I Have Walked 500 Miles: From Santiago de Compostela to Santiago de Compostela (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781984128812)

I am a retired computer consultant living just outside Belfast, Ireland. I always had a secret ambition to write a book but until I walked my first Camino de Santiago, I never found the inspiration. I then wrote my first book, 'Walk With The Sun Till Ur Shadow Disappears'. In my youth, I dreamt of travelling the world and doing something special. Unfortunately, in my early twenties, I was struck down with Guillan Barré syndrome and was seriously paralysed over 80% of my body. Despite the prognosis, I never gave up and after a long period of recuperation, I made a full recovery. Not long afterwards I met my wife and over the years we had seven wonderful children. The desire to travel, however, was placed on the back burner for the next 35 years. At the age of 60, I took early retirement and set off to see the world. During my working life sitting behind a desk, I became fat and unfit. Travelling by luxury cruise liner was just adding to the fat. The thought of strenuous exercise was the last thing on my mind. Then, in 2012 I heard about the Camino de Santiago and within a year, I was tramping across the mountains, valleys and Meseta of northern Spain. I have stood on mountains looking at other mountains below me. I have stood on a bridge looking at an old village appear out of the water as a drought lowered the levels of the reservoir. I have prayed at the tomb of the apostle, Saint James the Greater. The Camino bug got under my skin and I returned in 2015 and then again in the Year of Mercy in 2016. As I write this, my plans are well advanced to return again after Easter 2018. That bug keeps whispering in my ear....'Ultreia' and draws me back to those ancient trails where a little bit of my heart and soul will still be trekking to the top of a mountain and tramping across the Meseta