When I tell people we’re walking the Camino in the autumn, reactions vary.  It’s striking first how few people haven’t heard of it: what feels like a rather anoraky pursuit is actually pretty well known, thanks partly to the sheer number of people who now do it, and partly to the Martin Sheen film from 2010 and a BBC programme last year.  Most people are envious, and we are certainly lucky to be able to take six weeks out from the rest of life, to have (we hope) the health and strength to complete the walk, and to be able to afford it.  But some do ask the blunt question, “Why would you want to do that?”  And it’s a very fair question: if you’ve got the chance to take six weeks holiday, it’s not obvious why you would spend it all walking across northern Spain, through landscapes of varying attractiveness, staying partly in hostels, to a destination you can fly to in a couple of hours!

For me, some of the reasons are clear.  I’m looking forward to the physical and mental challenge of walking 500 miles at a run rate of about 15 miles a day: I know it will hurt at times, that we will get both hot and wet, and that the walking may be boring at times.  But it will be very satisfying to complete the walk, and who knows when injury or illness may rule this sort of thing out completely?  The chance to observe a slice of modern Spain at close quarters will be interesting, as I covered in an earlier blogpost.  And it will be good to see the historic buildings and get a sense of the atmosphere that greeted medieval pilgrims.

Harder to pin down, but important, is the sense of going on a journey, and the reflections that will prompt – as Lawrence Durrell wrote, “Journeys lead us not only outwards in space but inwards as well.”

There is a difference between a journey and a trip.  A trip may also be quite long, and involve admiring landscapes and buildings.  But that doesn’t imply a development of the mind or, more speculatively, the soul.  A journey implies a change. 

It doesn’t have to be a physical journey.  The former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, calls his memoir A Journey, because it’s “a description of a journey through a certain period of history in which my political, and maybe to a certain degree my personal character evolves and changes”.  By coincidence, I was listening to Test Match Special this morning, in between working on this blog, and the former Australian fast bowler, Mitchell Johnson, talked about the highs and lows of Test cricket, and said that you learnt better how to cope through experience “on your journey”.

Journeys can change you for a number of reasons.  Most obviously, there is being in a different country, and going through it under our own steam.  Goethe wrote in Italian Journey, “Nothing is comparable to the new life that a reflective person experiences when he observes a new country.”  There will also be plenty of new people to meet, and by all accounts people from dozens of different countries and a variety of walks of life.  Then there are the experiences we will have, some planned -sharing dormitory accommodation for the first time in over 15 years – and others unplanned, though hopefully not too dramatic – please let’s not be seriously ill!

How you change will depend partly on the strength of these forces, but also on your mindset at the start of the trip, and how you react to the experiences it brings.  I’m fortunate again in not embarking on the journey in order to come to terms with a bereavement or other traumatic life event.  I’m not actively seeking God, nor another definition of the meaning of life.  But I am looking forward to the time to think, and to think while on the move, and I know I need to allow my mind to be open to whatever the journey brings.  The 19^th century essayist, William Hazlitt, wrote that “We go a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind much more to get rid of others.”  That will be hard for someone who likes to plan everything, and to know exactly what he will be doing for the next days and weeks.  But it’s part of the camino experience that I am looking for.

Finally, what’s the significance of the fact that this particular journey is based on a medieval Catholic pilgrimage, and that walkers and cyclists are still known as “peregrinos” or pilgrims?  That’s one for another blog!