13th June Guidance
Guidebooks are written for a reason. To guide, to assist, to suggest, to help. Take your pick. They can off course be subjective with one author's 'must see' not even rating a mention in another's offering. And when it comes to guides for the Camino, we'll the most useful guidance they offer is how to divide the whole route up into stages. Managable stages.
But off course it can only ever be 'guidance' that one can chose to listen too and adhere too, or adapt as one might seem fit from the comfort of an arm chair on a wet February night when the 'expert guidance' of how far to walk seems a bit low.
Setting off I had planned how far I would walk each day and had reserved/booked accommodation accordingly, in the knowledge that if I had a slow day I would still have a bed waiting for me. But the downside is that it means I have to get from A to B each day.
What I hadn't accounted for with said plan, knowing better that the experts who had walked the route before offering their guidance, was the accumulative effects of walking an average of 7 hours a day, carrying an 8kg pack, on mainly hard surfaces, wearing walking shoes on 61 year old legs/feet.
All of which meant that my 'timetable' for today meant I was faced with a 42km day. Well sod that for a game of soldiers as my grandma would say. So I saved myself 3-4 hours walking on the not so interesting part of the walk by taking a bus for 18 mins. You tell me who was the winner.
As a result the rest of todays little jolly to Llannes, along cliff tops, coming close to roaring blowholes where the sea thundered hidden from sight, past gorgeous beaches and through lovely villages was an undulating, twisty delight. Maybe next time I'll listen to what the experts say.
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