It´s a good question.  Why walk the Camino de Santiago?  Why walk over 500 miles – that´s 800 kilometers – along the epic pilgrimage route from the border with France in the Pyrenees to the final destination of Santiago de Compostela (or the other one at Cape Finisterre or “The End of the World”)?   We could take the famous answer offered by many high altitude mountaineers when asked why they climb Everest – “Because it´s there”.

It´s a fair answer, and actually the one I could have given when asked why I walked the route for the first of many times almost 10 years ago.  I didn´t have a religious conviction, I was pretty fit and didn´t see it as a great physical challenge, I had traveled a fair bit in Spain already and spoke OK Spanish, it wasn´t a daunting unknown travel destination filled with exotic mystique like some are and were the kind have always beckoned me .

But, it still drew me for some reason.  I just wanted to walk it…just because.

The thing about the Camino is that it is about many, many things for people.  Everyone has a back story, a motive, a  reason, sometimes a pain, a need or just a curiosity.  It is often underlain with a desire to take on a challenge, to get fit, lose weight, see a country, learn a language.  Sometimes with a spiritual or religious motivation, a way of walking away from a bad decision in life or towards a new one.

But here is the thing…it IS about WALKING.  Yes, walking will get you fit and it will help you to lose weight.  It will help lower blood pressure and your risk of lots of diseases.  So that ticks the New Year´s Resolution box right there!  But just the actual fact of walking – putting one foot in front of another and just MOVING FORWARD is incredible.  It is liberating and meditative in a way that other forms of exercise aren´t.  That you are on a path that has literally been walked in the same way for thousands of years adds an element which you can´t sum up in words.

So if any or all of the above strike a chord with you, do it!  Walk that very long path and you will without doubt not regret it.  WALKING is life changing.