primitive web app, to let me select starting locations (Leon, in our case), destinations (Santiago de Compostela), and what I facetiously refer to as 'maximum walking distances'. This toy then calculates a route, showing you the legs of the journey and attempting, if possible, to end each days' journey in less than the max. specified miles. Of course, not all towns have refugios, so my app is greedy.. it assumes you'll walk on til you hit a town with a place to stay. Which we will,, und ve vill like it.

193 miles into 13 days is 14.85 miles per day. Turns out, though, that you actually need to shoot for 15,3 miles in order to do the walk from Leon in 13 days. [Actually, I ran a set of models across a range of max distances to figure that out.
Like I said, stress, people, different. ]

Caveats apply. Not responsible for anything, don't trust my data, I have no idea what I'm doing, etc.

5 days

Yesterday was the 5 day mark til the trip. I laminated our strip maps and an overall map of the route. I don't think I'll take both - probably just the strip maps. I got them by printing off the route information from the wonderful Mundi Camino site.

Jordan is eight!

Today is my niece is 8 years old! Well, sorta.... we celebrated it today, which is practically the same thing. Or maybe it just means that she can have two birthdays.
Unfortunately, it is raining, which means we won't be able to have nearly as much fun outdoors, but I'm sure we will still have a good time. We assemble at my sister's house this afternoon.

Less than two weeks

A little less than two weeks to go now til our walk. This past week, Jonathan Bennett came by and interviewed Terre and I for a brief blurb in the GSL bulletin. He hopes to do a longer article for the diocesan newsletter and a followup article when we return.

Things you think everyone knows

This morning I exchanged mail with Jon B., one of my old bosses, and at some point I explained I would be out of the country soon. There ought to be a name for the phenomena of thinking that a fact is well-known when it isn't. At this point, it seems like I've been talking about the camino for so long that I assume that most people know about it and know I'm going. And then I'm reminded that it's simply not true.

Liberty Lake

Terre and I walked 8.5 miles around Liberty Lake this past weekend, with packs. I carried 30 lbs. I learned two lessons:

• Know the distance around a course before you begin, and


• 30 lbs is heavy.

We thought we were walking around a 2.5 mile path. Imagine our surprise and disappointment when we learned that it was only 1.7 miles. Still, it went well. No major issues, though our feet were a little tender after finishing.