Spanish Stroll

…Well, in principle at least. Today marks the point in my journey that I finally turn inland for the last stretch down to Santiago, having walked around 625km, or nearly 400 miles, across the northern coast of Spain, guided almost exclusively by a succession of little yellow arrows daubed on pavements, bridges, walls, trees and … Continue reading →

Well, if that headline didn’t get your attention, nothing will. (Although presumably it did otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this). Let me explain. I was just getting used to being The Fast Walking Blogger, when all of a sudden a new nickname got thrown into the mix. Apparently my policy of allowing myself one hotel … Continue reading →

They say that walking El Camino de Santiago is an intense experience, and I think it’s fair to say that my experiences so far bear that out. Quite apart from the extravagant beauty of the scenery and the spectacularly aching appendages that I’ve been endlessly banging on about, there have been many other memorable firsts, … Continue reading →

If I’d been a little bit braver this morning, today’s header photo would have been considerably more dramatic than this one. I took a mercifully brief (compared to yesterday) detour from the Camino because a waymarker had been obscured by some undergrowth, to find myself in a muddy field nose to nose-ring with a decidedly … Continue reading →

I think the fact that I seem to have started taking an interest in the sex lives of dragonflies might suggest that I’ve been away from home too long already, or at the very least that I shouldn’t be spending quite so long in the midday sun…but you’ve got to admit, that does look remarkably … Continue reading →

…I carried on walking. To Bilbao. At 15.4km, this stage is by far the shortest of The Northern Way, which I had been looking forward to in order to give my body a bit of break. But it has to be said that its brevity is in direct proportion to its aesthetic appeal. The first … Continue reading →

Nope, haven’t given up and headed for the less challenging terrain at Anfield; this is an example I saw on my way out Markina-Xemein of  the random words of encouragement to walkers that pop up in the most incongruous places along The Way, and which generally succeed in bringing a smile to your face, even … Continue reading →

Strange how such a quaint English cricketing term can mean something quite so different in another language. Interruptores de la pierna – leg breakers – is the term that the local walkers of The Way use to describe the 24.5km worth of vertiginous ascents and descents that make up the 4th stage of The Northern … Continue reading →

I’m a day late (that annoying thing called work getting in the way), but I’m finally here in Irun: a French / Spanish border town in the Basque country that is the official starting post of El Camino del Norte, the 825km walk across Northern Spain that I’ve been banging on about to anyone who … Continue reading →