Rotaract Vice President Eleanor Duce, winner of student TEDx contest.

The speaker was 5th year student Eleanor Duce, Vice-President of St Andrews Rotaract, who described her pilgrimage on 'El Camino', the 872 kilometre walk from St Jean Pied-de-Port, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, to the tomb of St James in Santiago de Compostela. Accompanying Eleanor, as he had done the entire Camino trip, was life-long companion ‘Lester', her teddy bear, dressed in a diminutive, red St Andrews student gown. Having spent her year abroad in Peru, Eleanor explained how she aims to raise £872 - one pound for each kilometre of her walk - in aid of a girls' school in the Andes. She told of the ups-and-downs of her walk, literal mountains to climb and metaphorical mountains to be conquered. We heard of blisters and different ways of dealing with them (!), of gruelling treks day after day, of mutual compassion among her fellow travellers, of their regular greeting, 'Buen camino', on meeting. She learnt many things on her walk, about herself and about life in general: that life can be both gruelling and uplifting, that you can walk at your own pace, that you can lighten the load by avoiding unnecessary excess. Her talk was both serious in its life-lessons and gently humorous with the presence of Lester in photos along the journey. An uplifting and admirable presentation which was much appreciated by those present.