It's just a week since I attended the engaging Sunday liturgy at the Cathedral in Le Puy and the special Pilgrim's Mass on the Monday morning, before taking up my trusty sticks, pulling on my all-weather boots and leaving for St Jean Pied de Port, a place of beauty and charm nestled at the base of the Pyrenees some 740 Ks away.

Well here it is 4.30am as I prepare to set out on Day Six. For the past five days, I have averaged just over 30 Kms a day (at least that is what my Fitbit tells me). The distance is unremarkable, until one factors in the terrain, some of the tracks, the pack on the back of an ageing body, and the feet in those boots trying to avoid those rocks big as boulders and the scrambled network of exposed roots so as to not measure one's length on an unforgiving surface, and become a Camino causality statistic.

'Edge One' encouraging statistic is the number of steps recorded by the Fitbit. Those Kms translate to an average of 40,000 steps a day! There is perhaps a discrepancy between distance travelled each day and number of steps taken caused by the cautious half or quarter step, as one gingerly negotiates the more challenging sections. Each time the 30,000-step mark is reached the Fitbit goes off with a "buzz" and a star appears on the screen!

So much for the trivia of the daily routine, because there is so much more to walking the Camino! More of that in the coming days.

In the meantime, I thought I would list a few the events and encounters experienced, some of which have surfaced long past memorable stories.

1. One night and breakfast in Paris

2. The two lawyers from Singapore

3. The contrasts between this section of the Camino sand the Spanish one.

4. The personal challenges- physically, emotionally and spiritually- even at an advanced age one finds that there is still so much self-knowledge to discover.

5. Prayer

Must finish here and take breakfast, before I head off on Day Six, thankfully only about five hours walking.

Au Revoir

Jim