Yet again the camino calls. ‘Come’ she whispers. ‘It’s warm and sunny, your toes can sink into the sand as you walk alongside the ocean that awaits where you last left off. There will time for you to ponder, people for you to meet, delicacies for you to enjoy and all manner of surprises for you to uncover.’

Yes. Yes, I will go. I will answer the call. The pull this time is strong. The camino is magic like that. I am curious for what I will find along this next section of the camino. Once again I feel ready to hop on where I last left off to simply walk. To walk a long walk. Although if I am honest this pull, coupled an excitement that is growing is somewhat surprising to me given that last time I wan’t sure I’d ever be back on the camino again.

It was July last year when I last set off on along the camino del norte. A camino that lasted three days instead of the ten I had planned. I was done with the camino when I left. So done. I didn’t want to be sharing rooms, I was frustrated at being injured (through stupidity) and I didn’t love the realisation that was revealing itself to me, that in this time of my life I’d given away my power. I’d completely lost myself. I had no idea how to use my voice anymore.

But in those three days of walking and the three days of stopping I met some incredible women. Women who each gave me something to ponder throughout this past year. Women who I’m sure without realising gave me what I needed. I needed a place to begin and some questions to ask myself. When I left I knew I needed to go home. It was the first time I’d ever stopped for a day along a camino and surprisingly I was completely ok with it. This time the camino was not about distance, days walked or reaching a destination it was about stopping and the women who walked into my life. Women I would never see again but who would always be a part of me.

Of course you haven’t yet met these characters, these women and what they inspired me to go and learn about myself because I came home and let these stories and this blog sit on the sidelines. It didn’t quite fit. The stories I thought I was going to write didn’t come home with me. I came home different. I needed to take what each of these women had provoked in me and to go and be with that in my life. To take those questions and go on a long walk, to live with them. Life is a camino! I’ve been walking almost a year with some of these thoughts.

Everything has a time and place. When I started writing this blog it was with good intention, to create something for and with women. But there was also perhaps an egotistical intention and the desire to create what others expected I should do – to build a camino something. As the call came this week to walk again, so did the call to write here. As I started writing, the title changed from ‘your camino’ to ‘camino tales’. I can’t tell you how to walk your camino, that’s not really me. I can however share my camino tales with you and connect with you through my camino stories. That is me. Ph-ew, this feels peaceful, now this blog is synchronous with how and what I want to write. Flow.

These women, these characters you’re yet to meet them in my writing and what they inspired in me during my last camino. Oh and the preventable injury, that’s a doozy! It’s going to be embarrassing to write up that one. I’m excited to answer the call to walk the camino again and with that excitement I feel hopeful for this space. I think I get how to use my voice now. Just be me. It sounds simple enough but I feel this will be my challenge. One I am looking forward to actually. One I will be thinking about as I reread ‘Big Magic’ while I walk in a few weeks. There are still things I want to change and learn from about how I’ve blogged in the past. I hope these changes will see this blog grow into something beautiful.

Ho hum … the first challenge in the next 10 days or so is to enter a writing cocoon to catch up on all my camino del norte posts. If I can do this I can blog live from the camino. I find live blogs from the camino such a joy to read. I would love to extend myself to do that, to get in amongst that joy. I don’t love typing on an iPhone when travelling so much but the connection with fellow adventure lovers – that’s fun! And fun is good, fun is definitely worth investing time in. So, if you’ll have me I look forward to sharing this space with you over the next few weeks to share some camino tales.

Fran x

“Say yes to every single tiny clue of curiosity that you notice around you. That’s big magic too. It’s big magic on a quieter scale and on a slower scale, you just have to learn how to trust it. It’s all about the yes.”

– Elizabeth Gilbert