It feels surreal to think that tomorrow Dave and I will be on a plane heading to Spain. We cancelled plans to walk another Camino twice since 2019 – first because of the pandemic and second because of my health issue that came up last April. Everything is fine now, thank heavens. I am grateful for all the kind thoughts, prayers, and actions by caring friends and family and know they had a lot to do with this positive outcome. 🙏

We hope to make a quick recovery from jet lag and visit the amazing La Sagrada Familia designed by Gaudi in Barcelona before heading off on an eight hour train trip to Leon. Leon is the starting point for the spectacular Camino San Salvador (Way of the Saviour). We are warned not to be fooled by the short distance of this Camino. Although it is just 121 kilometers, the mountainous terrain will physically test most pilgrims. Usually this Camino is divided into five stages, but we will allow an extra two days. Our seniors’ knees and hips will thank us if we manage to arrive in Oviedo in one piece because we’ll still have 307 kilometers to walk on the Camino del Norte from Aviles to Santiago. We’ll leave Leon on September 9th and hope to arrive in Santiago on October 5th.

Here is a link to a collection of beautiful photos taken on our daughter Tania’s Camino San Salvador journey in May, 2016.

Dave and I walked multiple Virtual Caminos after joining the Camino for Good on January 15, 2021. It has been fun and great training. Here’s a little about our Virtual Camino experience. Today we virtually arrived at Cruz de Ferro – actually Pickles’ Bluff in John Dean Provincial Park on Vancouver Island where we live. The rock we placed there is dedicated to our new, real journey.

During the past month Dave and I have packed, unpacked, and repacked countless times. It’s never easy keeping to the rule about carrying no more than 10 percent of your body weight. The addition of water and food will unfortunately but necessarily put us over the 10 percent rule.  Here are the contents of my 30 litre Osprey backpack.

https://throughourlookingglass.ca/index.php/revised-packing-list/. 

Could WestJet be right when they tell us to arrive at the Victoria International Airport 2.5 hours ahead of time? Yesterday the airport sign displayed a security wait time of 0-5 minutes! Hmmmm… Shall we sleep in a little later or not?

One last thing… According to HostPapa (my web host) my website needs to be optimized to get rid of “faults.” It uses too many resources because of these faults. I am technologically challenged, so the list of things I need to do to fix them is way over my head. I gave up after reading the first two items on a long list. A daily post may not be possible as a result but please stay tuned. Please sign up to receive notifications when a new post is published. When you sign up you will receive an email in your inbox to confirm that you want to subscribe. Click to confirm. Our story will eventually be told either here at our “Through Our Looking Glass” blog or on Facebook. 👣 👣