When I was a few years younger and just in the early beginnings of my globetrotting days I was inspired by every adventure, every challenge and every story. I would spend time in hostels questioning other travellers about their experiences selfishly seeking inspiration for myself. What can I say I was 19 and wanted to ‘do it all’.

During this time I stayed with a friend in Berlin, Hannah, who I had met during her own globetrotting in a hostel in Melbourne, Australia. Her family welcomed me into their home with friendly faces and her Dad filled my life with the best green tea I had ever tasted and some of the best inspiration I could have asked for at the time.

Hannah’s dad was a regular pilgrim. He spend some time every year going on long walks and one that particularly caught my interest was the Camino de Santiago.

I had read Paulo Coelho’s ‘The Pilgrimage’ a few months before when I was stranded on a ferry from Italy to Greece with very limited english literature selection, but Coelho’s extremely spiritual tone didn’t quite inspire me as much as Hannah’s Dad’s enthusiasm.

It had been almost 3 years since I had stayed with Hannah and her family but my desire to walk that 780km across Spain had not disappeared – merely lingered in some deep secret part of my mind. Waiting for the perfect moment to make a reappearance in my life.

Flash forward to August 2016. I am 22 and living in Utrecht, The Netherlands. The room I am renting from a travelling student is about to expire and my temporary work contract is about to end. And Utrecht happens to be a town which happens to have a St Jacobs group around the corner from my house.

And one day I accidentally walk in.

The room is covered in maps, books and shells, and I know this is a place for pilgrims. I am offered coffee and a man sits down with me.

How can I help you?

I want to walk the Camino de Santiago!

…I don’t even know where that came from, oh… yeah… that deep secret part of my mind that’s been patiently waiting to expose itself…

Soon he was explaining maps and routes, allergues and backpacks, shoes and blisters. I was inspired. (Well, except for the blisters part).

He told me that September was the best month to go.

I was going in September.

And before I knew it I had joined the group and ordered my pilgrim passport.

I was going to walk 780km from the bottom of France to the west of Spain. I was going to walk the Camino de Santiago.

And with any luck I would find myself along the way… #soulsearching

It turned out that Hannah was in Amsterdam around that time and we caught up on a sunny day in the city. I told her about my plan and it turned out that her dad would actually be walking the same route as me along the camino only a week before. I was literally going to be following in the footsteps of the person who had inspired me to do the Camino de Santiago. (She also warned me about blisters from her own camino experience).