About the Bicycling Buchans
We are a 50-something couple living in East Anglia, England, who discovered cycle touring was a good way to be together, and escape the demands of home life. One of our five children still sort of lives at home, three are married and there are nearly five grandchildren. Peter is home-based, mainly house-keeping and involved in editing someone’s autobiography. He is now in recovery from CFS/ME which he suffered for nearly nine years until last Autumn. Well, to be honest, there are still plenty of bad days. Bridget works full-time and sometimes struggles with depression. Again, the cycle touring seems therapeutic for both of us.
Some time ago we followed up a latent interest in the Camino, making a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella, in North West Spain. This quickly became a plan to do it ourselves,bit by bit and starting out from home.
August 2008 contains our journal from 2007, when we travelled from home to Harwich, and later from Hook of Holland to Rheims. We stayed in hostels or B&Bs, mostly, and were surprised by the sense of peace that came from taking a day at a time without worrying too much for the morrow, and by how much stronger we both felt afterwards, because we had travelled under our own steam a considerable distance across three foriegn countries and had met with all the welcome and support we needed.
September 2008 we continued our journey from Rheims. We bought a new lightweight tent, to save us some Euros when there is no pilgrim accommodation, which there will be as we travel further south. We headed for Vezelay, the starting place of one of the four traditional pilgrim routes across France, the Via Limoviencis. We reached just south of Limoges before it was time to go home. The blog for this journey is currently (September 2009) very nearly complete – some was written on route, but our journal and photos are in the process of being added.
March 2009: we walked the Camino Ingles with our daughter Kate. This account is complete with photos.
September 18 2009: we are about to leave on Stage 3 – Limoges to Santander or thereabouts! We’ll let you know!
November 28, 2008 at 4:18 am |
This is great! Let me know if you’d like to link exchange.
April 14, 2009 at 5:07 am |
Ok, Bridget and Peter – here you are writing about the camino and commenting on my knitting, and suddenly I discover your last name is Buchan!!!! I grew up in the town of Buchans Newfoundland which is named after David Buchan, an English explorer who spent time in the Newfoundland interior. My school’s year book (which I edited in my grad year of 1967) is called The Buchaneer. I do love synchronicity.
Nigel
April 14, 2009 at 8:49 pm |
And Peter’s father was called David – more synchronicity! Isn’t this world wide web stuff fun! I hope you admired my Golden Shrugs.
August 18, 2009 at 1:34 am |
I think I found your website from the Camino Forum. I’m hoping/planning to travel the Camino Ingles in 2010 or 2011 and have just found the bit in your blog where you say you took that route too. Looking forward to reading about your adventures.