The Pilgrims progress

When Beth and I retired some time ago now, we intended to have a holiday overseas one year and then one or more holidays the next year in Australia, and then to repeat that pattern year in, year out for as long as our bodies and/or our finances hold up. But then along came COVID and sent us into something of a torpor and put paid to our clever scheme. 

 As we were dragging ourselves out of that COVID induced fog our thoughts turned again to holidays, and Beth in her inimitable style got to work assembling a bucket list, calcuating our likely rate of decline and use-by date, analysing finances, predicting world events, and holding a wet finger to the breeze. All she learned was placed in a spreadsheet and when the numbers were crunched the answer was incontrovertible. To even make a small dent on our bucket list our digits needed to be extracted post-haste. 

 So, over the last 12 months we have ticked off the Cape to Cape walk in Western Australia, the Three Capes walk in Tasmania, and the Overland Track in Tasmania, and now on the 10th April, we are about to jump on a plane to Europe for 3 months to wear out another pair of walking boots. We will be doing some touristy stuff in Lisbon, Porto and the Douro valley in Portugal before walking the Portuguese coastal Camino from Porto to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Then we head to the north of Spain to do some cycling along the coast. A little break in Madrid to catch up with friends and then we take a ferry to the UK to do some walking through the Cotswolds and then quite a long walk from Glasgow to Inverness rounds out the trip. 

 We are very much looking forward to sharing some of our adventures with friends S and C who we have known forever. They will be doing the Portuguese Camino with us as well as the walk from Fort William to Inverness. 

 For those of you interested in keeping abreast of our wanderings, I am planning to maintain something of a blog. I have good intentions of posting weekly, but sadly I am not very good at ensuring outcomes fulfil intentions. I promise, however to do my best, and rest assured I will be reminded from time to time of my committments. 

 I have called this Blog "Europe 2024 - Year of the pilgrim". Our pilgrimage is not so much about walking in the way of St James or seeking spiritual enlightenment, it is about keeping our bodies active and enjoying as much of the world as we can at a leisurely pace in the time that we have left on this earth. What better way to do that than going for a walk each day.