Day minus 2 – Leaving home

I’m moving out today, as far as Dublin. So that will be the end of practical preparation and a little time for thinking on the coach. i hope to be as relaxed and laid back as the fellow above whom I met on the Camino aroudn Arzua a couple of years ago.  I posted a list of things I did to prepare on the CSJ (Confraternity of St James, the UK Camino society) page on FB which cannot be ‘shared’ (because it is a ‘closed group’) so I am posting it here again.

As promised, something about preparing to set off on a 2000km walk to Rome. It is not all that much different from setting off on Camino in a way, and I reckon I can usually get packed and off in about an hour if necessary. Everything for Camino is kept ready and waiting! But it will be near to 100 days walking and that makes it seem like more preparation should be necessary.

A few practical things I have done, first.
1. A new lightweight sleeping bag, from Cumulus in Poland, generously donated to me by family. It weighs 314g and is pictured yesterday with a size 11 Croc and my old one which weighed 896g in stuff sack.
2. I bought a small tablet, which I have never brought before. I have always made do with a phone. I had to learn how to use the tablet, because it is android and my phone is an iphone, but that is OK.
3. I have started a blog. I used to do “Live on the Camino” on the Camino de Santiago forum. As I occasionally wrote longer pieces I found using the phone for this rather difficult, so the tablet and the blog are an experiment. I have just turned the blog on www.walkingtim.com
4. I am bringing a small but sophisticated camera, and a couple of extra lenses, which I have done for the past 3 or 4 caminos. I like photography.
5. I have made contact with a friend of a friend in Lausanne, so can send some stuff ahead to collect when I arrive there which is a help.
6. It is hard work settling on apps. Finding the right app is the new finding the right shoes and socks and rucksack. There are dozens of Francigena apps. I will tell you if any were helpful. They concentrate more on the second half of the path, in Italy.
7. I have still to find a GPS mapping app which I really understand, apart from Google maps. But I don’t rely much on electronic maps, although I like to record my path, and I use my Garmin running watch for that.
8. I had to make some guidebook choices. I am taking the real paper version of the Terre de Mezzo book. It is in Italian, which I am OK with. It is 2011 so is going to be out of date at times, but it looks nice! I like the maps. I have the second volume in English, which I will pick up in Lausanne.
9. I am taking Alison Raju and Lightfoot guides but as Kindle versions. I like guidebooks very much. And more are better. But I don’t want too much weight.
10. One other book – a tiny NT translated quirkily and wonderfully by Nicholas King sj. It has been on all my caminos.
11. I haven’t weighed everything, as I am not going to make any changes at this point, but it is about 6.5kg total in the rucksack.
12. I thought long and hard. And I decided I am NOT going to camp. Encouraged by meeting a few people who didn’t camp along the way and managed.
13. What I have done this time, which I have never done before is planned out where I am going to stay each night for the first two weeks. This is very much against instinct – on the Camino I rarely know in the morning where I will be in the evening. But I think accommodation in France is fairly scarce. I sense the Italian stretch will be much more like the Camino, in terms of infrastructure. So I have been emailing convents and Diocesan hostels and campsites (for chalets) and 3 or 4 hotels on Booking.com. I will see how it works out after that.
14. There is a bewildering array of social media to think of. This CSJ group and a Francigena FB group and the Camino Forum, which has a Francigena section and a Francigena forum. I always feel, a bit like Twitter, that I might be missing a lot ‘somewhere else’. And then the blog, as mentioned above.
15. There is also some mental preparation – I may come back to that.
16. And that’s it. I head to Dublin tomorrow, for Maundy Thursday. I fly to Southampton for Good Friday in Winchester. Then Canterbury on Saturday and an Easter Vigil there. And then Communion in the Cathedral at 8am Sunday, and I’m on the road.