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Editor’s note: Journal staff writer Rosalie Rayburn is spending her summer vacation (and then some) trekking in Spain. Here is an introduction to the trek she wrote before she left in May. She is blogging and posting photos as she goes.

About three years ago, I saw a movie called “The Way” with the actor Martin Sheen, which was a fictionalized account of a middle-aged doctor walking the 500-mile pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, in Spain. I instantly decided I had to do it and set the summer of 2015 as a target date for making that decision a reality.

Since then, my partner and I have read every book we could lay our hands on to research what we needed to do to be ready for the journey.

The “Camino,” as it is loosely referred to, is a pilgrimage that dates back to the Middle Ages. The legend goes that a shepherd found bones in a cave that belonged to the Apostle James. The bones are now interred in a cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, a city in the northwestern Spanish province of Galicia.

There are many routes to Santiago de Compostela; from different cities in Spain, Portugal, England, France and further afield. We are walking the best-known route, the Camino Frances, from the town of St. Jean Pied de Port in the French Pyrenees, through a mountain pass to Roncesvalles in Spain.

We will pass through the regions of Navarra, La Rioja, Castilla y Léon and Galicia. The route will take us through Pamplona, known for the running of the bulls during the festival of San Fermin each July.

We plan to stay in the pilgrim hostels, called albergues, where dozens of travelers pack into large bunk bed filled dormitories that cost a few euros a night. We’ll be washing our clothes in the sink each night and hoping they get dry by the next day.

Our hope is to complete the walk in 40 days, covering 12 to 15 miles each day. It’s definitely going to be a physical and mental challenge.

I’m looking forward to it as an opportunity to live very simply, to meet people from all over the world and to reconnect with the most basic values in life.

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  “In these villages west of Leon, Spain, the local bakery, (or) panaderia, has a delivery service. The bread van drives around the village honking the horn and hanging a bag with the bread delivery on the doorknob,” Rosalie Rayburn writes in her blog.

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  “‘Oh my God, my feet are killing me!’ I could just imagine his thoughts,” wrote Rosalie Rayburn in her blog. “We walked by this statue of a pilgrim on the outskirts of Leon, Spain, yesterday (June 12). We have mercifully escaped foot problems but we have met many pilgrims who have terrible blisters and tendinitis and have had to take time off.”

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