redsturgeon wrote:I have aspirations to walk the Camino, again with no religious intent but as a personal challenge. I'd be interested in your thoughts and advice as to the feasibility of this as a relatively fit and healthy 67 year old.
Advice on the best time of year to do the walk and the sort of costs involved would be great.
Thanks
John
Do it John, you won't regret it. My main bit of advice would be not to over plan/think it, don't read too much up in advance and be flexible. If your aspirations extend to doing the whole thing from start to finish, great but know that you probably won't achieve it, that'll save you a lot of heart ache. So much can go wrong, sprained ankles, old knee injuries coming back to haunt you, ditto back/hip problems. You are walking day after day after day and you get a sort of repetitive strain thing going on. If you have any kind of weakness the Camino will find it and not just physical either.
But that's the point really, it's not meant to be easy and it isn't but you sort of just get into it, you find your stride and before long your life boils down to the next coffee stop, the next lunch stop, the next albergue, will you/won't you get a bottom bunk, will the showers be ok, what am I going to eat/drink tonight. You will be shattered at the end of every day and in bed by 9pm and out at 6/7am (or earlier) walking as you watch the sun rise over stunning landscape. And I won't even tell you about all the little things that happen along the way, you'll just have to find that out for yourself.
Other than that, I'd advise getting a single flight* to Biarritz and a taxi shuttle to St. Jean de pied de port (can provide the number, I alway text them using google translate and it works fine), these days because it's become so popular you'd need to do this a week in advance to make sure you've got a seat, I always used to do it on the morning I travelled).
* Due to post-brexit changes you might have to book a return, go for the cheapest you can you might well not use the return part due to date changes or having to return early due to injury.
With a single ticket you're flexible as to when and from where to return, on a couple of occasions I had to book a return flight from the nearest airport - Santander or Bilboa, due to injury.
Since covid people have been booking their accommodation in advance using booking.com or whatever, you might want to do this on your first night at St Jean for peace of mind but I never have, preferring to find somewhere when I got there.
A friend of mine did it last September and my one bit of advice to her was send your rucksack ahead (using one of the many bag courier services - costs a few euros) on the first day because the walk from St. Jean ( the start point) to Roncesvalles, is long and hard, 8 hours min, she ignored my advice and regretted it.
May and September are the most popular time to start, if you can avoid these it would be best because there's less competition for bed space, if not, got with the flow.