From Sarria onwards to Santiago de Compostela, I found myself reflecting on what I had learned on the Camino, and wondering how I can take what I’ve learned back into my daily life. How do you reintegrate back into the life you left behind? I know this is something countless …
What about the mind? You reach Logroño, and by now you are getting settled into the Camino’s routine, and you are starting to feel like a pilgrim on a pilgrimage. But what does that even mean, and how might we think about it? What makes this different from, say, a …
How do you conceive of walking 800km/500 miles when, like me, you typically take the car to the local shops less than a kilometre away? It’s a scary number, even more so when you look up at the Pyrenees, and see the vultures circling. Does that bell toll for me? …
What is it about starting a pilgrimage with an ordeal by mountain? Is it a test of resolve? Or is it to give us a glimpse of the reward for our efforts in the majesty of the scene laid out before us?
Have you noticed that when you eat certain foods, taste certain wines, smell certain smells, you are instantly taken back to your memories of a place, perhaps distant in space or time from now? For example, I recently baked.a tarta de Santiago – an almond cake common in Galicia in …
Do you approach travel with excitement or trepidation? How do you find calm amidst the excitement? And importantly, how do you balance these to get the most out of travel, and out of life more generally? It seems to me, that to get the most out of our travel, we …
How do we stay positive when we travel? We’ve all been there. The flight gets cancelled, the accommodation is unavailable, the unexpected happens. We experience frustration – often magnified when we travel, perhaps compounded by language difficulties and cultural differences. What happens next is up to us. Tourists demand, pilgrims …
