Getting Ready for the Ruta del Ebro

Tomorrow, I will be heading back to Spain.  This year's Camino is another one of those solitary routes, the Ruta del Ebro, which starts at the mouth of the Ebro River on the Mediterranean, at a place called Ríumar.  The Ruta del Ebro joins up with the Camino Castellano-Aragonés, which goes through Zaragoza and then Soria, two Spanish cities that are pretty unfamiliar to me.  At some point, I will merge onto the Ruta de la Lana, then the Camino San Olav, and if all goes well, I will find myself in Burgos about 3 and a half weeks after starting.  From there, given the lack of time, I will hop on a train to León, and hope to once again walk the beautiful Camino del Salvador to Oviedo, and finally, the Camino Primitivo from Oviedo into Santiago.  Though this sounds like a crazy mishmash of Caminos, if you look on a map, you will see it is all one continuous line; my only disruption will be the train from Burgos to León.

I will be meeting a Swedish walking pal Annie in Barcelona on May 18.  We are set to meet in the Ars café in the Barcelona Sants train station, as close to 10:30 as possible. She and I will then hop on a train to Amposta, take a cab to Ríumar, check into the Hostal Paca, and head out the next morning. That means that on Thursday, if all goes well, I should be walking!  The stages are somewhat longer than the average, but that in part is because of spacing of accommodations and also because of my inability to spend the whole summer walking.  :-)

This year I am starting with a bit of a dodgy knee. I've been doing exercises to strengthen and loosen the leg muscles for the last 8 or 9 months but every now and then I feel some squawking from my knee.  I very much want to walk this Camino in memory of my dear mother, so I will be a bit more stubborn than usual if my knee starts acting up. I am packing lots of ibuprofen and a knee brace. But I realize that I may have to adjust to Plan B once I'm actually out and walking.

All my love to my family and to my most loved mamacita.