For some reason I decided to not start this until the day we first started walking. We were dropped off at Calgary Airport by our good friend Ruth. 2 naive little pilgrims who figured they did not need to train as hard as they did for the Camino.

After 6 hours in the car, 5 in the airport (and only a 5 minute wait thru security despite all the scary airport stories…and an added 2 minutes for Terry to get patted down for having “abnormalities ” in her scan)…8 hours on the plane…Ken still had most of the mental faculties required to re-assemble our trekking trolley. Terry offered helpful suggestions which were met with grunts…so she went off to buy chocolate. Good British chocolate.

As per usual, we took a day to acclimatize to the time change and as per usual Ken found a pub to spend it in. I took the train back into London to scope out our pilgrim starting point at Southwark Cathedral (thank you Helen and Mark for correcting my pronunciation of “wark”…it is just “erk”..as in Southerk. And not pronounced South either. Heavy sigh.

We are staying in Thamesmead. We chose a place on our path actually past the Cathedral, so that we didn’t have to try and pull the trolley through the church and crowded streets of London. I wanted to be at the church for a morning service at 830 am (don’t tell my very Catholic mother) and walk afterwards but the trains weren’t running and local taxis were booked (see trains not running)…so we decided to walk backwards from our lodgings to the church so that we could get an early start to avoid the heat. In the 30s. Never thought I would wear a dress to hike in but…

After a very hard slog through very hot streets, we finished our first day’s 18 km trek to the Cathedral, just in time for Evensong…choir from Canterbury was singing…fitting, as Canterbury is the official start of the Via Francigena to Rome.