Looking into ultralight hiking

Always good to have an obsession: mine, at the moment, is lightweight backpacking.

This sprung from my 900km walk of the Camino in the north of Spain earlier this year(2015). I found that, despite my careful limiting of weight in my pack, I finished with very painful legs...no blisters or contusions just the dull ache of pounding along hard roads and rocky tracks for a month.
And I know that I did better than most because I read, and took to heart a skimpy volume called, sssss, which preached

As a general guideline, aim for your backpack’s total weight to be 10 percent of your body weight. ---Ashmore, Jean-Christie (2011-09-16). Camino de Santiago: To Walk Far, Carry Less (p. 3). Walk Far Media. Kindle Edition.

Camino pilgrim with a moderately heavy pack...not as bad as some.

For me that meant a base load pack, excluding water and food, of no more than 8.6 kg(19.2lbs). Which I did and was grateful for the advice as I watched my less weight conscious fellow travellers wilt under their heavier kit.

But I still had pain.  How to stop this pain has become a little bit of an obsession because I love "through walking", the steady coverage of big distances over weeks rather than weekend walks.  The Camino Français from the French side of the Pyrenees to the Galician Costa del Morte on the Atlantic Coast is only one of the many trails that converge on the dream pilgrimage destination of Santiago de Compostela. And then there are all the other mega walks that I may have time to do.

Reading into it, I found that I had adopted the right philosophy; I just had to do it better. Relentlessly getting the weight down, going "ultralight" appears to be the trick. As the Wikipedia article puts  it:

By carrying lighter and more multi-purpose equipment, ultralight backpackers aim to cover longer distances per day with less wear and tear on the body.

 Not just 8.6kg but a ultralight base load of three kg(6lb), a target of less than half of what I carried in Spain and nearly what I carry on a daily walk around town. Wish me luck, I've a long way to go.