Lurking and Walking

[Watson, John]

G'day Marcia
The older, unfitter and overweight a person is, the more care they must
take.  I feel you should have little trouble if you do what the weakest link
says they can do. Personally, as a 61 YO who walked last year, I would not
go from St Jean if a member has weak knees. The path over the Pyrenees is
the hardest part of the trip. Why jeopardise the whole trip? It does not
make the trip any more meaningful. After all, most medieval pilgrims walked
twice as far, so there's nothing magical about St Jean. You could walk from
Pamplona, even.
 From Roncesvalles to Santiago is just over 700 km. If you average a tick
over 20 km a day the trip takes 35 days. Allowing 2 days for R&R (Burgos and
Leon, say) that's 37 days!
Somedays you will HAVE to walk further than 20 if you want to sleep indoors,
but other sections are shorter so it evens out.
The oldest I walked with was 84. He made it with only a little help. You
will have a marvelloius experience. Enjoy it all.
John

-----Original Message-----
From: Marcia Pelletiere [mailto:mpelletiereaWORLDNET.ATT.NET]
Sent: Saturday, 4 August 2001 1:07 AM
To: GOCAMINOapete.uri.edu
Subject: Lurking and Walking


Hi,
My name is Marcia, and I've been reading the postings for a few weeks as I
haven't had time to sit and write an introductory message till today. I've
enjoyed the postings (and the archives) very much.

I'm going on the Camino on August 23rd (seems so soon now!) with 2 friends,
returning Oct. 1st. I'm 47, and they are 62 and 65. We three are in various
states of fitness, from fairly fit to overweight, each with our own troubles
of foot and knee and so on, but we are hopeful that we can make the trip
with 37 days of walking from St. Jean Pied de Port to Compostela, with an
average of 15 miles a day, and packs no more than about 15 pounds.

I'd welcome any emails on or off list to address the one issue I've been
mulling over. Should we find we need to go slower, we can't extend the time
allotted for the trip, so we'd need to probably take a bus to cut out a
portion of the camino. I think I remember someone saying that there was one
industrial part that was the least hospitible to walking. Would anyone be
able to share ideas about which section would be best to leave out if one
had to make that choice? I'm happy to get emails via the list or off list,
whichever people prefer. Thanks in advance for any suggestions, and for all
the wonderful postings.
Marcia