Mid-summer mourning
Our 'freedom walk' is behind us and Mark and I are now in South Africa... but our hearts remain somewhere on the trail in Spain
NE Where is an independent, travel-focussed journal for curious people. If you value the work I do here, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription ( for less than $1 a week, benefits include access to an archive packed with stories about exceptional women, and other tales about interesting people and places) or perhaps hitting the button below to buy me a virtual coffee. Thank you for joining me on this journey!
Busy day? Take a listen to this piece, instead of reading it:
Dear NE-One
Over the past few weeks I have started this note more times than I care to remember. I’ll begin in my head, or I’ll sit down to write something, and then after a sentence or two my mind drifts off, and I’m lost. Where do I begin? What should I tell you? In fact, do I actually want to tell you? No offence – it’s just that I’m not one for putting hugely personal pieces Out There, and so when something I’m writing (this note, a fine example) begins to go that way my brain jumps in, rolls her eyes and says, c’mon, Narina Ann (she always addresses me as ‘Narina Ann’), this piece isn’t supposed to be about you. But, sometimes that’s just the way it goes.
The last time I dropped you a line Mark and I were about to head off on a walk through Spain. Initially we’d set aside six weeks to walk east to west, coast to coast, across the Iberian peninsula – but because shifting deadlines and then expiring visas ate into much of that time, our plan morphed into sticking to the Camino routes for about two weeks. We’d walk two days along the outrageously busy French Way, from Astorga to Ponferrada, Mark decided (I left all planning to him), and then we’d branch onto the little-known Camino del Invierno, the Winter Way, and head towards Santiago.
It would be, we’d promised each other, our ‘freedom walk’; a simple journey that we would embark on without any commitments, without our computers, and without any commissions. I didn’t post anything to social media; I didn’t shoot any images just in case an editor might want a story later; I didn’t take any notes, do any research or collect any information. It was wonderfully, liberatingly, something we did Just For Us.
We did, however, send photos to our family WhatsApp group, and Mark’s dad surprised us by creating this very special video from those pics:
In the three weeks since we reached Santiago, Mark and I have been in mourning for those 15 precious days on the trail; for the 360-something kilometres lived to the rhythm of our steps, and punctuated by hammock-siestas, simple trail-side picnics and invitations to coffee with strangers. Yes, there were hills and blisters and one particularly long, hot stretch along a tar road – but how deliciously sweet water tasted, gathered cold from a fountain, and how much joy that earth-honey scent of flowering chestnuts can bring to a mid-summer morning.
It’s been a struggle to kick our brains back into work mode and, while life has hardly been a trial these past few weeks, we’ve both missed the simplicity of living life one footstep at a time. I’ve thought about putting words together to detail our walk, but doing so now would undo the sheer freedom of our journey. I want to cling privately to the feeling of those days, blisters and all. The words, perhaps, will come later.
I’ve been asked a myriad questions since we returned – how did you escape the crowds on the Camino? Did you get bed bugs? How much stuff did you carry? Where did you sleep? – so I’m putting together a piece that’s absolutely not a guide, but that addresses some of the questions I’ve been asked. If there’s anything you’d like to know about walking a lesser-known Camino route, please drop me a line (you can reply to this message or pop your question in the comments) – and if you know of anyone who has walking a Camino on their radar, please hit the button below so they can sign up to receive the next piece.
Thank you so much for being part of the NE Where community – and for sticking around the past few months, while my notes have been few and far between. The pace of life has slowed to almost-normal, and you can now expect NE Where to drop into your inbox every second weekend, from 11 August.
Until then
In a reading kinda mood? Put the kettle on…
Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Lives: The woman who walked solo across Africa
The Zafimaniry: Madagascar’s forest people, without any trees
How algorithms are working to protect endangered wildlife
Luang Prabang – in 5 photos
Dervla Murphy: The solo adventurer considered the greatest female travel writer of all time
Packing up and moving on: The one thing that’s changed the way I travel
You guys picked a good route —- the Francés should only be walked in Winter to avoid those awful crowds! The cure for the post-walk blues: plan another! 😂
Lovely commentary and also a great reading list! Also, have you heard of or read The Mission Walker, by Edie Littlefield Sundby? She's in my Mexico writers group - and after discovering some years ago now that she had cancer, think stage 4, she decided to walk to all the Calif. missions -which she did, and wrote a great book in the process. Thaks for a nice post!