Travelling really long distances

Just can’t believe that New Year is now two weeks away….

I have a question for the readers of this Blog (if there are any) but first I just need to share the following with you -

We spent a wonderful week up in the North of Scotland at a place called Nigg with a bunch of really great people. Richard and Sabine, our hosts, run a seriously good B&B there (check out http://www.niggbnb.com/) and our good friend Mike drove some of us up and back down again – was it 1500 miles? Almost as far as Alison and I will be walking!

When we were there we ate/drank/walked/danced and broke bread together, we made a student cross leg out of snow and I will never forget the walk we did leaving a long trail of our footsteps across a beautiful snow covered landscape, stopping occasionally to eat Christmas cake and drink good malt whisky or some other high octane beverages (what was that Polish liqueur called again?) while some of the group tried to make snow angels in the very deep snow.

Thank you Mike (a star for sure) and thank you everyone else for being there and to Richard and Sabine for their fantastic welcome. And thank you Susie’s mum for the stop over on the way up and to our daughter Dominique for the Durham stop over on the way back.

The weather did stop us from getting to the Dornoch New Year’s street party and put paid to the surprise visit we planned for my sister who lives in Lybster (another great B&B www.acarsaidlybster.co.uk) a further 64 miles north of Nigg. Sorry Sheena and Norman!

So enough of the thanks and the ads and all that….

I have to say that we are not just planning to walk all the way to Santiago; we also have to plan a brief interlude during the walk when we will be slipping back to Durham for a day from somewhere in Northern Spain.

I know it sounds weird but it is necessary as our middle daughter graduates from Durham University this year and the graduation ceremony is on the 29th of June. As the proud parents (and as we went to her sister’s graduation, too) we need to be there! So far, I have found an affordable flight from Biarritz to Stanstead and back. Which would mean getting a couple of buses from wherever we are (Pamplona?) to Biarritz, fly to Stanstead, train to Durham, dress smartly for the occasion (clothes stored with Dominique before we start the walk), celebrate, jump on a train and reverse the route back to the place we first though of (Pamplona?).

Of course, I will keep looking, but have you got any other ideas? Have you travelled around there and perhaps know a different route? Perhaps we are too close to it and something extremely obvious has been missed by us…

Ideas in an email please.

See, I told you we would soon be getting you to do some of the work!