3. Getting to the Start

Rhon and I will be leaving Melbourne for Paris on September 8. Pat and Jenny have already left - they are going to have a couple of weeks in The Isle of Man where Jenny's folks live before we all meet in Paris on September 11th.
On the 12th we will be catching a train to St-Jean-Pied-de-Port via Bayonne. We leave at 12.30pm and arrive at 7.30pm.

To travel the full Camino Frances you start at either St-Jean on the French side of the border or Roncesvalles on the Spanish side. Both are considered to be traditional starting points. If you start at St Jean the first 20odd kms is straight up a 'hill' to Roncesvalles - about 1200 mtrs high and many consider this the toughest day of all.When we started our planning we decided this was too big a climb for us on our first day and decided to get a taxi to Roncesvalles instead of riding.But we are spending the first night in St-Jean and will collect our Camino Passports at the pilgrim's office. (The passport is stamped everywhere you stay and is the proof that you need to gain your Compostela in Santiago).

We are spending a full day in Roncesvalles to get familiar with the  bikes, do some last minute preparations and get all fired up to start riding on Sunday, September 15th.

2. Preparing

One of the first things we had to decide was how long we were going to take to do the ride. There were a few considerations (1) our anticipated fitness level (2) our age - I'm 72 and our youngest rider is 59 (3) the accomodation available (4) the hills/mountains (5) the weather (6) the track conditions. Also we were not out to break any records and wanted to take in the local scenery, sights and people. We were not going to sleep in any of the pilgrim hostels and wanted as much comfort as we could get off the bike. I guess our greatest concern was how we would handle being on the bike day after day.
So again we did a lot of internet research, spent a lot of time checking blogs, reading books etc etc and finally worked out a schedule. We will be riding in 18 stages with a rest day in the middle.The daily rides vary quite a bit, the longest being 60km and the shortest is 20km - our last day's triumphal rise into Santiago (well that's the theory). Most days are between 40 and 50kms with the two toughest days - big climbs - at 35kms.

Over the months since our decision to go we have all been riding regularly and have ridden together as many weekends as we could. Rhon, Pat and Jenny have also been to the gym regularly. Our bike fitnesss has improved markedly and we are all pleased with ourselves. We are pretty confident that we can comfortably handle any individual stage on its own - there's just the question still of doing 18 days in a row.

We have learned a lot about riding a bike and had great fun buying lots of bike gear. We actually look like cyclists now.We hired bikes from an outfit in Madrid. They will come fully equipped, delivered to our hotel at the start point and collected from Santiago.

We also had to consider how much luggage we would carry on the bike as we would be taking everything with us everyday. Rhon and I aimed at 10 kilos max. When we came to do our packing we managed to get everything we needed into 5 kilos each in a backpack. That's what we will be taking for the whole 5 weeks we are away.

So we think we are in pretty good shape and are all excited about our big challenge.

1. Background

About 12 months ago we went to see the movie 'The Way' with two friends, Jenny and Pat. For those of you not familiar with the film, it stars Martin Sheen and tells the story of the pilgrimage walk from St-Jean-Pied-de-Port on the French/Spanish border, across the north of Spain to Santiago de Compostela - about 800 kilometers. The film fascinated all of us, and we found the scenery particularly  captivating. Over a cup of coffee we all agreed it would be a fantastic journey to make and that there wasn't any reason why we couldn't do it. Of course reality hit home the next day - I can't walk more than 10 kms (dodgy knees) and none of us was extra fit. But after doing a bit of Googling I found that it was possible to do the journey on a bike. Which was a marginally better proposition as we all did a bit of riding and had 12 months to get into better shape. So we did a bit more Googling and a lot more talking and in December 2012 booked our flights to Europe to start our ride September 15th 2013.