The Crossroads

Yesterday, Francine and I reached a crossroads on our continuing virtual Camino del Norte. I should explain that we have been recording the distance of our daily hikes into a tracking sheet – one square for every kilometer on the Camino del Norte, which begins in the Basque city of Irún. By my count, we’re at 478km.

This was a sequel to our virtual Camino Francés, our pandemic project which we completed in February of 2021.

Well, yesterday we hit a crossroads (indicated on the chart above by a red X). If you were actually walking this route in Spain, this is the spot where you get to make a choice: continue on the del Norte route, or walk two additional days towards the ancient city of Oviedo and walk the remainder of the way to Santiago on the route known as the Camino Primitivo – the oldest Camino route.

In less than a month, Francine and I are flying to the actual city of Oviedo with our friend Callie to walk the real Camino Primitivo. So of course, we took that fork in our virtual walk!

With any luck, we’ll finish our virtual walk on the Primitivo just before getting on a plane to walk the actual Primitivo, which is pretty cool!

A Training Note

We’ve upped our training regimen this week. Instead of just walking our 8km midday with full packs, we are now getting out the door at 6:30 AM to also walk 5km with full packs, bringing our daily total to 13km.