This has been several years in the making. And still now somewhat unexpectedly I find myself sitting at Eindhoven Airport waiting to board a flight to Porto. From there I will start walking to Santiago de Compostela, an adventure of which I have been thinking a long time already and which will now become reality.

I guess it all started a couple of years ago when I had a couple of panic like attacks as a consequence of worrying too long and too much about certain life matters. One of the reactions that such a mental state causes is to want to escape, although there is no real escape from a panic like feeling. You will just take it with you. When I had my second episode I decided together with my girlfriend Angie to escape anyway. We took a few days off and drove by car to Mendoza, Argentina to visit some friends and be in a more natural environment. The panic somewhat subsided although that’s always a slow process.

I guess it was around the same time that I started reading books about people doing long walks. I was continuously fantasizing about one day doing something similar myself. By then I had already expressed that one day I might walk to Santiago de Compostela and this desire became even more tangible after a colleague from the office actually walked the Camino Primitivo, one of the many ways to Santiago which leads through the north of Spain. Reading those books was also a way to escape, escape from a life of routine and being able to somewhat feel what it would be like to live an adventure and getting enthusiastic about it along the way.

Then came pandemic which caused a mild revival of the panic like feelings. The whole country (Argentina) went into lockdown and I was really worried about what being locked in would do to me. As always the head makes things worse then what reality provides. Lockdown was manageable, also due to my companion and the nighttime walks we would sometimes do and during which we were a bit scared to be told off by the police. We actually encountered the police at one point but they did not seem to mind our presence.

But inevitably being locked in caused an urge to escape. Something which we would give into by cycling all across town on Sundays to the house of Angie’s sister to spend the day there. Fast forward 8 months of pandemic. We had decided to break up in the meantime but were still real companions. Apparently also the urge to escape was still there considering the the fact that over the course of 4 months we did about 4 holiday trips together, during some of which we did some of the nicest walks we shared together.

A couple of months later we find ourselves at the hospital for an adventure of a totally different kind. Angie was diagnosed with colon cancer and I stood by her to support her in dealing with that situation. We decided to move to a house in the countryside, which we thought to be beneficial for the both of us. It wasn’t what neither of us had imagined. Angie wanted to go abroad and I also wanted to go and live some adventure but considering the circumstances it was a very good option to wait out the storm and help Angie recover. But unfortunately this wasn’t the case. Four weeks after we moved Angie died from a side effect of the cancer which affected her lungs. Suddenly my companion was gone. Life is very harsh sometimes.

It has been over 14 months now since Angie passed away. I am in the lucky position of not having to work too much so I was able to have time for myself to process all had happened. I did some escapes in the meantime with varying results. Some were enjoyable and others I had to abandon because my body doesn’t always respond like it did before. In general it has been a process of accepting. Accepting the fact that my companion isn’t here anymore and accepting that I have to take it slow.

The last couple of months I spent in the Netherlands. I had not seen my family for a very long time and because I felt stable enough to do so I decided to come over and spend some time in the Netherlands. The past year I’ve been thinking about walking to Santiago de Compostela but I did not really plan anything because I felt that it’s not a time to be too demanding on myself and my body. I had almost ruled it out for the time being untill a couple of weeks ago when I was doing a lot of freelance work.

Working a lot usually leads to me feeling unbalanced in regard to mind/body status. I have a hard time dealing with that on a daily basis and such was also the case a couple of weeks ago. I don’t want to spend all of my time in my head, I thought. Conclusion: then I should go walking on Portugal – Portugal being a destination which I have had irrational fantasies about during the past few years. After analyzing a more expensive trekking tour option through the Algarve in the south of Portugal the Camino a Santiago came back into view.

I had never really investigated deeply into the various available routes to Santiago – and still haven’t really done so now – but know now that the so called Portuguese Camino, running from Lisbon through Porto and then to Santiago de Compostela, is one of them and a much used one. Doing a quick Google search on the viability to walk this route during autumn returned some positive feedback and convinced me to buy a plane ticket to Porto and take on this adventure.

Rounding up my route to Porto – already inside the plane – I can say that it was not the way I had imagined winding up on the Camino. At one time I talked with Angie about doing it and she was surely up for it. I imagined starting somewhere in Spain or maybe even in France but now I will be walking through the unimagined territories of northern Portugal. But that’s life. Let’s see what happens in the next 18 days.