A couple of years ago my eldest daughter Ella suggested I might like to join her in her challenge to walk the Camino de Santiago.  Ella wanted to accomplish this journey during her thirtieth year, 2013.

Our original, very loose, plan had been to walk perhaps the minimum necessary in order to be granted a ‘'compostela'’, the certificate given to pilgrims who have walked at least 100 kilometres to reach Santiago de Compostela, and have an appropriately stamped pilgrim's passport showing starting point and places visited en route.

However, having been inspired by the accounts of pilgrims who have walked the entire Camino Frances, commencing their journey in St Jean Pied de Port on the French side of the Pyrenees, crossing into Spain on the first day of their pilgrimage, and taking approximately 30 – 35 days to complete their trek, I now feel it would be cheating to claim a 'Compostela' without walking the full Camino. As I am currently not employed and Ella will be between commitments at our proposed start date on 16 April, we both feel we should fully face the challenge and walk the entire 800 kilometres. We have allowed five weeks and if we make good time we will trek on to Finisterre, a further 80 km.

I have been training long and hard in the mountains around our home and have built up to walking 30 km with full pack.  

Although we are hoping for an improvement in the weather, at the moment (early April) there is deep snow at the beginning of the route and deep mud further on. We have to be prepared for all conditions and carry everything we need on our backs.  With just two weeks until our start date, I am excited and nervous in equal parts.

Rather than this being a totally self-indulgent exercise, I am hoping to raise some sponsorship funding in favour of Macmillan Cancer Support, in memory of my mother Alice, who lost her long battle against cancer in 2006, and for my father Denys, who died in the same year.

So thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

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