Camino De Santiago

EX-RUNNERS FROM LOUGHBOROUGH UNIVERSITY TACKLED A FAMOUS 500-MILE WALK IN SPAIN RECENTLY

- John Caine

WITHOUT realising it, while walking for a week in Austria in 2016, Richard Tibbott and John Caine – two old friends from the 1965 intake of students at Loughborough College – found themselves on a trail called Sankt Jacobs Weg. Discovering it was part of the Europe-wide network of trails which all form the worldfamous Camino de Santiago, they thought to expand their hiking ambitions in 2017 by tackling the classic 500-mile Camino Frances pilgrimage route from St Jean Pied de Port in south-west France, over the Pyrenees, and across northern Spain to finish in Santiago de Compostela.

Training walks were planned – South Downs Way (100 miles) in February followed by Coast to Coast (200miles) in July. Timing was important, as it was too hot in high summer, the IAAF World Championships were in London in August, so late September and October was selected. Using the walk as a charity fundraising vehicle was an easy decision. Richard lost his wife Catherine to pancreatic cancer in early 2015, so Pancreatic Cancer Research and The Wooden Spoon Society, a charity for under-privileged children were to be the beneficiaries of fund raising.

Early in the planning several friends agreed to walk part of the route with us including fellow Loughborough graduate Mike Candlish as well as freshly-retired BBC commentator and ex-athlete Brendan Foster. Alan and Elaine Jenkins got us off to a great start by walking the first three days to Pamplona, including the tough first day of Napoleon’s route over the Pyrenees.