Becoming one with my back pack

Jackie O’ Soul Searcher Blog Entry

I´m not really sure what day this is or how many days I´ve been on the Camino, but I´ll try to get it all in here since I started. It has been amazing in many ways!

Camino Day 1

Ken and I joined together in St. Jean Pied de Port and started out a little later than everyone else. We headed down to the post office to see if we could send stuff ahead as my pack was very heavy. Ken needed to send some post cards. It turned out that it would have been very expensive to send from there, so I carried everything.

After the post office, we headed out of town and started the journey. We walked along a country road and went up and up and up. It was a very steep climb but the view was spectacular! As we climbed, we saw beautiful fields, farms, cows, sheep and as you looked back you could see the towns we were leaving behind. I have to say Thank you to Suzie for the walking sticks! I have thanked you many times the past few days! They are life savers! Anyway, we walked along, all the while picking superb blackberries that grew along the side of the road, until at one point, we came across a small road that went off to the side. It was more of a grassy path, but you could see that maybe trucks took it once in a while. We took that road (followed an older man who took it) and things just got steeper, but it was nice and soft to walk on. We also had to avoid the sheep manure as we walked. At another point, we saw a path going straight up so Ken decided we should take it. It brought us thru brambles and I got my arm scratched up, but it led us to the initial paved road that we had started out on. We figured out later that by taking those 2 short cuts, we saved about an hour to get to the first stopping point.

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