Camino anyone?

🚶🏻‍➡️Sort of a support group on a long bloody walk!

So, “I have been thinking” - Louise normally runs for the hills when I open a sentence like this, but please will you bear with me? After joining the prostate cancer support group the other week with The Dodgy Walnut guys, it made me think about how much a group of guys sharing their feelings (any ladies reading this, yes we can share our feelings occasionally!) and their experiences of prostate cancer can actually help the recovery/acceptance process.

With this in mind, and I am going straight in with it;

“Who is up for walking c500 miles across the top of Spain with a group of (probably) middle aged men all with dodgy/no prostates?”

Some of you may follow our other channel (Our Everyday Journeys) that captures our travels in amongst our family and working life etc and this was born shortly after me getting my diagnosis. It was a little like making sure that we did our bucket list items now, rather than waiting for the “right time”, with the chance of missing out completely.

One of the first major tick list items that we did was complete the Camino Frances with two of our teenage’ish children. You can watch it by clicking the below if that floats your boat, we are very proud of what we achieved:

Lovely Reader: “Why the hell would I want to do that?”

Me: “Now the question you should be asking is, why the hell would I not want to do that?”

The Camino Frances for us was something that we were going to complete once the kids had all moved out and Louise and I were happily settled into retired life. You know the format; get born, go to school, get a job, pay lots of tax, find a partner, get married, have kids, work even harder to pay even more taxes, retire, remiss to the good old days, die. We, like many, were on that path of so called ‘life’.

Then, as many of you reading this post, 💥BANG💥, that bloody C word crops up and the doc tells you that the prostate is the culprit. Life suddenly takes a change in direction and all hell breaks loose just to keep your health in check and suddenly paying taxes don’t seem as important now. That is why we decided to take the foot of the gas for a while and get to do some of things that we had always wanted to achieve whilst on this planet. The Camino Frances was one of them, and one of the most scariest, if we are going to be honest…there was no holiday rep to look after us or an all inclusive buffet to dive into 24 hours of the day.

My Brain (on route to the Camino start town): “We are all going to die, I have led us all to our deaths and they are just going to find bones and random rucksacks”.

Spoiler alert: We made it! Phew!

So in the spring of 2022 with flights booked, rucksacks packed and with childlike enthusiasm, we caught our flight into Europe and completed a 500 mile walk over 40 days and 40 nights and ended up in Santiago de Compostela with a completely different outlook in life. It was not about reaching the end destination (I hear the shouts of “he has gone totally bloody woo-woo” at the screen), but about the experience of the Camino itself and more importantly the people that we met along the way. We had heard from others that had completed the Camino Frances how it had changed their outlook in life and it was not until we had completed it that we also had the joy of being in the very small group of people on this earth that truly can say the same.It truly was through the human connection that we encountered along the way and the friends that we still hold dear today that we met on the Camino.

To this day the Camino Frances experience is something that I hold as very high up on my life achievements (obviously following the birth of my beautiful children, meeting Louise and seeing

Oliver Burkeman

on stage at Hay Festival the other day…no restraining needed I promise!) and I was wandering if anyone else in the prostate cancer club would also like to get that experience?

I am sure there are many questions, let me answer a few that I got asked by my nearest and dearest (name changed to protect the innocent):

Nearest & dearest: “You? Walk? 500 miles? Hahahahahahahaha”

My brain: “Sod off Derek, I can walk!”

What actually happened: True, we did very little training for this walk. We got a fair few blisters, I got Plantar Fasciitis and we had to stop a few times along the way. But we made it and that just adds to the story that we still tell today.

Nearest & dearest: “You? Sleep in a dorm with loads of other people? Hahahahahahahaha”

My brain: “Sod off Derek, I can sleep with 20 other people if I wanted too (in the 60’s I heard that was the norm!)”

What actually happened: Albureges can sometimes be noisy, however, we got used to it. The vibe was always friendly, clean and welcoming and most people are soo tired by the end of the day that sleeping in a room of twenty other pilgrims was least of their worries.

Nearest & dearest: “You? Religious walk? Hahahahahahahaha”

My brain: “Sod off, you are getting on my nerves now Derek!”

What actually happened: We are not specifically a religious family, I pray when I feel the need, for us we would not class this as a ‘true religious pilgrimage’ and it was not for the majority of people walking alongside us. We found that people just wanted to gently connect with others, disconnect from the world for a while and reset their lives before heading back into it with a renewed energy.

Nearest & dearest: “You? 6 weeks in Spain, you’ll never do it? Hahahahahahahaha”

My brain: “Bye Derek🖕”

What actually happened: It is a long time to commit to, and we were lucky to be able to arrange work time off etc and it flew by. The time was certainly well spent and it is something that we have prioritised again after the first Camino as we benefited from it so much. This is why I was thinking of organising two different options for completing the Camino…one that is about c35 days and then the last 5 days others that can not commit to the full c35 days can join for the walk into Santiago de Compostela (you still get an official Compostela certificate from the pilgrims office for completing either the c35 days or 5 days route, sweet hey!)

So, the value of the post this week? I am reaching out to see if there is an interest in me organising one of these trips? Would you like to take part in it, would your partner/family get involved? If I did not find it a truly amazing experience I would not put it out there. Ask me some questions in the comments (or in chat if more comfortable with that) about the art of the possible in making this happen.

If you are interested let me know, we might be a member of a club that no one wants to be in….be we still have some gas left in the tank!

Till next week!

If you need more support then there are some great charities ready to help:

United Kingdom: https://prostatecanceruk.org

United States: https://www.pcf.org