For those of you who've been following the blog you'll know my old schoolfriend Ross Campbell was out over the weekend to accompany me on three days of the route. He finished his section of the walk on Sunday lunchtime, when we reached Astorga.
Ross has been involved in many of my adventures in the outdoors, from ski-ing to climbing and walking; he also knew my mum from the time we were about six years old and always got on extremely well with her, so it was most appropriate Ross managed to make the journey to take part in the challenge.
In order to be here Ross had to fly from London to Valladolid, hire a car and drive across the whole of Castilla - Leon into the mountains to find a small village where I would hopefully be passing through at roughly the time he arrived. Then, after actually doing the walking, he had to get a taxi back over the 60 miles we'd covered to re-find the hire car, before driving back to Valladolid for his flight home. All in all a quite heroic effort, and very much appreciated.
Being accompanied on the walk definitely helps, it's unusual that both people will go through a bad patch at precisely the same time, so when one person is down the other can usually lift the spirits. On the 3,000 ft climb from Molinaseca on Saturday Ross's good humour was invaluable to drag us both up the mountain, especially when the fifteenth false summit revealed itself to be just that, with no idea when the true summit might be reached.
Cheers RC.
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