All good things come to end. And I suppose the ones that aren’t good end too. But I’ll put this hiking experience into the good category. It certainly wasn’t fun at every moment, but it’s the kind of thing you look back on and you’re glad you did it.
We ended up hiking a little over 80 miles, from Santander to Ribadesella (minus that one taxi ride). This northern route is significantly more challenging in terms of hills than the traditional route. But I really like the path next to the ocean. This last bit had an impressive mountain range on the other side of the path. We’re proud of the way our bodies held up at their advancing age.
Originally, I was going to go see some more ancient cave art in the area, but I found out yesterday that admission sells out well in advance during these summer months (evidently September is still summer in these parts). That gave us one extra day. After exploring several options, we’ve decided on a cushy one.
After hiking this much, we determined that we didn’t need to subject ourselves to further ascetic practices by staying at a monastery. Echoing the words of the Apostle Paul, “we beat our bodies and made them our slaves.” Now it’s time to treat those slaves a little nicer. Today we took a train and a bus. Tomorrow we’re headed to Málaga to camp out at a beach resort. We’re looking forward to cabanas, massages, and drinks with little umbrellas in them.
Perhaps having our basic (and more advanced) needs met will lend itself to more introspection and philosophizing. If that’s the case, I’ll write some more about the deep insights I’ve discovered. More probably, you won’t hear from me again on this trip as the comforts lull me into a bacchanalian existence that will add more days back onto my Purgatory sentence (I hinted I might write about that at some point… we’ll see).
Thanks to you faithful readers, and the new ones that joined this time around (and au revoir to those that opted out!). I have a couple more planned trips coming up. November is Azerbaijan. Does anyone out there know anything about that place? So far, I’ve only found people who know other people who have supposedly had some experience with it (which puts it into the same category as Bigfoot for me!). I’m one of the leaders this time for CCOP at the big United Nations climate change meeting, COP29 (you can find my account of COP28 in Dubai by scrolling down the list of posts on my Substack homepage). And then just after the first of the year, there is a podcast trip planned to Hawaii in conjunction with the good folks at A Rocha who are doing really good work caring for this ailing planet. No doubt I’ll chronicle those adventures here.
It’s possible that I’ll write something else before those trips, because writing is how I figure out what I think about things. I’d like to have some coherent thoughts before traveling again. But if not, I’d be happy to hear what you think about things.