Month: August 2022

After a 30 minute weather delay, our flight left CLT on August 11 for an incredibly smooth and eventless journey across the Atlantic.

We landed in Madrid on August 12 at 7:03 a.m., essentially on time. In spite of the smooth flight, nice inflight dinner and breakfast, we slept lightly and fretfully(typically), for at best, a total of 2 hrs during the 7 1/2 hour flight.

Clearing customs and retrieving our backpacks took an unusually fast 30 minutes. A free 20 minute train ride from Madrid (MAD) T4 terminal to Atocha train station in central Madrid went smoothly, allowing us a couple of hours to get a second breakfast of cafe con leche and tostadas. Our train departed at 11:35 and delivered us to Pamplona on time at 2:55 p.m. A short 15 minute wait in the shade for a taxi, seemed longer in the 99F heat. Five minutes later, we were delivered to Hotel Maisonnave, our base for the next three days.

The three days in Pamplona are to give us some transition time to recover a bit from losing a night’s sleep, to adjust to crossing 6 time zones and to make a few final preparations on our way to St Jean Pied de Port, France.

Blogger’s note: As we walked out of the Pamplona terminal wearing our backpacks, a gentleman greeted us with “are you the people who are walking the Camino for 68 days”. He (Paul? from Miami) had discovered our blog and was beginning his first Camino. Ironically, his wife has speculated that maybe he’d see us. Perhaps we’ll see him again. A nice way to begin our Camino.

For first time followers and anyone who has not explored our blog site, here is a brief tour:

As a follower, you are currently reading an e-mail containing our most recent post.

To see previous posts, find the Jimandi link, in blue, at the top of each post. Clicking on this link will take you to the Home Page of our blog, where you will find our latest post.

Previous entries can be found as you scroll down the Home Page.

At the top left corner of our Home Page, are 3 small horizontal lines. This is the link to our blog Menu. It contains additional information about us, our previous Caminos and the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in general.

The Menu items are links to various other Pages on the blog site that you may find interesting.

• Clicking on “Home”, returns you to the Main page with most recent posts.
• Clicking on “Camino 2022 … here we come“ gives a list of links to each of our Camino 2022 posts in chronological order.
• Clicking on “Trip Journals” is a chronological list of posts for each of our Caminos.

Please keep in mind, that every page on the site has the Menu link in the upper left corner, allowing easy navigation within the blog site… especially if you get lost!

Since mid-July, we’ve been preparing for the Camino.

We’ve been establishing a routine of going to bed at 9:00 p.m. every night to assure a good night’s sleep before getting up at 6:00 a.m. By 6:30 a.m. dressed and wearing our walking shoes/boots/sandals, we begin walking outside, in and around our neighborhood. We typically have walked 2-3 miles before returning home for breakfast. After breakfast, because of the extreme heat and humidity, we’ve driven to our local YMCA and walked another 2-2.5 miles around an indoor track. This has been to establish a routine, similar to what we will use daily for our walk across Spain.

In parallel, to our physical preparation, we have been identifying and gathering those items we will need to carry in our backpacks to support our 2-month, 500 mile walk. During the past week, we have been paring down to only essential items to minimize the weight we have to carry on our backs.

Preparations for Camino 2022 are essentially complete. The final tests have occurred in recent days as we loaded and weighed our backpacks (Linda’s at 21lbs and Jim’s at 23lbs) and walked with them to re-acquaint ourselves with the optimum settings and adjustments (after 3 years of non-use) to assure maximum comfort during our walks.

Yesterday, we received, via email, our approved Spain Health Control document. This, along with our passport and Covid Vaccination/Booster ID card will enable us to clear customs at the Madrid airport.

Tomorrow morning, we”ll drive to Charlotte where we will leave our car with our daughter, Amy, and then check-in at CLT for our flight to Madrid.

Even though we thought we’d walked our last Camino in 2019, we’re now about to do it at least one more time!

We’re three years older and recovering from a “post 2 vaccinations+2 boosters” mild version of Covid-19. Like most victims of the “plague”, we are still experiencing the tiredness that accompanies just about all of our activities. Fortunately, our fatigue is not debilitating but more of an inconvenience and a good reminder to pace ourselves.

So, the plan is for Camino 2022 to be an approach for us to work our way back to full recovery from our Covid experience to normalcy. A “paced” approach, coupled with the ever-present healing forces of the Camino Frances will, hopefully, expedite our progress to a full recovery.