rain and snow makes walking interesting in August

Like many I felt like a challenge to create an unforgetable transition from a very active business life and real retirement. Walkiong to Santiago de Compostello was one option but that would have been a supermarket walk with upto 800 walkers a day all following a middle ages myth that the remains of St James are enshrined there when one of the routes indicates that it is the path taken by St James when he left Spain.

So instead  I chose to walk from the lighthouse on the rocly coast west of Irun to the sandy beaches of the Med. In 850 km just one other serious long distance walker was met.Amazingly I expected to get wet on many occaisions. But in reality I only got soaked three times and temperatures upto 37 degrees centigrade in the shade were experienced day after day. At prsent we have the new moon of early August and it prompted me during a thunderstorm to check out what we experienced, that is me and my then fiancé expienced then. The relevant chapters in the book, now available in soft back and Kindle versions from Amazon Books, indicates that we were soaked to the skin with no mountain visibilty, then battered and blown over on a tricky ridge by gale force winds only to find the the Pyrennees that we had walked through for the past two weeks were now covered in deep snow. We might not have survived if we had delayed our walk by a few days. The coastal temperatures dropped from the mid 30's to 18 to 20 degrees for a couple of days even as far south as Benidorm a six or seven hour drive south. 

The book is there to read. If you or your children are tempted by a wilderness adventure the book will tempt you further and gives sufficient informationto do so.