Yes, we’re overly familiar with this quote. And yes, it’s an overused cliché in travel writing but some lost is a good lost don’t you think? Read along as I share my tales of walking along the north coast of Spain along the Camino Del Norte. Me, my thoughts, the trail and all I need in my backpack. Starting each day in one place and ending it in another. Lost in the days as they unfold. Lost in my love of wandering. Lost in a long walk. A camino. Aaah. Good lost.
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.”
It takes at least a million steps to walk a camino. I know this because I joined a Garmin challenge in November to walk one. It took me 78 days and 1.1 million steps. I didn’t walk it in socks and sandals as the featured image suggests, I just like the feels of that photo. Hiking socks and sandals…what hiker doesn’t love that combination?! However, the camino, I did walk it from my front door, while on vacation, doing laps around airports and at home doing day to day things – all the steps counted! Let’s just sit with that gem for a moment. All.The.Steps.Count.
From time to time I checked in to see what percentage of the camino I had covered and how far was left for me to walk. Then, one day, just like that, I had completed 99% and I was almost there. On that normal day in January I was about to finish a camino! How did it feel? It felt good. Really good. Exciting even. In this current phase of my life where it often feels like I am not finishing or achieving anything – on this day, I would. I was about to finish walking the Camino de Santiago.
The true beauty of this was that I was doing it in the background of my everyday! Far away from Spain just plodding along in my daily life. Isn’t this a little bit of the camino working its magic. Magic in the mountains, the ups and downs of life, the depth of the valleys, those easy and the hard days and in the rivers, trying to find flow amongst the strong currents, who, with their own strong pull impact our days. Getting fitter, getting stronger on these normal days, doing all the normal things I needed to do and at the same time quietly walking the Camino de Santiago. Ok, I completed the distance of the Camino de Santiago, but you get my drift.
Have I signed up to walk another badge or walking challenge? Not yet. In fact I’ve taken my Garmin off for a while. I need a break from checking my numbers! Steps, sleep, HRV stats it can get a bit obsessive. I want to walk unencumbered for a while. But, if you need a nudge to move again or you feel you need to walk yourself a camino I can highly recommend it. I am proud of my virtual badge, of the 1.1 million steps in my legs and of the push towards and reconnection with daily walking. I’m also glad for the gentle reminder it gave me, that for anything to be achieved…All.The.Steps.Count.
How to walk a Garmin Camino de Santiago challenge?
You’ll need a Garmin watch that is connected the Garmin Connect app
In the app head to the challenges section and choose yourself a challenge!
Don’t have a Garmin! No problem. Use the watch you have or make your own challenge by counting your daily steps in the health app on your phone. Easy. Just walk.
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Camino Tales 