Jenny Oliver and her husband are walkers. Oh yes – big time.
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She and her husband, Ken, did 800 kilometres last year over a month.
It was a classic, thousand-year-old pilgrimage across northern Spain to Santiago on the north-west tip, where the bones of St James the apostle are said to lie in the cathedral. The route is so well trodden by pilgrims down the ages that it has sunk about two meters below the ground around – it’s a pit in the earth, worn down by the feet of the faithful.
The couple saw a film about the route and the pilgrimage and decided they had to go.
Fortunately, Jenny is a very good photographer and documented the journey. Her pictures are on display in the Art on the Corner gallery on Bourke Street, Glen Innes.
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To prepare for the trip, they trained in the roads in and around Glen Innes, going further each day until they were walking an easy ten kilometres before breakfast. In the end, they were up to around 20 kilometres a day, at about four kilometres an hour.
One result of their effort is on display at the gallery. It has a resonance now because the two regions of Spain they finally passed through were Asturias (on the middle of the northern coast) and then, finally, Galicia, two of the regions on which this year’s Celtic Festival focuses.