We are Jim and Linda, a retired couple living in Greenville, SC. When we are not spending quality time with our children (5) and grandchildren (14), our next favorite pastimes are relaxing on beautiful beaches and experiencing interesting places.
Jim worked in manufacturing and corporate management for 30 years and has been a small business consultant since 1995 and continues in a semi-retired status. Linda was a corporate events manager with a large international company. She retired first in 2000 and after a two year break was enticed by her former employer to return on a part time basis until she finally decided to retire for good in 2015.
Even though we both had traveled internationally with our respective careers, we had limited our personal travels to relatively short term trips in the US and Caribbean. That all changed when Linda’s part-time work schedule and an accommodating boss allowed us to take more extensive trips.
In 2012 as we were wrapping up the planning for our “month in Provence, France” trip, we decided to tack a couple of days on the front end to walk the first 15 mile stage of the Camino. This was brought on by a book we read about Shirley MacLaine’s adventure on the Camino some 10 years earlier.
The grueling hike from France, up and over the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain, incredibly, left us wanting to continue. So, in 2013, after spending a month in the German Black Forest, we picked up where we finished in 2012 and walked another 32 miles of the Camino before returning home. In 2014 we started our European visit by walking the next 270 miles of the Camino, then flew to Civitavecchia, Italy to begin a cruise of the Mediterranean. In 2015 after a two-week cruise to the Baltics and St Petersburg, Russia, we returned to Leon, Spain, our stopping point in 2014 and walked the remaining 180 miles into Santiago de Compostela.
Our Camino adventures completed, we thought, we continued our travels elsewhere on the planet. But by mid-2016 we were contemplating a return, this time to walk the entire distance. So, in October 2017, we completed our 5th Camino experience walking the full 500 miles from St Jean Pied de Port, France to Santiago, Spain in 68 days.
The Camino called us again in 2019, so we walked from St. Jean Pied de Port, France to Santiago de Compostela once more.
Covid-19 put a hold on most international travel until late 2021, when we contemplated another trek across northern Spain. So, in 2022 we completed our 7th Camino, walking again from SJPDP to Santiago, but skipping several strenuous segments along the way… resulting in a mere 360 mile adventure… designed to help accelerate the recovery of our encounter with Covid-19 two months earlier.
Jim has been developing an empirical theory about walking the Camino Frances, based on our experiences to date. He believes that each time we walk it, we reduce our biological age by as much as 5 years. If this turns out to be true, from our 77/78 year old perspectives, continuing to walk the Camino as long as we are able, may be an enhancement to both our physical and mental health and longevity.
This became our rationale for taking on our 8th Camino experience, “Camino 2023”. We completed the walk from SJPdP to Santiago, receiving our 5th Compostela in September 2023. Reflecting on that experience and its apparent continued positive impact on our physical and mental health, we decided to embark on “Camino 2024” and, as long as we are able, plan to continue on an annual basis from here forward.
Jimandi 