So, it’s my right knee.
These things happen. How? I have no idea. I wasn’t jumping fences or rock hopping.
I mean, this is the Camino, right?
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Today, pilgrims found each other and “Camino families” begin to form.
“Everybody was so stressed about climbing the Pyrenees yesterday that making new friends was the last thing on their minds,” a young friend suggested today.
We were marveling at how social everyone had become overnight.
Continue readingWhat was I thinking?
I won’t lie to you, today was the toughest day of hiking I have ever experienced in my life.
And not just the first five miles, from St Jean Pied de Port to the cafe/hostel Refuge Orrison.
A lot of people want to stay at Orrison in France to break up the trek across the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain. The alternative is hiking the entire 24 kilometers to Roncevalles where the ancient monastery houses 238 weary pilgrims every night.
Continue readingGround Zero for Camino Frances: St. Jean Pied de Port
The energy on the street builds like a pressure cooker as pilgrims arrive from all directions, register for their Camino, hunt for food and drink, check into auberges for the night or trundle up the road to the Pyrenees.
At 10 am when our train arrived from Bayonne, St. Jean was oddly quiet.
“Where is everybody?” I asked a Dubliner named Guy in the Camino registration office.
Continue readingAfter a long day of travel, finding gold in Bayonne
So, this is France. Nice place. Bayonne, specifically. Having left San Miguel de Allende on Sunday morning by ETN bus, it is now Monday night and I got to Bayonne just in time to catch the sunset.
Let me tell you that between there and here, not much happened. In Mexico City, I sent my Uber driver to the wrong terminal at CDMX.
No problem. That’s what the tram is for.
Continue readingCamino-living: Cramming a 224-pound life into a 17-pound backpack for the next 43 days.
That’s it. That’s as light as I can make it, 17 pounds (or 7.711 kilograms).
I am now relieved that I picked the Osprey Manta 34-liter bag because there isn’t a cubic inch left to spare. I’m also relieved that I opted to jettison the 2.5-liter HydraPak that came with it.
I needed that space for, you know, clothing. As for hydration, a couple of water bottles in the side pockets will do nicely.
People like me, we find ways to fill an extra-large suitcase just as easily as we fill a medium-sized one.
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These boots are made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do — well, one pair will
On Sunday, I leave Mexico to walk the Camino Francés.
That’s about 500 U.S. miles of walking over perhaps 34 days.
Unlike the Adirondacks, the Pacific Crest, or the Appalachian trails in the U.S., the Camino has cell service, probably too many people (to which I am contributing), and many indoor sleeping options, from bunk-room auberges to hotels with saunas and pools.
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One last day, walking Dublin with James Joyce by our side
Leopold Bloom poses a tantalizing puzzle in James Joyce’s epic novel “Ulysses”: “cross Dublin without passing a pub.”
Thanks, I suppose, to computers, GPS, and Google maps, that puzzle has been solved many times over. Why you would want to do it, is a puzzle to me. When in Ireland. …
Here’s a tougher puzzle: Walk across Dublin and not see a reference to James Joyce – be it a photograph, a statue, a quote on a wall, a bookstore window, a mural, a pub name, a simple conversation, or a T-shirt in a tourist shop.
It feels like Joyce is Dublin and Dublin is Joyce, and though he has been dead these many decades, the full ripe glory of his passion for this city is everywhere.
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Sunday morning and Ennis slowly stirs awake
Dublin is alive and kicking by the time we arrive
Our man Mick picks us up at Corofin Country Lodge on Sunday morning and drops us off in the center of Ennis, as promised. Thirty euros all.
Mick looks like Jason “The Transporter” Statham. All efficiency and business. The man in black. The car in black.
Unlike Statham, Mick likes to speak. He’s quite a conversationalist. I think. Mick speaks in a thick accent that may have been a mix of Gaelic and English. His words came in phrases, in short rapid bursts like an assault rifle.
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Day 3: Fanore to Ballyvaughan, mythic meets the mystical
This morning is one of those “it might rain” weather forecasts, and a few sprinkles are falling already as Amy drives the kids to school and us a mile farther up the road to the trailhead for the hike to Ballyvaughan.
We’re all talking rapidly as if trying to squeeze a lifelong friendship into a five-minute ride. We really like Amy and her family.
She tells us of the difficulties of the universal lockdown in Ireland during Covid, how neighbors turned in neighbors if they violated the 5 or 10-kilometer perimeter set up for each home, how stir-crazy everyone became, and how hard it was to make a living on a short leash.
“You’re heading out on my favorite hike,” says Amy. “We all discovered the Burren and hiking during the lockdown. It was the only thing we could do. And now I love it.”
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