Let's get organised!

My first port of call was airline tickets.  Done.

How do you hire a camper van in Lisbon?  Air bnb, of course. Done.

Meet Puck.  Why Puck?  The Driver really is a driver.  He drives a library van around the rural backwater.  All the vans are named after Shakespearean characters.  (Can you guess where the rural backwater might be?) His is called Titania.  Ours is called Puck.

How do we know where the pilgrim route goes?  We needed help.  Where better than the Camino Forums?  They are a fount of all knowledge when it comes to maps, guides, equipment, places to stay and anything and everything else you (or in our case The Pilgrim) might need or want to know.

Speaking of maps - we needed some.  Imagine my delight when I discovered The Map Shop was (and still is) very near our part of the rural backwater.  Myself and The Pilgrim set off across country on a rainy Monday and found a treasure trove.  Maps?  Done.

All this happened months ago and suddenly, here we are, leaving in a few hours: The Pilgrim, The Driver and The Wife of Bath.  I really have no idea why the other two might think I in any way resemble Alys but I suppose it might have something to do with the description of her as "a headstrong bold woman of her time." I'll take that.

How did we get into this situation?

I suppose I should have started this blog long ago, when the idea was first mooted, and not waited until the moment of truth ( i.e we are leaving within 30 hours) but I didn't, so we will be playing catch-up for a while.

So there we were, sitting around the table in my sister-in-law's kitchen one Saturday night in September.  She was feeling philosophical: as one gets older, as responsibilities come and go, as one contemplates the end of life, maybe one should take a more spiritual view.  She was considering a pilgrimage. I was thinking Canterbury but she was thinking Santiago.  Not the pilgrimage route through Spain but rather the unknown (at least to her) route through Portugal.

I was joking when I said we should hire a camper van and "he" (the brother, the husband, the driver) should drive and I would shop and cook and facilitate.

About three weeks later, after the sister-in-law (hereinafter referred to as "The Pilgrim") had decided this was a good idea, flights were booked, a camper van was hired and planning began in earnest.