A common theme runs through the many hikes writer Patrick Boxall has undertaken around the world 🥾
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.
