PS. My attempt to walk from Oslo to Trondheim ended prematurely near Ringebu when both knees gave up in protest at the weight I was forcing them to carry. Both on my back and around my waist. I'm currently trying to lose some of the internal avoirdupois and hope to finish that journey sometime. Perhaps this summer.
My weight is a big concern, and I have put myself onto a weight loss regime. It is showing promise, but I am targeting a weight that I haven't been under for many years, even before I did my first St Olavs Way and first Camino over a decade ago. It would allow me to feel more comfortable walking without carrying my CPAP machine, something I did more regularly back on those first pilgrimage walks.
The nature of the St Olavs Ways does mean that it is very unlikely that I would disrupt anyone else in a herberge or hostel. Other than in the larger towns like Lillehammer and Otta, where I will probably stay in hotels in any case, there are unlikely many, if any, other pilgrims sharing a dormitory. So it is only my own personal medical care that I need to concern myself about.
The other matters are getting a pilgrim passport and an English language guidebook. Serendipitously,
@ivar posted a link to a new online shop in Trondheim that actually had the passports in stock. While I am sure that the National Pilgrim Centre in Oslo would have had these when I start, it's always nice to have the passport when one arrives at the start.
The news on the guidebook front is a little more promising. I walked in 2012 with Alison Raju's guidebook, then about a decade old. An updated edition was published in 2015, and it looked like I might have had to walk again with a nearly decade old guidebook. While many things wouldn't have changed, my previous experience is that guidebooks quickly fall behind within any hardcopy book publishing cycle in some critical areas like accommodation, and over a decade much can happen. So the news from the National Pilgrim Centre that there will be a translation of one of the current (non-English) guidebooks available early in 2024 was quite welcome.
Unlike my last two Caminos in Spain, where I was already staying in Portugal, and could almost just get onto the train one morning, and start walking the next, this walk will require a bit more planning and coordination to bring to fruition. Of course, as many of you know, that planning and anticipation is almost as rewarding as undertaking the pilgrimage itself.