The Genesis

The idea for this journey originated with Ed who was the first one to see the movie "The Way." He told us about it and we all ended up seeing the movie over the ensuing months. The moment we saw the movie we were hooked.

I've been walking with a group of friends for over five years now and for the last three years we walk everyday from Monday to Saturday for at least an hour. So, the idea of doing the Camino was not totally out of the ordinary. One may argue that there is a big difference between walking four miles everyday and walking an average of fifteen miles per day during nineteen consecutive days. In fact, when I met with my cardiologist two days ago and told her what we were planning she said "You're crazy."( She is going to put me on a treadmill stress test to ensure that that I'm fit for the trek...) This was the same reaction my family doctor had when I told her and referred me to the cardiologist.

Since we first agreed to go on this adventure we've been refining exactly what it will entail. There are many caminos that pilgrims take to get to Santiago de Compostela. We settled on taking the Camimo Frances which, besides being the original and the one featured in the movie, starts in France just north of the border with Spain. Doing the entire Camino Frances entails walking nearly 500 miles in 31 days.
While a couple of guys wanted to walk the entire camino, we finally settled on a 300 mile journey from Burgos to Santiago. A good compromise for a bunch of guys who have never done anything remotely similar to this...