Are We Nearly There Yet?

We leave in one month, 7 days, 23 hours and 25 minutes. I have walked twice and saved $600. The excitement Mum and I are feeling is beyond words. I have travelled but never as far as Europe, and now I am going to walk across an entire European country. The excitement however, doesn’t seem to help me prepare. I have so much to do and I just can’t think where to start. What shoes do I need? Where does a girl find a jacket that is both functional and fashionable? What kind of idiot am I to think about what I will look like when there is a likelihood I won’t shower for days at a time?

My work colleagues keep suggesting I watch all the Camino movies being released at the Film Festival. I am too scared of this and have instead chosen to look at the beautiful and heavily filtered #CaminoDelNorte beach shots on Instagram and live in a dreamlike state, pretending it’s not hard and I can do it.

Mum on the other hand is walking EVERY DAY!! She has bought the shoes, the jacket, even the bum bag. She is ready, she is capable, she is strong and she CAN do this. Her biggest concern is remembering the password for this blog site.

So today, I will commit to walking up the 15 flights of stairs to my office every morning and I will commit to walking to and from work every day. I actually started that this morning and left the house just as the heavens opened. Within one minute I was soaked to the skin and happily accepting a ride from a kind couple who did not know me but saw me and felt such pity for my drowned rat image that they pulled over and told me to hop in. As I eagerly pulled open the door I did consider ‘stranger danger’ but at that point was willing to accept death over the 20 more minutes walking in that torrential rain. But I think as we embark on this epic adventure this is the perfect beginning to my commitment to this trip. I embraced strangers, I got pummelled by weather and I realised that I really, really need to buy a jacket!!