Here's another excerpt from my 'Pilgrim Musings':

On the whys and wherefores

Sitting on the dock side in Bilbao waiting for the ferry to take me back home I found myself lost amongst a sea of tourists, all blotchy with lobster red sun burn and loaded with duty free; I stuck out like a sore thumb, all travel worn with a Squaddie tan, tatty, now oversized clothes and only my back pack and trusty walking staff for luggage. I felt like I’d been teleported into a parallel existence, all chaos and noise, uncomfortably alien and light years away from the calm, peaceful, peripatetic life I’d been living for the past five weeks.

“Did you have a nice holiday?” somebody asked me. I replied that I had, not really wanting to say much more. “Where have you been staying?” was the next question. “In many places” I replied and found myself drawn into an awkward conversation about where I’d been and what I’d been doing; walking across northern Spain for five weeks. The general response to my explanation was puzzled expressions and more questions like “What did you want to do that for?” Indeed, what had I done it for?

Nine months before my life changed dramatically. For fifteen years I’d been in the same job and the same relationship, and both had come to an end. Someone or something somewhere had been trying to tell me that things were changing whether I liked it or not. I’d done an art history correspondence course and it was while I was working on a module about medieval gothic architecture which focused on the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, one of the three major medieval Christian pilgrimage sites, the other two being Rome and Jerusalem, that I learned about the Camino. I was fascinated and on doing some further research I learnt that the pilgrimage route had been rediscovered in the 1980s and that people from all over the world walked it for various reasons. I filed it away in the back of my mind as one of those ‘I must do that someday’ things. Now that ‘someday’ was here. This was going to be my time and mine alone, to sort myself out and prepare myself for the life changes that were pending, changes that I knew had to happen and for the better. I needed to motivate myself to face them bravely and the only way I could think of achieving this was to get away from everything I’d known for the past fifteen years, open the door to the world beyond and step right through it. My first point of call was going to be San Jean Pied de Port, the start of the Camino Frances in the French Pyrenees; I was going to walk the Camino de Santiago.

I’d worked as an administrator for a local museum and art gallery, a job that I loved, but after many years the enjoyment I got from it had fizzled out, a fizzling which started with the pending move to a new, purpose-built premises and which, of course, needed fresh, new staff. I felt that my time there was done, I’d been there long enough, I was dead wood. At the same time my long-term relationship ended; fifteen years as partners and sixteen months married. It was sudden, although I realise now, not so unexpected; my husband came home very late one night, woke me up and announced that he was moving out. Just like that. He could give no reason or explanation for this sudden and drastic action and all I could do was accept it. I tried time and time again to get him to tell me why but he wouldn’t or couldn’t. Truthfully, I felt lost, confused and betrayed but I had no inclination to fight as I was tired and beaten down by years of emotional and mental abuse. I’d been stuck in a rut that I hadn’t known how to climb out of; I’d been too afraid of what the repercussions might be. Now fate had handed me a way out but my confidence was battered and my self-esteem was low and I didn’t really have a clue what to do. Suffice to say I spent hours and hours crying, drowning my sorrows in endless glasses of wine and bars of chocolate, losing myself in period dramas and books, going on long, long walks on the South Downs and generally keeping myself to myself before I came to my senses.

This happened during a family holiday in South Africa the first week of which was spent on a wilderness trail in the Hluhluwe iMfolozi Game Reserve in KwaZulu Natal; just a small group of six including me, my sister, my brother in law, a trail guide, a Zulu tracker and a lovely, bonkers South African girl. Just us, together in the vast magnificence of the African bush. It was to be a life changing experience.

On the first evening after setting up camp on a rocky ledge on the banks of the Black iMfolozi River I moved away from the others to enjoy a moment to myself. There I was sitting quietly on a sun warmed rock, taking in the stunning scenery, watching the wildlife, listening to the sounds of the bush, and pinching myself as a reminder that this was reality and not a dream, when I was suddenly and completely overwhelmed with emotion and a sense of absolute clarity.

I’d flown in from the UK the day before, spent the night at the Wilderness Leadership School headquarters in Durban and now, just like that, the very next day, I was in the South African bush, a place I’d dreamed of visiting and experiencing for as long as I could remember. I was surrounded by alien sights, sounds and smells which seemed strangely familiar; I felt like I’d come home. Our camp was situated on a curve in the river which stretched away into the wilderness in each direction as far as I could see; a bend in the river, a fork in the road, a time to make choices and find a different way. I can only describe my experience at the very moment as some kind of epiphany; everything in my life up to that point, all of it, my experiences, both good and bad, polarised and I realised that everything that had gone before didn’t matter, it was in the past and I had only the future to look forward to, a future that I had to face on my own but one that I was mistress of. Then the tears came. I cried on and off for the whole five days in the wilderness and spent many a mindful moment meditating on who I had been, who I was then and who I wanted to be. One of the first things I realised was that I had to hand in my notice at work, dump the flat, move back in with my parents and escape from it all on the Camino de Santiago. I made myself a promise and as soon as I got home I honoured that promise; I quit my job and my flat, bought a one-way ticket to France, and then read everything I could about the Camino Frances, the most popular route to Santiago de Compostela. I joined online forums and chat rooms, applied for a pilgrim’s passport and spent hours walking the South Downs to prepare myself for the 800-kilometre walk. I was free and independent; I was going to be the ‘master of my fate’ and the ‘captain of my soul’.