The magic of a bloody long walk

The women were in their mid-sixties, maybe. British and retired. I can’t remember their names and I doubt they remember mine, but I do remember thinking they were utterly batshit.

This was their seventh time walking the Camino de Santiago, they said. The same route every year: 800 kilometres from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

They told me it was addictive and I didn’t believe them. They told me I’d come to understand, and still, I didn’t believe them.

Fast forward eight years and I count myself fortunate – and not at all batshit – to have clocked close to 3,000 kilometres on pilgrimage paths in Spain, Portugal, Norway and Japan.

And though I’m yet to repeat a route, I’ve come to realise the women were right; it’s addictive, this walking, in ways I still struggle to explain.

Earlier this year, I spent six weeks walking the Shikoku Henro, a 1200-kilometre Buddhist pilgrimage in Japan. The pilgrim’s path is up and down in every way, with blissful days on forested trails offset by mind-numbing stretches of coastal highway.

During those monotonous seaside stretches, I found myself with too much time to consider the big questions.

What were these long walks giving me? Was I even enjoying myself? And if I were a sandwich, what would be my filling? How much would I cost?

As always, the answers – to everything but the sandwich hypothetical – revealed themselves in the people I met.

I think of the people I met along the Camino de Santiago. Of the batshit British women, yes, but also the Swede who was recovering from a brain tumour.

He’d decided to walk across a country; a few months prior, he could barely walk to the bathroom. I think of the way he would puff his pain-relieving ‘medicine’ at night, then gingerly lace up his boots each morning, without complaint, before striding into the pre-dawn haze.

I think of the divorcées who shared yet another kind of pain. The college kids who admitted to being paralysed by choice and were learning to take things one step at a time. The retired cop from New Mexico who insisted that if a wine’s alcohol content is less than 14.5%, ‘it’s like kissing your sister’.

No! Too honest! 

I think of him and his wife – how they saw me limp into a bar and rushed to buy me my first glass of wine.

They wanted to know where I came from, what my plan was, why I was walking. I remember being so tired that all I could do was shrug and point to the Pyrenees peaks through the window. Unlike the comment about kissing sisters, no further explanation was required.

It’s addictive, this walking, in ways I still struggle to explain. Maybe it’s the forward momentum. The act of moving alongside others. Travelling in the same direction with the same intention.

Whatever it is, I’ve come to understand you can’t carry both armour and a backpack; to throw the latter over your shoulder, you have to discard the former.

It’s an invitation, I think, a way of letting the world know you’re open for business. And business – on these paths, at least – is booming. 

So long as you keep walking. 

So long as you steer clear of your sister.