2023 – 2024

Christmas is a tonic for our souls. It moves us to think of others rather than of ourselves. It directs our thoughts to giving.

BC Forbes

Happy Christmas and Happy New Year to all my readers. I hope 2024 is filled with positivity and you get walking as much as you can. The last few weeks has been good to me. I have celebrated a birthday, I have been with friends and have been walking. Tomorrow, I visit my family to spend the next few days with them but I think of those who spend Christmas alone.

Thank you for reading throughout the year and I hope you can tag along on my adventures in 2024. I have a lot in mind with trips to Spain and Portugal planned. I will go through them later in the post. For a start, I want to review how the previous year went and talk about how I would like the next year to go. So let’s start with the last year.

2023

I was blessed to not only walk from Porto along the coast in April, but I walked through the meseta from Burgos on the Camino Francés in September. I had my plans made for quite some time – since the end of 2022, in fact. I had previously walked the Portugués coastal route in 2022 so it was familiar to me, but it didn’t make it any easier. The weather was warm, there were long days but it was quite enjoyable. I really like the ocean and there is something about walking with the ocean breeze in my face – it felt very liberating. I missed it when I turned inland at Redondela. You can read about this particular Camino here. Thanks to Sandra, Tanya and other very kind people I met whilst walking to Santiago. I’m sure I will walk along the coast again – I do live near the beach here in Dublin.

On my final night before Santiago, I made a spur of the moment decision to book flights for what would be my “meseta-Camino” the following September. I needed to return and the meseta was calling me. And so I did. I had previously walked from Burgos in 2021 with Linda and really enjoyed it. So why the meseta? I have answered this before - but I love the wide open spaces, and there were days where the sky filled up most of the horizon. The walking is easy too, apart from the Alto after Castrojeriz – phew! that took years from me! I haven’t quite finished my daily blogs yet but I have reached Ledigos – you can check out my blog for my latest post. The highlight of this Camino was my stay in En El Camino – Eduardo is a gent. His albergue / hostel is always busy and I suppose he has taken on the role of receptionist now and not hospitalero – the Camino is changing eh?

Pilgrim Figures and Volunteering in Dublin

2023 sees over 445,000 compostelas (at the time of writing) being issued by the pilgrim office in Santiago, nearly 7,000 being Irish pilgrims (source). This number has increased by nearly 7,000 on last year. Will this trend continue? Personally, I am happy with my sellos and credencials. I was happy to volunteer for Camino Society Ireland for another year. It was great to see greater number of pilgrims back in our centre in Dublin looking for information as they prepare for the Caminos.

2024

Ah, I never thought it would arrive….

Here’s to the New Year, eh? 2024 – such a nice round number. I might mean something to someone, but to me I only have Camino plans.

I originally wanted to fly into Porto and walk up from Vigo to Santiago but I started to think about the Portugués Central route. I want to spend 5 or 6 days walking up from Porto and then leave to A Coruna, after which I will walk down. I have plenty of time for plotting and planning, and I have limited knowledge of the Central Portugués Camino so will be doing a good bit of reading. Linda gave me a blog to read up on as a start https://firstcamino.wordpress.com – so that’s something.

More posts to come in the coming days.

Buen Camino!

If you like what you see, let me know by hitting the ★Like button and leaving a comment. It really helps the site. If you want to hang out with me between posts, then follow me on Instagram and Facebook for more frequent updates. If you really enjoy my posts and want to support the site, I am partial to a cafe con leche. Buen Camino!