I'm going for a walk

I have decided to go for a walk, a very long walk, 410 miles give or take a few in fact.

A few months ago a friend of mine from camp asked me if I wanted to go to Jerusalem, I did but the thought of being blown up was not exactly my forte. So the other week he asked me if I would be interested in doing the Camino de Santiago. I have heard a lot about it, the priest at my church (who my gran is chums with) does parts of it every few years, in fact he keeps a stone on the side of the alter and tells people to hold it and push all of their worries into the stone. When he goes to walk his camino, he takes the stone to Cruz de Ferro and places it on the pile of rocks. I have also seen the film The Way by Emilio Estavez, which was very insightful and sad.

So why not, I really could be loosing more than a few pounds, I love a new adventure and I couldn't think of a better person to spend it with. The plan needs to start now though, I am currently not fit enough to be jetting off to Spain to walk from Pamplona to Santiago. So I have started walking 5k every few days along the beach, It is a very flat surface but it is a start to get my stamina up a bit. This weekend will be the start of the longer 7 or 8k introducing hills but still on pavement to get my feet ready for the amount of paths and concrete. 

In June I will be flying to Poland to stay with my friend for a few weeks before heading to Spain to start our camino. He lives in Wroclaw and has some beautiful hilly walks around that I am planning to get stomping on before we fly. 

I signed up for a new website with a very informational forum on the Camino de Santiago, everyone is very helpful and extremely nice. I cant wait to get there now and see the beautiful landscape.

Blog Refurbishment

Welcome to 2015!

So the previous existence of Travelandpineapplecakes.blogsopt.com has been refurbished to Misadventures of a Scottish Wanderer. I have went back and edited some of the previous posts to make them a little less horribly written. I suppose now that I am a university student, I have no excuses to misspell everything. 

So summer 2014 was one of my favourites so far, I met some really cool people that I hope will stay connected for a very long time. My summer as a general counsellor was fantastic, my first co-counsellor was better than I could of asked for. The kids were so well behaved (well in a way that they can be), they really did make the first 6 weeks fly in. I was then given an all girl group that were as young as 10. At first I really did think that I was going to break one of them, they were so young and fragile. But after the first morning my nerves settled down. They were a great bunch of kids and my other staff in the group were just as excited as me to have them. But camp must end at some point, thats when the adventures began.

Once I landed in the USA before camp, I went through the usual procedures of visa and passport control, but apparently something was wrong with my N number?? No idea what that means, but it must have been important because I was swiftly escorted off into a side room where I sat for nearly two hours. The only people who I had spoke to during that time was a Virgin Atlantic representative telling me that my bag was safe, and the very scary security guy who I thought was going to shoot me for asking where the restroom was.

During the summer one other girl decided to jump on the road trip bandwagon, she was from Sweden. We got the car (and an upgrade) after I'm sure they forgot about us, we then drove (hungover) to Laurel in Maryland. The next morning we drove into Washington D.C where we spend around 2 hours looking for a damn parking space. Luckily that night we were only driving to Strasburg, VA at the bottom of the Shenandoah NP Sky Drive, by this point I have racked up one extra state on my list, Virginia.

We drove slowly through Shenandoah National Park before staying  in Harrisonburg, VA. The next day consisted of a long drive to Nashville, TN. My second state was now added and the atmosphere was fansastic. We did most of the tourist stops in town including the Johnny Cash Museum and the Concert Hall.

After Nashville, TN, we drove down to stay with a friend of mine for the night in Alabaster, AL, my 3rd state added. We planned to do some things in Alabama but we were pretty tired and not very fussed on doing much more except getting to Florida. Nearly 10 hours later though, we made it.

One full week in Florida, chilling by the pool and spending the day in Universal Studios or going for drinks in Downtown Disney. It was all worth the very long trip.

On our way home we battled the overweight suitcases flying from Orlando back to NY, before staying a night in a hotel that looked like a very dark and dangerous area of Queens. So technically everything worked out right? Well except for visa and suitcase battles and dodgy looking areas of New York. So just to add to the fact that it all looked very smooth. I nearly went through security with my friends purse in my bag, which consisted of all her money, cards and train tickets home from London. I barely made it on the flight, I had to wait and hope that someone out there on the social media world could contact her and tell her to come back to my bloomin terminal. 

Advice: Don't ever become someones camel for them, make them carry there own damn crap

I wonder what the next adventure will be?