From Brisbane to World Youth Day Madrid

Pilgrims - who isn't one when it comes down to it? Me? I'm going on a structured pilgrimage to report at World Youth Day Madrid 2011 http://www.madrid11.com/en. It will start somewhere around August 12 in the little town of Pedro Abad south of Cordoba and thence move onto Madrid where I'll share my 60th birthday with some 2 million souls on an airfield at an open air Mass celebrated by the Pope. Below is the introduction to an article I wrote on the impending adventure.

IN my 60th year "towards heaven" - to appropriate part of a phrase from one of Dylan Thomas' most famous poems - I'm about to embark on a pilgrimage.
It's the most major of my intentional pilgrimages - the only others I can recall being an all-night prayer vigil in honour of Our Lady at Three Springs about 300km north of Perth in 1975, and a solo journey from Lismore, NSW, to Western Australia in a then 31-year-old "shovel nose" Toyota Corona in 1995.
A couple of years back, when I announced my intention to become a World Youth Day pilgrim to Madrid in 2011 to a fellow train passenger, he seemed baffled.
Quickly perceiving he felt my somewhat august years had removed me from the "youthful" category, I set him straight.
"In the eyes of eternity, my years are but a blink," I explained. What could he do but purse his lips, ponder and nod?

To read more just follow this link: http://www.catholicleader.com.au/news.php/features/pilgrim-flags-learning-curve_73698

And so another exploration of what will no doubt be an intriguing detour. Hopes are for refreshment of vision and all the other goals of an intentional pilgrimage (as opposed to 'normal' life journey).

• Right - me with some of the other Brisbane World Youth Day pilgrims on a trial walk testing out shoes etc on the way to Slaughter Falls at Mount Coot-tha (I'm the youngest one there.)