Callicoma Walk (5km) – Fri

Notes:
With just a week to go before I head off bound for France and Spain, I managed to squeeze in what will probably be my final Pre-Camino training session (although it’s rather tempting to sneak out another 14km to reach the 500km milestone).

Doubling up as one of our farewell activities for my Boss, it had us all out of the office and into nature doing some early morning exercise (which is never a bad thing).

The weather forecast all week was for a 78-83% chance of rain and for once they weren’t wrong. But it was light enough and brief enough that none of us minded.

Past reviews on this particular walk often mentioned people getting lost due to the poor sign-posting (there certainly weren’t any big yellow arrows or yellow scallop shells to guide the way) and although I had plugged the route into my Suunto 7, we too had a couple of backtrack moments.

My HS Mk IV hydration system worked flawlessly, as it did on the Mk III version, although it’s real value is in its reusability when a water bottle needs to be binned.

Anyway, another nice little work-out with pack on back. The only downer being the ferocity of the local leeches. I think most of us had at least one hanging off us after the walk (I had four). But as mentioned last time I fed a leech on one of my hikes, I don’t expect this to be a consideration for the climate and terrain experienced on the Camino-Frances. I could be wrong though – I’ll let you know.

Callicoma Walk Wrap-up

• Trekking pole-less today but definately still taking them with me on the Camino
• Recorded the walk on my GoPro with my standard Timewarp settings (1080p, 10x, Wide)
• Preparation was key again – Pre-created the trail and uploaded to my watch which certainly saved us getting completely lost on this challenging route
• I decided to assign today’s Suunto activity as a “Trek” as opposed to a “Walk” and as you can see in the stats above there’s no mention of the step count… I thought it’d be interesting to track those on the Camino over 800km so I’ll be sure I assign it a “Walk” from now on
• Hydration system is working well – Tick
• Boss was happy – Tick
• Leeches, leeches, leeches & leeches… gotta do those post-hike checks in Australian rainforests or the blood-sucking freeloaders won’t stop ’til their tank’s full

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Distance walked today: 5-6km

Weight of Pack and Contents: 12.2kg (incl. 2.4kg of water)

Surface: Mixed (mostly dirt, rocks & mud)

Weather: Light showers

Total Distance Walked for Training thus far: 486km

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