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A bit more packing advice

An earlier post of mine had pictures of everything that I took on the Camino (or rather everything that I could find to take pictures of!). Here's a bit of advice on packing for you.

In general less is best; a lot of people take far too much and end up having to dump it or posting it forward to Santiago post office (who will then hold your items for 30 days ready for you to collect, many people have used this option and found that it works well for them but I have never myself done it). I was told before my first Camino to carry no more than 10% of your body weight which may work well for some people but as someone who weighs about 46 kilograms and is about 1m 55cm tall this is impractical – if you want to carry your own backpack all of the way then only carrying 4.6 kilograms is simply not possible. I carried a bag weighing 6-7.5 kilograms and found this to be a practical weight for me. I would say never carry more than 10 kilograms – you don’t need to and your Camino will not be enjoyable for you (plus is you are flying using a certain budget airline anything under 10 kilograms can be counted as hand luggage and so money saved!). With everything it’s worth paying a bit more to cut down on weight.

        When packing remember that you’ll be carrying water for your day’s walking and that one litre of water is one kilogram of weight. Added to this you will always carry a snack of some sort – a piece of fruit or a cake maybe and some days you may well have to carry food for the meal that night (say some pasta, sauce and a tin of tuna) all of which will add maybe 1-2 kilograms of weight depending how much food you have.

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