andy.d
Veteran Member
- Time of past OR future Camino
- Camino de Levante 2009
Camino Ingles (Coruna) 2011
Camino Ingles (Coruna) 2014
Pilgrims Way Winchester - Canterbury
Camino Ingles (Ferrol) 2015
Cistercian Way (Wales) 2016
I am supposed to be in the middle of walking The Cistercian Way, a 700 mile pilgrimage around Wales. As always when I set off on a long pilgrimage I promised that I would only stop for two reasons: an emergency call from home or a medical professional telling me to stop.
After 10 days I started getting very bad knee pain. Fortunately I was staying at a monastery and two sisters who were trained nurses looked at it and told me to stop walking. (Also my good friend @Bradypus was nearby and arrived with icepacks, painkillers and a bottle of tinto).
I got the train home the next day. An x ray has been clear and the doctor advised me to rest it for a couple of weeks and then to see if I could gently get back into walking.
It's been a little over two weeks now. The pain is mostly gone and I am able to do normal day to day activity. Next week I will see about some short walks. If that is OK, I will do some day walks the week after.
If that goes well I will rejoin my route towards the end of it (I will be doing a talk at Tintern Abbey anyway on October 18th) and finish it with a very light pack.
I have been at peace with all this. The pilgrimage has taken me in a different direction from the one I had expected, and I have had a huge amount of space to reflect, read and pray all this (I will try to put some of this together in the talk in a few weeks - there's also quite a bit about it on the https://pilgrimpace.wordpress.com/
blog).
What I am trying to say in all this is sometimes on Camino an injury means you have to stop. This is not necessarily the end of the pilgrimage or of the journey. It's hard, but see where it leads.
Andy
After 10 days I started getting very bad knee pain. Fortunately I was staying at a monastery and two sisters who were trained nurses looked at it and told me to stop walking. (Also my good friend @Bradypus was nearby and arrived with icepacks, painkillers and a bottle of tinto).
I got the train home the next day. An x ray has been clear and the doctor advised me to rest it for a couple of weeks and then to see if I could gently get back into walking.
It's been a little over two weeks now. The pain is mostly gone and I am able to do normal day to day activity. Next week I will see about some short walks. If that is OK, I will do some day walks the week after.
If that goes well I will rejoin my route towards the end of it (I will be doing a talk at Tintern Abbey anyway on October 18th) and finish it with a very light pack.
I have been at peace with all this. The pilgrimage has taken me in a different direction from the one I had expected, and I have had a huge amount of space to reflect, read and pray all this (I will try to put some of this together in the talk in a few weeks - there's also quite a bit about it on the https://pilgrimpace.wordpress.com/
blog).
What I am trying to say in all this is sometimes on Camino an injury means you have to stop. This is not necessarily the end of the pilgrimage or of the journey. It's hard, but see where it leads.
Andy