TakeaWays

Often, on days and during extended moments of self-loathing, where I feel entirely uninteresting and worry that I’ll never do anything cool again, I eventually come to remembering upon unto a mirror gazing, that hey, I have partial heterochromia. And you know what, I’ve also had cancer. And walked the Camino de Santiago in 2018.

And although cancer’s obviously not cool, but walking 800km west from the French Pyrenees across Spain is probably one of coolest things I think I’ll ever do; cancer only badass because I’m fortunate enough to say I beat it. Though more on that another time I think.

Looking back, as I also frequently like to do or more honestly where I unfortunately live, I feel like it might be one of the only times I’ve demonstrated true integrity in my life (and the only thing I’ve ever maybe got right). As in doing something I said I would. Finally following through only after five years of talking about it. Made manifest without a plan other than for “one day” almost in an instant, like most of my trips have been to date, with a sudden urge to flee or escape.

Though I’m always up for a challenge, that or I’m just, as some friends have said - addicted to pain, and any kind of penance (or opportunity to lose weight) 2018 had already been testing.

I closed my business at the height of what I had created, the only explanation I had to offer being that I just couldn’t do it. I know I was still coming to terms with what happened to me a few years prior as far as getting kicked out of America and the toll my illness took.

So I cashed in on the talent I represented and left on a whim without a clue let alone the correct shoes, to see if walking it off would fix it.

It took me 33 days and nights to repent across Spain, with two of those sleeps spent under the stars, another on the floor of a cathedral and didn’t wake up in hell.

From Roncesvalles to Pamplona, Longrono, Burgos, Leon through to Santiago and everywhere else in-between. I didn’t meet my husband but I did fall hard and fast in love with bread again, or more so tostadas. Con tomat, con marmelades (!!!) you name it, discovering very quickly that the Camino was no place to diet, and rather noted once I got over it that “no two tortillas were the same;” that one must drink – honestly you won’t have a say in it and it will probably start earlier than you’d still prefer and think.

And even though every day was unique, I think Burgos was my Way’s most unsuspecting city that I’d never heard of, that doesn’t really roll off the tongue or was as recognisable on a map as say La Rioja and which I know for a fact I judged as I walked towards it earlier that morning. I mean, Burgos. Burgos. I can’t explain why but it doesn’t give doesn’t New York, London, Paris when you read it.

I cant really speak on Santiago, I spent the last 72 hours inside with a one Davide from Valenthia, ten years my junior who couldn’t speak a word of English so we were forced to communicate through body language, before I left him in the middle of the night to make my way back to Rome and onto Australia.

Something I regret but obviously is hilarious to look back on and will never forget And arriving just meant the journey was over. I cant say I found what I was looking for, seven years on I’m still searching.