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Alone on the Camino: One Woman's Journey of 800 Kilometers at Age 80
Paperback
Series: Alone on the Camino
Adventurers & ExplorersBiographies GeneralTravel Writing
ISBN13: 9780646750002
Publisher: Self Publisher
Published: May 30 2026
Pages: 350
Weight: 0.69
Height: 0.87 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
In 2015 I found myself challenged as a fast approaching 80 year old, to walk 800 kilometers, along a humble roughly formed pilgrims track that historically wove invisible threads across centuries that was the equivalent of walking approximately one fifth of the way across Australia. I was required to carry a meagre back-pack weighing 7 kg of everything I would need to survive this somewhat unusual journey.
I also would be required to seek shelter in communal auberges at night where I would eat simple pilgrim meals with strangers I had never met before. Then I would share a dormitory style sleeping space with the same strangers before sleeping side-by-side in bunk style wooden slat beds in huge cold and often of mixed sex accommodations on equally cold hard mattresses that promised sleep would at best be fractured and broken.
After a somewhat relaxed attempt at a training schedule I set to this self induced challenge with gusto in 2017. I was 76 when I found myself half way round the world from my home, alone and determined at the base of the Pyranees Mountains taking my first step on this rugged walking track. Here I was to find myself experiencing health issues that would surely 'choke a horse' forcing me eventually to make three return trips by air, two of those for surgery to keep me going back for more. This was to take me a total of eight years to complete as I tackled heat induced exhaustion coupled, at other times, with bone chilling freezing cold mountainous country often traversing wet, miserable, muddy, rock strewn paths. Paths that could challenged those twice as fit and half my age when I finally and honourably claimed my Compostela at Santiago Cathedral. This humble single piece of paper, to me, is worth its weight in gold for it proclaims I have indeed walked 800 kilometres.
My path taught me much for I was challenged on various occasions testing my dogged determination to the max. One time I narrowly avoided abduction by mine host in a aubergue, on another occasion I quickly absconded from a procurement situation by a self confessed Taliban soldier returning he claimed from eastern training camps, then there were the scammers who infiltrated my phone causing me to block all bank transactions to avoid fraud.p.However to balance experiences somewhat I encountered also amazing heart-stopping moments like I once found myself walking through a myriad cloud of thousands of brilliant multi-coloured butterflies on a scorchingly hot sun soaked afternoon that was purely magical as well as on one other day grieving the demise of a tiny field mouse family on the stoney country road I trod, while another time I stood transfixed in my tracks as a gentle breeze ruffled the countless restive leaves in a plantation of birch trees that I swear resembled a long lost melody tucked safely away in my ancient memory banks of a long gone childhood.
Here on the Camino you will find a plethora of kindnesses, that are indeed unique, for this seems to be a rarity seldom to be found in our sterile, self-absorbed modern world of today.
My story will take you down laneways paved with memories both precious and rare as I happily destroy my own health along the way one single step at a time for an adventure that is beyond compare.
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