With such a high number of forum members, many posters are just a name and you never meet in real life.
@Dorpie had chosen a picture of himself at the Irache wine fountain as his avatar. He often signed his forum posts with his name Rob. He gave quiet and accurate advice and had a lovely sense of self-depreciating humour. As a tribute to him and to jog my memory, I skimmed through his forum posts. These are mostly his words, I just replaced first-person singular by third person singular:
He had a bit of a thing for making sure information we propagate on the internet is accurate. He knew Spanish and was interested in Spanish gastronomy and culture. Once, during a forum discussion about carrying pocket knives, his curiosity had been piqued and he went to his friendly neighbourhood police station to enquire about the legality of Opinel type knives. When he explained his purpose for carrying it (he had actually taken a picture to the station for fear of getting into trouble) he was assured that hiking in Europe would be regarded as a legitimate reason to do so. I can so relate to all this. A guy after my own heart. ☺
He was about 40 years old when he walked his first camino in May 2015, starting in SJPP. He had walked Santiago to Finisterre and to Muxia a couple of years earlier as a taster for the big walk. He walked his second camino in July 2017, again from SJPP; both times in a little over 30 days. In about 70 days in total he only ever once had to walk to the next village to find a bed, he said.
He had walked a spring camino and a summer camino and in September 2019 he took the Eurostar from London and the TGV to Bayonne to start an autumn camino from SJPP. He was thinking of walking eventually a winter camino and later the Henro Michi in Japan. It was not meant to be. He loved the social aspect of the camino francés and once he said that community is the word he'd use to describe the camino for himself.
On his first camino, he took over 100 pairs of earplugs to give out to others which was perhaps overkill, he said, and he was leaving handfuls at albergue receptions by the end but he did become known as the guy who had earplugs ☺. Another time he mentioned that he was camino famous as the maniac who wouldn't stop walking despite the entirety of both soles of his feet being entirely blister, not to mention other ones elsewhere and losing 8 toenails, he’d not seen anyone with worse. He switched from boots to lighter shoes eventually. ☺
A year ago, in September 2018, he took is aging father, who cannot walk very far, for 8 days on a road trip, as his 80th birthday present. They started in Bilbao and then zig-zagged to San Sebastian, Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, Orisson, Pamplona, Burgos, Gijon, Melide, Astorga, Leon, Salamanca, Avila, Segovia and Madrid. He had asked the forum for recommendations of places to visit or to stay or to eat there and when he came back he reported where they had been and thanked those by name who had given tips.
Farewell, forum buddy
@Dorpie.