THE CAMINO-EAT WALK SLEEP REPEAT. I saw a t-shirt in Roncevalles with this take on a popular novel and film, that just skims over a day on the Camino de Santiago. Add talk, help, meet, pain, love, empathy and respect, and you start to appreciate the emotions and feelings that you can expect to encounter, and probably experience, walking the Camino. In a world of ‘fake news’ and false promises espoused by governments and organisations that hide behind contrived values with clever acronyms, the Camino is the real deal. If you expect nothing and accept everything, the Camino can change lives and reset priorities . Cultural diversity, religious and secular differences, coupled with language difficulties encourage us to listen and accept this new community that becomes your family for 5 weeks. I will rely on these ... read more

MELTDOWN. No, not Chenobyl , or a nuclear plant in Japan. This one was all mine. As those of us have the dubious pleasure to know, anxiety attacks come at the most unexpected times. My latest one popped up at 12.58 last night. These are quite irrational fears or reactions to things that usually never happen, but it’s very real at the time. I put mine down to jet lag, airline food, making sure I don’t miss my train , even though I have 2 alarms set at 5 minutes apart, or the vegan meal I ate for dinner last night. The room I had was also very warm with no way of cooling it down. Another thing I hadn’t noticed until I went to close the curtain at bedtime, was that there wasn’t one. Normally ... read more

“It’s a dangerous business, walking out one’s front door.” While the main character of the Hobbit was exaggerating the risk in stepping out for a walk, Frodo Baggins does have a point about the uncertainty of walking a long distance with no support at hand. It’s time for me to go walking again. It’s the best way I know to declutter your mind, and my mind is overdue. After much procrastination, this year I’m walking the Camino Francés again. I considered other routes but they were, to me, either too expensive, or the tracks had too many hard surfaces. I must admit the Francés is a familiar and a comfortable way to go. People suggest that I do something different; “ There are other places to walk.” I hear. While the route is the same, the ... read more

Being woken by workmen smashing mallets onto metal isn’t my idea of a wake up call. We arrived in Paris yesterday afternoon after a sad goodbye to Tim and Natalia at Bettembourg Station, Luxembourg, and took our seats in the high speed train to Paris. We were in a booth of 4 seats with a table separating them into pairs. Sue and I had it all to ourselves until Metz, France, where we were joined by a young girl and her grandmother; “Bon jour.”, G’day. Merci and bon jour are the extent of my French, and even then I usually revert to English, or what I use as English. The French countryside flew by, and in between nodding off to sleep and reading, I did notice the contrasting green pastures mixing in with canola crops whose ... read more

I try not to get too hysterical about historical, but Trier is the oldest town in Germany. It was the centre of the Roman Empire in the 2nd - 4th centuries but was first inhabited in about 17 BC. It is a city that has been formed and ravaged by wars for centuries but many buildings were spared damage, a situation recognised by numerous UNESCO protected sites in Trier. At the fall of Roman occupation in 480 many buildings were looted for their stone and metal fittings, that were then used on newer projects around Trier. The Porta Nigra and the amphitheater were just two that lost materials, making restoration almost impossible. Trier was bombed in WW2 but has been faithfully restored to its former glory. We arrived on a warm spring day and walked to ... read more