“Who are you and where has my wife gone?”

For all his support and encouragement it was clear that my husband was bemused that his wife of some twenty years had decided she wanted to go on a walking holiday in rural Spain.  A far cry from the usual holiday wish list of international metropolitan cities or cocktails and spa treatments at a tropical resort.

And not only that, I backed it up with a four day walk along the Great Ocean Walk track in Victoria twelve months later.

Adventure Barbie was my Victorian walking companion and her husband asked her “What do you get out of it?”

A simple question that really got me thinking and that was a welcome distraction on Day 2 which was seven hours of up and down. Stunning landscapes just very steep hillsides!

The Camino had always intrigued me. I had read a wide range of personal experiences from the backpacker version to the reflections an American nun. The essence of this ancient pilgrimage spoke to my soul.

The year leading up to the Camino was in short, tumultuous and yet I was unwavering in my commitment to going. The final ‘backpacker’ experience was a far cry from the initial conversations around a fully guided walk and yet it was liberating and offered freedoms that I now hold as treasured memories.

With no guide or real map, faithfully following the yellow arrows was a daily act of trust as I walked in the footsteps of those pilgrims that had gone before me.

When Adventure Barbie asked me to join her on the Great Ocean Walk in Victoria with the Twelve Apostles as our destination no thinking was required. I had walked 160km’s in Spain and this was only a 54 km fully guided and supported walk.

Ha! Such arrogance – my feet ached liked they never did in Spain.

And therein lies the “what I get out of walking”.

I set out with a vision of what I think the experience will be and it never is.

A walking holiday is a punctuation mark in my life. It represents a Full Stop. It makes me take a breath and be present to the experience. And in that space comes the reflection that the busyness of everyday life does not allow.

Walking in Spain was meant to be two old friends who live continents apart spending quality time together. So not what happened!  Our party of two became a party of four. My forty something never been married friend met a fifty something never been married man and they are still laughing together twelve months later. I roomed with a German girl we befriended on our first day, a complete stranger.

I was me. Not a mother, wife, sister or daughter. It had been a long time since I had felt that.

The Great Ocean Road was meant to be an easy walk and it wasn’t. I know now that I am stronger than I think I am. Losing my first born child took the wind out of my sails and tilted the world for me. Failing to bring a child safely into the world took away my ‘bulletproofness’.  Yes, it made me more human (a good thing always) but something broke in the process.  The Great Ocean Walk helped me put it back together.

Walking makes you commit to a destination and is a practical representation of this quote that I have pinned to my noticeboard.

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back– Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” -W.H. Murray although often attributed to Goethe.

What’s your punctuation mark in Iife?

Liska x