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Leaving Spišské For now we have finished walking. We have walked just over 100 miles in the last 8 days. We have many hundreds more to walk across many countries before we arrive back in Santiago de Compostela. It will take years and thousands of steps. But as always, when travelling for pleasure, it is the journey not the destination that matters. We have got lost many times on this not yet…

Following a Camino is always more than just a walking holiday. It is a sometimes endurance-testing mental and physical journey with a sense of purpose and aching-legged achievement at the end of each day..We know we have walked each step and there is an authenticity to that, that is so often missing from this superficial, fake news world we are living in. And nothing feels more genuine and…

We have been walking across Slovakia for 3 days, a constant series of ascents and descents, shaded, wooded paths and shale that rattles under foot. Like our journey, Slovakia seems to be a country of opposites. Part left behind in the Communist days of the 20th century, part reaching towards a better future. In Gelnica, where we stayed on the second day, the town itself feels as though it has 2…

So.. we have found a new Camino.. one that doesn’t include cliff edges and the potential of falling to our death at every step – my Lycian Way phobia. Instead, we have arrived in Kosice, ready to start the not yet famous Slovakian Camino. It is so new that no one in Kosice has heard of it, even though it starts from here. A city that is a mixture of Soviet-era rectangular tower blocks, hidden…

We are leaving our Barcelona sun-burned empty-street wanderings behind us and turning our van back towards an England that is also sun-drenched. The enticing azureness of the sea sparkles its goodbye as we head for France and inland. This time we cross over the Millau viaduct .. It’s hard not to feel the precariousness of driving a portable home across a valley.spread 300 metres below us… like…

We have made it to Barcelona.. well a campsite by the sea just outside Barcelona.. sitting under our van awning we can see the blue ocean sparkling while squawking emerald green parakeets swoop between trees, and our coffee bubbles on the stove. Spanish parakeets sharing a feast The freedom of outdoor living with all the mod-cons of indoor living. What more can we need. We catch the train into…

Today we have been mostly melting. We have made it to in the South of France,, to l, , .. it is a bit like driving through an inferno… or maybe a pizza oven.. Our camp site is next to the River Tarn, refreshingly cool to swim in after a day of driving through dramatic tree covered, cliff edged mountains and across viaducts so high they make you hold your breath until you are safely on the other…

So here we are, back on the road in a very big Hymer motorhome.. More like a flat on wheels than a camper van. We are kitted out with all a traveller could ever need.. We have an air fryer, a very modern fridge, the most efficient pans, constant internet access, a new leisure battery so we can live and work off grid and, most important of all, a cocktail shaker. We are the most modern, the most…

So here we are, back on the road in a very big Hymer motorhome.. More like a flat on wheels than a camper van. We are kitted out with all a traveller could ever need.. We have an air fryer, a very modern fridge, the most efficient pans, constant internet access, a new leisure battery so we can live and work off grid and, most important of all, a cocktail shaker. We are the most modern, the most…

So this is it. ..the last ever Camino de Santiago blog. We have finished our last day of walking and made it back to Santiago de Compostela. Along with hundreds of other peregrines, some simply lying on the ground on top of their rucksacks, other hugging each other goodbye, we stand in the shadow of the intricate cathedral that symbolises the end of a journey Ninesh and me in Praza de Obradoiro…

Tui marks the start of the last 100 kms of the Portuguese Camino. And as when we reached Sarria on the Spanish Camino, the Way suddenly becomes much more crowded when Santiago de Compostela is only 100kms away. Walking the last 100kms means that you can claim you have walked the Camino and gain the confirmation stamp in Santiago.. As Camino purists, who have carried our backpacks the full 620kms…

We cross from Portugal to Spain over a bridge, with one foot in Valenca on the Portuguese side and one foot in Tui on the Spanish side. Crossing the bridge from Portugal into Spain Standing astride the invisible border It is strange, this idea that a border can run through a river. I wonder who it is that decides that something as seemingly concrete as a border can exist in the fluidity of…

Coast just outside Ancona Sitting opposite the wild waves of Ancona Beach, we spend the afternoon and evening drinking 1 Euro glasses of chilled beer and sparkling wine on tap.. Our glasses chilled and overflowing in the Portuguese sun., we pretend that our legs aren’t aching from our 12 mile walk, try to forget that when we first started walking the Spanish Camino 8 years ago, 12 miles would…

We are back in Portugal for our final Camino de Santiago tour. Our final 100 miles across the North of Portugal to take us back to Santiago de Compostela We begin back where we ended last year in Viana, a seaside town full of Portuguese holiday makers. The only foreign languages heard are from Camino-goers, some of whom we meet at breakfast in the Pensacola O Laranjeira. I watch our fellow…

It has been almost a month since we left Turkey. We spent our last day wandering the streets of Ovacik and met up again ,with Tarik, embracing each other like long lost friends. It is strange how quickly somewhere becomes familiar, how a connection with just one other person can make us believe we are coming home. Leaving the azure blue of the Turkish seas was hard. As always when we walk, we…

As was to be expected, we are woken by birds fighting over leaves to line nests and by a cacophony of confused cockerels. I stand outside our room, bees humming around me, the sun on my face and the air warm with the smell of baking bread. And I wonder if this might not be a better way to live our lives. . Whatever else is happening in the world, here honey is gathered from the pine trees and…

Standing on the Edge of the World We spend the night in a hotel in Alinca, 700m above sea level. From our bedroom window the sea stretches until it merges with the horizon into a blue foreverness. The owner of the hotel is from a Turkish family but was born in Germany, so as we sit at breakfast we chat in German about how hard it is to run a hotel, about the high expectations of Turkish…