The last tour was a blast.

We all had a truly memorable time. And we’ve all become friends. More than friends. There is a bond between us which is hard to describe.

Jennifer and I are now starting to think of the next one.

Next year we’re definitely doing a walk from Florence to Assisi, then to Rome. That will be in April. We already have four people who have committed to that tour – and our maximum number will be nine.

We found on the last tour that keeping the number of people to under ten makes for a far more enriching experience. It’s best to keep the group small.

The last trour went smoothly because Jennifer and I did two full scouts prior to the tour commencing. We did our homework. We drove the route, and checked out every hotel, we went into bedrooms, examined their bathrooms, made notes of which had baths as against showers, whether they would do an early breakfast for us, whether the staff were pilgrim friendly etc.

We prepared as thoroughly as we could.

Financially, it meant we made a loss on the tour, but the prep work had to be done, and it had to be done properly. Just like making a movie. But now we have the infrastructure in place should we wish to do another Camino Portuguese tour.

It will be the same with the Assisi Tour.

Jennifer and I will have to go over there well beforehand and scout it fully, and we’ll even probably walk some sections. We will need to check out hotels, where to eat, and we’ll also need to find an Italian Catarina. That will be hard. She was fantastic. But we’ll need someone who speaks Italian, and who knows the region.

We will also start thinking about a Celtic Camino.

We’re thinking it will involve a series of separate walks around the West Coast of Ireland – possibly on the Beara Ring, the Kerry Ring, and the Dingle Peninsula. It won’t be one continuous walk – it will be four or five separate walks on those three peninsulas – taking the van between the different locations.

We’ll then fly the group from Ireland to A Coruna in the north of Spain, bus the 50kms or so to Ferrol, then walk the Camino Ingles into Santiago. That’s a short Camino – about 100kms or so. But it means we get a Compostela.

We’ll ask Catarina to do that one. She speaks English – kind of!

Again though, Jennifer and I will have to return to Ireland and set that up – figure out the walks, line up hotels, work out the itinerary etc. The Irish part of the walk would end with a long walk along the Cliffs of Moher – which are incredible.

That won’t be a cheap tour. Ireland is two to three times more expensive than Spain, and then we’ll have airfares too. But it should be an amazing tour.

As for when we’d do that – possibly September 2015.

More immediately, we’re thinking we might do another Portuguese Camino Tour in October. Catarina has put her hand up to say she’s available – but it would depend on whether we got sufficient interest. We’d need about eight people to make it viable.

Jennifer and I enjoyed the last tour so much, we’d like to do some more. But we can only offer a tour if we’ve fully prepped it. This is not stuff you can do on the internet.

And in the case of Ireland, it’s very important we check out the pubs!

It’s fascinating now, with a bit of perspective time-wise – to look back on the tour and reflect on the group experience.

When you walk in a group, as part of a tour, there’s a whole other dynamic going on that you don’t experience when you walk alone.

There are the obvious things: often you’re walking with others and so you don’t have the time or opportunity to contemplate or reflect, because your energies and attention are deflected to whoever you might be with.

But the upside of that is that the other person might be providing you with insights, or dare I say it, beads of wisdom, that could end up being incredibly beneficial to you. Or you might be walking with a few people, and you might be bouncing around ideas or beliefs that you wouldn’t have considered had you been walking alone.

Same at lunch or dinner – group discussions can be fascinating, revealing, and insightful.

You might say that this can happen if you walk alone, and you meet up with people who you befriend along the way. But it’s not the same thing.

As a group you start off together – you’re bonded from the outset if for no other reason than you are a collective – and unlike friends you meet along the way, who you might not see for a week before you meet up with them again, with a tour group you’re with each other every day, and most meals too.

What this creates is familiarity, deeper friendships, and sometimes a level of intimacy that you wouldn’t otherwise experience. And by intimacy, I’m talking about being able to confide in someone. Being able to trust someone with your innermost thoughts and feelings. And being able to share moments of fun and pure joy.

Yes of course that also happens on the Camino when you walk alone – and sometimes there’s intimacy with strangers. Because they are strangers. Someone will pour out their heart to you because they know most probably they’ll never see you again. You become their Camino Confessional Box.

But that’s a whole other ballgame to the group experience.

One of the other major benefits of the group experience is that you begin to act like a family, and you begin to care for one another in ways that would’t necessarily happen if you were walking alone.

Yes if you walk alone you can be the recipient of acts of kindness and generosity – again often from complete strangers – but I’m talking about the caring and deep rooted empathy that comes from a bonded “family” experience.

I saw this first hand. The Camino began to work it’s magic on one of the group – this person began to unhinge, and a whole lot of stuff that had been lying deep within began to surface. Someone else on the tour recognised this – knew that person needed help – and gently stepped in and provided much needed guidance and support.

Because of the group experience, there was trust and familiarity between the two of them that allowed it to happen.

I’ve been aware too that now after the tour, that caring and providing of support between some in the group is continuing. Which is wonderful to see.

Fact is, you can be by yourself in the group experience. You just walk off on your own. it happened a lot. Everyone else recognised immediately that the person needed to be on their own for a while. They understood, and respected that.

And when we arrived in Santiago, there was no dilution of the impact of that arrival because we were a group. If anything it was intensified, because of the shared experience. Because we not only knew what we’d been through to get there, we also knew what the others had been through as well – as individuals, but also perhaps more importantly, as the group. The family.

We had become an an entity – a unit – a strange kind of animal that the Camino had spawned. We were separate pilgrims, yes, but we were also an organism that had registered it’s own experiences. The shared experience, as against the personal experience.

And the shared experience was truly memorable.

Apologies. I’ve been lax this last week with the blog – for two reasons.

Firstly, I’ve had my head down preparing for this coming trip to the US. Jennifer and I leave Mudgee on Thursday, and fly out this Friday. We’ll be away nearly a month. So there’s been a lot of boring office work to do, but also a lot of stuff to organise and prepare in advance of coming to the States.

The trip is to speak to potential investors in the PGS film. I will post separately on that later.

One of the things I’ve been doing this past week is sorting through all the photos taken on the tour, and selecting the best shots of everyone, day by day. I’ll put these photos onto USB sticks and send them out to each person who did the tour.

In going through the shots as I did, I became very emotional. Such a lot happened in such a short period of time. We had some incredible experiences.

I don’t know what it’s like for the others, but that two weeks has created resonances within me that are getting stronger every day. It was enormous fun, yes, but it was also a very powerful time spiritually – when the Camino worked its subtle magic. It unhinged things within me, and I suspect within others too.

The second reason I haven’t posted this past week is because unlike last year, I don’t want to post daily anymore.

There were times last year when I found I put up posts just to fill the space each day. I don’t want to do that anymore. I only want to post when I have something to say. Something that I believe is worth saying.

I will post regularly from the US – and I’ll also be putting posts up on my road food blog. And I’ll be posting photos here too. I’m looking forward to putting my “eye” to work in the US!

I’ll also be looking forward to meeting some of you. As the itinerary becomes more clear, I’ll post approximate dates of where Jennifer and I will be, but it looks like we’ll be doing a lot of driving over a short period of time.

We start off in Los Angeles – do a quick side trip to Palm Springs to see Steve & jill, then we head up to Oregon and Washington State, across to the Tri-Cities, then over to Provo in Utah, then possibly to Kansas City, then back to Los Angeles, possibly via Newport.

A big trip in a short time. But it will be a huge amount of fun.

Okay – now I have to prepare a couple of posts which I’ll put up shortly. Only a few days to go before we leave for this trip – yikes, there’s so much to do!

As many of you might know, after the Portuguese Camino my wife Jennifer and I went to Ireland.

I’d never been to Ireland before, and had always wanted to go. For some inexplicable reason, I was drawn to the place.

About ten days before arriving, I set about booking our accommodation.

Our flight had us getting into Dublin about 5pm. I didn’t want to stay in Dublin though the first night – I wanted to stay somewhere out of town, in a small village, and get a real sense of the Irish countryside, and the people.

I looked at various options within about 90 minutes drive of Dublin, and finally settled on a little B&B in a tiny village called Avoca in County Wicklow, south of Dublin. The B&B in fact was situated just outside the village, at a place called The Meeting of the Waters. 

This place, for some reason, called to me.

I should explain that when I plan a trip, or when I organise accommodation, I always allow my PGS – my intuition – to guide me. I disengage my logical practical self, and use my intuitive processes.

That’s what I did in this instance. I don’t know why I chose Avoca, and The Meeting of the Waters – as I say, it just called to me. It just felt right to stay there on the first night in Ireland.

We flew into Dublin, picked up a rental car, and drove to Avoca. It turned out to be a picture postcard little village – famous for being the location for the tv show Ballykissangel, which I’ve never seen.

Avoca was just as I’d imagined an Irish village to be – beautiful.

We then drove a couple of kilometres out of the village, following a river through some of the most exquisite countryside I’d ever seen. The B&B was a restored farmhouse, and it lay at the confluence of two streams – hence its name, The Meeting of the Waters. 

The following morning Jennifer and I walked around to the junction of the two streams, and discovered that it was the place where the Irish poet and writer, Thomas Moore, wrote many of his famous works, including a poem called The Meeting of the Waters. 

I stood there, at this meeting of the two waters, and immediately felt comfortable there. Like I had a connection to this place which went back centuries. Like I belonged there.

It was a very strange feeling.

Some of you who read my blog posts from Ireland might recall me writing at the time that I felt like I had come home. In fact on April 27th I wrote:

I feel at home here.
For some reason, I feel like I have come home.
That I was always here.

Cut to:

Mothers Day. This past Sunday. I called my mum to wish her happy Mothers Day. She was out having lunch with my family in Brisbane. I spoke to her for a while, and then for some reason I had the urge to speak to my sister, Anne.

I hadn’t spoken to Anne for several months. In fact she didn’t even know that I’d been away, or that I’d been to Ireland.

Those of you who are followers of this blog might recall that prior to my first Camino, I’d been estranged from my sister Anne for decades. We’d always fought. The Camino in fact reunited us. Brought us back together. I regard it still as the single most beneficial gift the Camino gave me – my sister.

Anne has spent many many years researching our family tree and ancestry – our genealogy. She asked about Ireland and said: You know that’s where our family came from…

In fact I didn’t know that. For some reason I’d always thought we’d come from Wales, or Scotland. I’ve never really taken any interest in our family heritage. But Anne has. She’s been dogged in finding out where we came from.

And then she said: Yes, we come from a small village in County Wicklow. Avoca.

What? I said. Avoca? Are you kidding me? 

And then she told me about my forebear – Mary Fairfield, married to a man named Donovan. They were tenant farmers and had a small farm just outside of Avoca.

I was stunned.

Of all the myriad of places I could have chosen to stay that first night in Ireland, I’d chosen the place where I’d come from.

This was seriously spooky.

And then I began to wonder: could that B&B have been Mary Fairfield’s farmhouse? Could I have actually stayed in my ancestors’ home?

(a photo taken from my bedroom window of the B&B)

I’ve said before that I’m constantly surprised at how my PGS guides me. Some of you have said to me that I shouldn’t be surprised, that I should just accept it.

But incidents like this just knock me sideways.

Of all the places I could have chosen to spend the first night in Ireland, I was led to the place where I belonged. To my ancestral home…

Here is an excerpt from Thomas Moore’s poem, The Meeting of the Waters – 

There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet,
As the vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet;
Oh, the last rays of feeling and life must depart,
Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart.

The vignetting is a little bit corny, I know – but hey, it visualises a very fruity poem so I figured sentimentality was okay in this instance…

Jennifer and I are coming to the US in less than 2 weeks now.

We’ll be in LA for a few days, then we’re driving north up through Oregon into Washington State, then across to Utah, then back to LA. All up about 4 weeks.

The trip is to speak to potential investors in my forthcoming PGS film, but if possible I would love to meet up with any of you that might be on our way, or near to where we’re going.

Already I’ve made some tentative arrangements to see a few of you.

My caveat is that the trip is for work, and so any arrangements would have to fit into a changing schedule – but if at all possible, it would be wonderful to meet some of you!

Let me know on – billpgsblog@gmail.com

Last year I walked the Camino Frances by myself.

I found it to be a profound and transformative experience. The resonances remain with me, even now.

This year I walked the Camino Portuguese with a group. In fact I led a group.

I found it to be no less a profound experience. But It’s interesting to now look back and compare the two pilgrimages.

Firstly, the Camino Frances was a longer distance – some 800kms – and it took longer. For me, including rest days, 31 days. The Camino Portuguese is shorter – 240kms – and it took us 13 days, including 1 rest day.

You’d think that the Camino Frances, because it’s longer and tougher, would provide you with all the ingredients to induce change – a greater change than a shorter pilgrimage.

But I didn’t find that to be the case.

The Camino Portuguese packs a lot into its 240kms. (That’s from Porto to Santiago.)

There are some long tough stages, and some climbs that really push you hard. After climbing to Roncesvalles, and to O Cebreiro, I didn’t think the Portuguese Camino could throw anything at me that would be as difficult as those stages.

But I found the climb to Rubiaes tough-going. As well, there were many stages which were predominantly on hard surfaces – bitumen, cement, and often cobblestones. The cobblestones were a killer on the feet. They induced blisters on many of those on the tour.

The stage from Vila do Conde to Barcelos was particularly difficult – a long walk, and largely on tar or cobblestones. We were knackered at the end of it. And that was day 2.

Also, there were sometimes fewer options on the Camino Portuguese to shorten your stages. The Camino Frances, because it’s so popular, has albergues most of the way along. You can choose to walk a shorter distance if you want.

The infrastructure on the Portuguese Camino – accommodation and cafes etc – isn’t so well developed, particularly for our tour group which required hotels, not albergues. (Yes I know, we’re not true pilgrims. To you I say bah! 🙂 )

So we had a few long stages, particularly early on.

But this I think intensified the experience, and began the transformation process in a few of those in the group after only a couple of days. I noticed this, I read the signals, but I was always a distant observer. I never wanted to pry. I just saw changes starting to happen…

You can have a transcendent experience in a flash. In a moment. You don’t need to walk 1000kms from Seville to have a life altering experience. That’s what I learned from the Camino Portuguese – and I have to say it surprised me.

I didn’t realise it would be as intense, both physically and spiritually, as it turned out to be.

The Camino Portuguese is not a “mini-me” Camino Frances. It has its own history, its own culture and food, it has very potent links to Santiago – St. James and his relics – that are unique to that part of the world.

It is a very special pilgrimage, and it can be as transformative, as spiritually awakening, as the longer Caminos.

The last shot of Donna on her guest post was a cropped picture I took of her and Greg on the second last day in Santiago.

Here is the shot in full…

Donna did the tour with us.

She was a delight. A delight to walk with, a delight to talk to, always a delight. Whenever I photographed her I always captured a truly beautiful smile.

This was her first Camino, yet she’d done a lot of training, particularly hard hill and mountain training, and she breezed through what turned out to be a tough walk.

She sent me this guest post –

On the 17^th June, 2013 my life changed forever.

I was sitting at my mechanics waiting for my car to be serviced when I stumbled across Bill’s blog. I read everything. Every blog entry. Every comment. That evening I sent Bill a message on the blog thanking him for his blog and inspiring words. I mentioned in my message that I intended to do the Camino in seven years time.

 A discussion ensued between myself, Bill and others suggesting that seven years was way too long to wait to do the Camino. Bill said I wouldn’t wait that long and if I’d been bitten by the Camino bug I would be there within a year. Honestly, I thought Bill was out of his mind.

Little did I know that by putting it out there I would be answered and I would be lucky enough to join Jen, Bill and others on the Portuguese Camino.

I didn’t want to go away and do the Camino because I didn’t think I could leave my children. Julie B wrote “

I hear what you are saying about waiting until the children are older and less in need of mother. Yet, when my kids were in High School, I had to travel often to take care of my dying dad. I had numerous “spiritual” experiences during that time because for the first time in my life I was only responsible for myself when I was traveling and staying in hotels. I literally could hear myself think and pray/meditate in solitude. I always came back with a heightened awareness and love for my family…..it was good to get away, not bad.”

Julie, such prophetic words. That is exactly what happened to me. For the first time I was responsible for myself and not for everyone else.

I never planned whom I would walk with on the Camino. Sometimes I was in a big group, sometimes with one friend and other times on my own.

When I was on my own I had hours and hours to think. Hours to ponder things. Hours just to occupy myself and not worry about anything other than “Am I still following the yellow arrows.” Walking on my own forced me to think about things I had perhaps been trying to avoid. It made me face issues that I had put to the back of my mind. It helped me to put things into perspective. It gives you processing time.

It also forced me out of my comfort zone and made me more self-reliant. There is something about getting lost in a foreign city where you have no language skills and you are trying to find your accommodation.

During the two weeks I had several spiritual experiences. These took me by surprise, as I don’t consider myself a religious person. I didn’t and still don’t really understand what they meant. It has given me a heightened sense of my own spirituality and it’s something I would like to explore more.

I had many conversations with lovely people that were part of our group and other pilgrims I met along The Way.  Each one of these people has touched me in one way or another.  I find that I am incorporating parts of the journey into my everyday life.  I’ll be doing something and I’ll think “Ah, that’s what Jen said.  Now I know what she meant.” 

I believe I have come back from the Camino happier and more able to deal with the stress of everyday life.  This cannot only be good for me but also for my children and others in my life.  I still have a lot to learn and a lot of lessons to apply.

Bill thank you for your blog.  You have been told by many others but it really does make a difference in people’s lives.

Jen and Bill thank you for organising the Portuguese Camino tour.  I will be forever grateful to you for doing this.  Without your tour I wouldn’t have gone this year.  Without your tour I wouldn’t have been able to make the changes in my life that I have.

A photo I took of Donna at the start of the Camino –

A photo I took of her at the end of the Camino –

I’ve been following a thread on one of the forums – about a series of armed robberies on the Camino Via de la Plata. A couple of men wearing balaclavas and brandishing knives have been stealing money off pilgrims walking alone.

It was a disturbing thread for a number of reasons – firstly, you set off on a pilgrimage believing you’ll be safe. That somehow the sacred nature of your journey will guard you from harm. But of course that’s nonsense. The Camino is like any other public place. You are vulnerable to the vagaries of man.

Secondly it’s disturbing that the economic situation in Spain is such that some men feel they need to rob others with a threat of violence. That’s sad.

Historically, pilgrims have always been subject to robbery and sometimes violence along the Camino. In ages past it was far far worse than it is today. The police in Spain want to prevent crime on the Camino, because the Camino brings much needed revenue to towns and regions that desperately need it.

And let’s put these recent incidents into context. The robberies have evidently been occurring on a remote part of the Via de la Plata out of Seville, where there are long distances between towns or habitations. Not the more popular Camino Frances. And it seems like this recent spate is the work of just two men – not several different thieves on different Caminos.

Of all the people who walk the Camino each year – and we’re into the millions – how many report being robbed or threatened? Hardly any. So the Camino is not unsafe. It’s just that you’ve got to be aware of your personal safety as you do anywhere, particularly if you’re a woman walking alone.

(Just on those figures – John Walker from the Pilgrim’s Office in Santiago told me that for every pilgrim who receives a Compostela each year, the Office estimates that there’s another ten that walk the Camino but either don’t complete the pilgrimage, or don’t receive a Compostela. More than 200,000 pilgrims received a Compostela last year – so multiply that by ten, and you have more than 2 million people walking parts of the Camino last year. That is staggering.)

People regularly report stuff stolen from their backpacks in albergues – even those that put their valuables in their sleeping bags while they’re asleep. And in some of the larger towns, pickpockets are known to target pilgrims.

I’ve always said, being a pilgrim walking the Camino doesn’t imbue you with a spiritual immunity from crime.

Particularly for someone doing their first Camino, there’s a warm fuzzy sense of being a part of a spiritual journey, and a belief that your fellow pilgrim has the same purity of intent that you do. You trust your fellow pilgrim. You want to believe that because they too are part of this sacred and ancient walk, that they too are honourable honest people.

And 99% are.

But the Camino does attract opportunists. Waiting to prey on the weak and vulnerable. And pilgrims are at times very vulnerable. They’re vulnerable because they trust, they’re vulnerable because often they’re exhausted or suffering from injuries, some are vulnerable because they’re naive or innocent. The Camino might be their first big trip alone overseas, and they’re not savvy to the scams and the dangers.

Someone on this post said all pilgrims are good people. Let me tell you, they’re not.

99% are.

But amongst those 2 million people who walk along the Camino each year, some are thieves, some are scammers, some are simply not nice people. Labelling yourself a pilgrim, getting your Credential and putting a scallop shell on your backpack doesn’t immediately make you a good person with a good heart.

In an albergue in Astorga, I saw someone leave their iPhone on a charger and head out for dinner. I warned the person, but they shrugged and smiled, said it would be ok. Later they came back and of course their phone had been stolen.

The Camino for me represents the journey through life.

You go through various stages – of hope, of disappointment, of frustration. Sometimes you get angry. You have times when you strike obstacles, when you struggle, when everything is boring and tedious. But then you also have times when you’re unbelievably happy, when you triumph. When you win. When you can only ever see beauty around you. You meet people along the way that change your life, and you might in some way change their’s too. And you learn huge lessons.

That’s the Camino. And that’s life.

As in life, you’re going to meet some good people, and some whose energies are confused. Sometimes foul. They’re not bad, because I don’t believe anyone is bad – they’re just unwise.

As in life, you have to be careful. You have to be aware. But you must never let fear take over. Fear limits you. Fear reduces and taints your experiences. Fear leads to antipathy. To hate. To rejection. Fear takes away the joy.

The Camino is a joyful experience. But it doesn’t give you spiritual immunity.

It’s hard coming home from a Camino.

No-one really talks about this.

The Camino takes you up so high, then you come home and you drop down so low.

Steve on this past Camino said it’s an unreal world. And yes, it is. For the period of time you’re walking, nothing else matters. Your priorities become very simple: where will you sleep, how will you do your laundry, what will you eat, how will you deal with your injuries, how far will you walk tomorrow, and how tough will it be?

Most of us ignore the outside world. We don’t keep up with the news, we don’t watch tv, except maybe for a footy game in a bar, or a Formula One race, or the weather forecast.

Some of us don’t check emails, we turn off our phones, some of us sever all communications. The worries of the life we left behind are, well, left behind.

But no matter how far we walk – whether we walk from Le Puy or from Porto, at some point we have to come home.

And it’s tough.

For a start, once we come home we don’t walk 25km-30km a day any more. We no longer get that aerobic high. We no longer have those endorphins coursing through our bodies, and that causes a big energetic and emotional slump.

Also, any worries or issues that we left behind are invariably waiting for us on our return, ready to jump out and ambush us with renewed vigour.

Some of us might have walked the Camino to work out stuff. A faltering relationship perhaps, or a business decision, or simply what to do with our lives. That “stuff” now stands baldly in front of us, waiting to be addressed.

We might hope to address it with a new-found wisdom acquired on the Camino. We might have spoken to someone on the pilgrimage who triggered something that now gives us a fresh outlook. We might have come home with a cocktail of emotions, unsure how to now approach our post Camino life.

If we’ve learned lessons, and most of us who walk the Camino do learn some profound life lessons, then we struggle to take what we’ve learned back into our everyday lives.

That’s hard.

On the Camino it’s easy. Relatively. It’s a finite world, for a start. A pilgrimage begins and ends. You get to Santiago, and it’s over. The trick is to keep it going. To take your learned Camino ethos into your daily life back home. So that it never ends. So that every day is a pilgrimage, irrespective of where you are.

That’s hard.

Some of us go back to the Camino. Some go back time and time again. To learn more lessons? To define ourselves? To breathe that refined and sacred air of a pilgrimage? We each have our different reasons. Already I’m thinking of my next one. And the next.

Jennifer and I got back home yesterday. We went to sleep and woke up 18 hours later. I’ve never slept 18 hours straight before in my life. Never.

Jennifer is nauseous. She was nauseous at the start of the Camino, now she’s nauseous at the end. It’s an esoteric reaction to an emotional state. It has nothing to do with anything else – it’s an energetic cleansing.

The Camino has that kind of impact. It resonates in all kinds of ways, in different ways in different people.

It’s hard coming home from a Camino.