Why Everyone Is Walking to Somewhere Sacred

Nobody warned me that my feet would bleed on the third day. The guidebook mentioned blisters in passing, the way people mention traffic when describing a city break, as a minor inconvenience easily managed with the right preparation. It was not minor. But by day five, something had shifted, and the pain had become almost beside the point.

I was walking the Camino de Santiago, the ancient pilgrimage route that winds through northern Spain to the cathedral city where the remains of Saint James are said to rest. I am not religious. I booked it during a particularly uninspiring Tuesday at my desk and told myself it was just a long walk with good scenery. That is, of course, not what it is at all.

The Camino has existed in some form for over a thousand years, and in recent decades it has experienced a remarkable revival. In 1985, fewer than 700 people completed it. Last year, that number was approaching half a million. They come from every country imaginable, for reasons as varied as grief, curiosity, midlife crisis, spiritual hunger, and yes, occasionally, fitness. What is extraordinary is that it seems to give each of them something different, and yet something the same.

What pilgrimage offers, in a world of instant everything, is the radical gift of slow progress. You walk. You arrive somewhere small. You eat simply, sleep in a bunk above a stranger, and do it again the next morning. There is no agenda beyond the next village. Your phone becomes largely useless, not because you have switched it off, but because the world of notifications seems to recede naturally when your attention is occupied by the path ahead and the ache in your calves.