Thread by @Alex_Verbeek

(1/16) For over 1000 years, people from all over Europe have walked through Spain to Santiago de Compostela. This summer, I followed in the footsteps of millions but with an extra challenge:

Spain has been facing the driest conditions for at least 1200 years.

(2/16) Follow this #Water story thread for #WWWeek.

#WorldWaterWeek #ad #climatecrisis #drought

(3/16) I needed a break from my usual focus on the climate and water crises, so I took five weeks to hike more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) from the French Pyrenees to the northwest of Spain.

I wanted to focus on my health, the beauty of nature, and people I would meet.

(4/16) But unfortunately, we no longer have the luxury of only thinking about the climate and water crises when we feel like it. In fact, for most of my hike, extreme weather impacted my experience in ways unheard of in the more than 1000-year-old pilgrimage tradition.

(5/16) The Camino Francés, the “French Way” and the most famous of the routes to Santiago, starts on day one with the most challenging phase: crossing the Pyrenees via the legendary Napoleon Route. Unfortunately, it was also day one of a heatwave. Imagine: it was only mid-June.

(6/16) I’ll never forget how exhausted I was when I arrived after two days on the other side of the Pyrenees in the lovely small town of Zuberi (see photo). I must have looked so worn out by the extreme heat that the hostel owner spontaneously carried my backpack upstairs for me.

(7/16) The next day I walked to Pamplona, the city I had wanted to visit since I read Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” in my student days. And what a feast it was.

But again: the reality of a hot world caught up with me: I couldn’t continue because of the forest fires.

(8/16) Extreme heat and drought had caused forest fires along the route, and all pilgrims were stopped by the police.

The next day, I skipped 95 kilometers to the first village from where we were allowed to walk again.

(Photo taken from the car window in a burned area)

(9/16) I spoke to eye-witnesses who had been only a day ahead of me. They had run for their lives to escape the fire. Having been surrounded by three sides, they had run to a nearby town and escaped unharmed but shaken by the experience.

(10/16) Weeks later, I entered Galicia after crossing the Meseta, already known as a flat, hot, and dry area in average years. I had been warned of the steep climb that awaited me, but nobody had warned me that the second steepest climate coincided with a second heatwave.

(11/16) And the second heatwave was soon followed by more forest fires. Imagine waking up at night with smoke in the bedroom; it was so bad that I slept with the N95 mask I carried for that other crisis, the pandemic.

(12/16) During five weeks in Spain, before the height of the summer season, I have been an eye-witness to climate change. I have seen dry rivers, the drought affecting agriculture, and heat affecting all aspects of life.

(13/16) But I have also seen the human ingenuity to deal with these effects, like in updated versions of generations-old knowledge about preserving and distributing precious water sources.

(14/16) We have to work on preventing the climate crisis from getting worse than it already is, but we can’t ignore that we have to adapt to the new realities. It is a task for all of us.

You can be a role model for water and climate action.

(15/16) But increasingly, companies take up their responsibility too. For example, I work with @SuntoryGlobal because I believe they are exemplary. After all, they return only clean water to nature and protect forests that nurture groundwater.

(16/16) So @SuntoryGlobal is a company that contributes to healthy water circulation in nature. In other words, they recognize that water sustainability is the most critical issue in their business activity.

I hope you take a moment to watch this video: