There is no planning stage. My flight is booked for April 14, taking me to Zurich first, with a train to Munich the next morning. Sometime around the 19th I’ll take a trip to the German North to let the northern winds do their thing and clear out my head.
There’ll be a short interlude back here in Cyprus in May/June to dissolve my household, and then we’re off to what is shaping up to be a 2300 km walk from Geneva to the West of Spain.
My first stage might take me from Geneva in Switzerland to Le Puy in France. At least that’s one possible plan. The other one is a little less involved: take a train to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port and walk the Camino Frances first, 35 days to get fit, take a train or bus to Leon, walk the (challenging) Camino Salvador and Camino Primitivo, and then head onward to Muxia and Finistère.
Health
In all this, I have to consider my health. I have no doubt, that it’ll improve while walking, but especially at the beginning, I have to be careful. So, I will be putting in breaks, return to Munich, and have blood drawn.
The thing about blood draws is, that they’re best done by the same laboratory every time. Labs have their own calibrations, and even labs in the same hospital might come back with slightly different numbers. At work, we’re used to it, we know how far off each lab is, but as an individual doing tests every two to three months, staying with one and the same lab is about the only way to get reliable data.
While the path is malleable, this part isn’t: I’ll have to get blood drawn every 60–90 days. There are no two ways about it. So, while I am free to walk wherever and whenever, volunteer at hostels as much as I wish, I have to keep a three-month home schedule for medical B.S.
Hardware
Usually, I try to hike as light as possible. This time, though, I want to bring my laptop or tablet. My phone contract is up for renewal, which means I get to choose one of those deceptively cheap new devices. I do not want an iPhone 14, and it’s too early for the 15, so it’ll probably be an Apple Watch Ultra for 1€ I’ll add to my arsenal. My phone camera is good enough for my needs, so I won’t be bringing an extra DSLR, but this also mandates the brining of two 10k mAh external batteries. All in all, 4 kilos for all of that isn’t unreasonable, meaning I have a max of three kilos, plus one liter of water, I can pack in clothing and hygiene.
Maybe it’d be a good idea to bring some kind of lapel mic for the voice-over recordings on Substack.
Software
DaVinci Resolve works on the iPad, so no worries there. Image editing will probably happen on my phone, Arc will be logging my travels, so I can post GPX files, and FindPenguins, Flickr, and mikka@medic.cafe will be used to communicate with the world, while this Substack will host (hopefully) daily videos, podcasts, and texts.
Most of all this will be decided during the first trip. What works, what doesn’t, and whatever really needs to stay at home. I never thought, that “just leaving and not planning” involved that much planning.