“And love is also an adventure, a search for a North-West passage out of inauthenticity”- Raoul Vaneigem (The Revolution of everyday life).

Yes that is a woolly hat on the Costa Brava- rainbound in the Hubba Hubba for the afternoon.

We are here at last on the gently lapping shores of the Meditterranean, and our ‘theoretical’ hike along the GR1 must soon be transformed into practice. We are both tired from the train journey down, long waits on cold stations, and stuff from home that still weighs on our mind. The leaving is always hard and I miss Oscar too much already…there’s tons of people with little terrier dogs in our campsite which makes it worse! My dominant feeling right now is nervousness, Barry (lucky for him) feels excited. It’s not that I don’t want to start the GR1, but the final frenzied days of preparation have taken their toll a bit and it’ll take time for me to relax into things.

Sitting in the campsite, our little tent surrounded by large campervans, I am happy that we have accepted the challenge of this adventure, to push ourselves out there, and give it our best shot. There is some things I am a bit scared of and plenty of doubts about the journey ahead, but doing this feels real in a way that is important to both us. Life begins at the end of our comfort zone as they say, and seeing our neat little gear set-up that will take us out into the wilds for 3 months makes my heart leap. Hundreds of miles of sierras, forests and plains lay ahead, the season will turn from spring to summer and we’ll follow the sun, ever westward towards the horizon. Somewhere over that horizon lies Santiago de Compostela and Cape Finisterre, but for now that is too far to contemplate, and even trying to imagine it makes me feel a bit defeated. Like the GR11 before, this journey will be taken one day at a time, it is the quality of each day that makes it, not the distance. But it is also undeniable that Compostela and Finisterre, even at this distance, have a magnetism that draws us.

Anyway, it has started raining (!), what happened to our balmy evening on the Med! So we’ve cracked open a beer and are sitting in our sleeping bags in the tent listening to the rain patter and blackbirds sing (see photo!)

I have not really decided how I’ll blog from the trail yet, retaining phone battery for navigation is a priority. I don’t want too much ‘pressure’ ( which I impose on myself) to post if it is not convenient. Chances are I’ll do a short update every week and occasionally some highlight blogs, then follow-up with some fuller posts with pictures when we’re finished. We will however, post our pictures more regularly on Instagram- you can see these on the sidebar of the wildpilgrims blog home page if you scroll down. Alternatively you can go direct to our Instagram page (search for @wildpilgrims) and even follow us if you like! Most blog posts I upload from the trail will be just text and the pictures relating to them will be on Instagram. Inserting pictures into WordPress on a smartphone is very fiddly. So, we hope you enjoy following our journey, soon it is time to set a course westward on the mighty GR1.