The Way: Camino De Santiago

There's a documentary video we've found really handy over the last few months called The Way: Camino Do Santiago. It's by a Victorian guy called Mark Shea, and it's a great insight into what to expect. He did it by himself, so it's a much more realistic insight than some of the travel documentaries where you know the presenter had a full support crew to carry their gear and bail them out of trouble.

There's a few reasons I found it so handy.

I think the Camino is a difficult thing to explain to people verbally. Saying "We're walking 800kms in about 5 weeks across Spain" just doesn't seem to do it justice. Showing Mark's video to family & friends has given everyone a better understanding of what we're undertaking and the physical & mental scale of it. It's interesting watching the evolution of the documentary as time goes by, especially seeing him become more comfortable in front of the camera.

From the point of view of someone about to walk the Camino, it was also handy from a practical point of view. Seeing what happens to someone's knees & ankles when they realise they've brought way too much gear has made us very weight concious (Mark had a 10kg pack plus 8kg of camera gear... the recommended total weight is 10kg). It also gave us an idea of what to expect in terms of people, walking terrain and sleeping accommodation.

I'll stop here incase this starts sounding like an advert. :-)

Here's the link to the video with a few short preview clips:

http://www.overlander.tv/camino/

And an interview with the filmmaker is here.