We are off to Spain (again) in a few weeks!!

March , 2024

Below are pictures from our 2023 Camino de Santiago as we walked the 480 miles from St Jean Pied de Port in France to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain.

G – It is March 10^th as I write this entry. I leave on April 10^th – 31 days from now. We have said in these journals many times how the people and the experiences are what keeps us going back to the Camino. Every time we have finished, we are already talking about when we are going to return. This will be the fifth time in the past ten years that we have travelled across the pond to meet new friends while walking 14 miles per day across the beautiful northern Spain countryside.

This year will be slightly different. First of all, I (Gary) will be leaving 20 days before Elizabeth. My plan is to go to Porto, Portugal and walk the Camino Portugues da Costa – the coastal route. This route will take me 172 miles along the northern coast of Portugal and into Spain, ending in Santiago de Compostela as most Caminos do, at the cathedral of Saint James. I then plan to take a train north to Ferrol and walk back the roughly 70 miles to Santiago on the Camino Ingles. I will then fly to Madrid where on April 30^th I will meet Elizabeth, our son Cooper and his wife Chelsea.

The four of us will then fly to San Sebastian on the Bay of Biscay and get a taxi to St Jean Pied de Port. After a night in SJPdP it will be walking west for the next 5+ weeks.

We have had fun these past few months working with Cooper and Chelsea to help them prepare for their first Camino – footwear, packs, clothes, etc. Cooper walked the first 500 miles of the Appalachian Trail with me in 2018, so he knows what it is like to walk every day for a month, while carrying everything you need on your back. They will be visiting Switzerland for two weeks before joining Elizabeth and I in Madrid on April 30^th. They have been planning for almost a year to be away for 2 months. We are very excited to be able to share with them the experience of walking the Camino.

For those of you wondering – Tucker, our younger son, was invited to join us as well. He decided to stay home, so he and I (Gary) just enclosed his car port into a garage. He is very excited about having an indoor parking place and workshop.

On the journey home, we typically fly back through Madrid. This year we (all four of us) decided to go home by way of Dublin and spend 3 nights there. Should be a fun conclusion to this amazing trip.

The plan is to post every 2 or 3 days, as we did last year (2023). We always love reading your comments and don’t hesitate to ask questions. We can always use new ideas of topics to cover.

When you choose to collect experiences rather than things, you will never run out of storage space. —Joshua Becker