Books And Travel

What draws a mystery writer from Chicago to the cobblestone streets and alchemical history of Prague? How can a city’s mystical atmosphere inspire a novel, and what happens when grief follows you to one of Europe’s most beautiful destinations? Lisa M. Lilly shares how Prague captured her imagination, weaving the city’s gothic romance and ancient legends into her latest detective novel. From the astronomical clock that’s been marking time since 1410 to the legendary golem still said to rest in a synagogue, discover how this enchanting city became both a setting for fiction and a place of personal reflection. Lisa M. Lilly writes detective novels and supernatural thrillers, and also the author of Writing as a Second Career: Books for Writers. Her latest book, The Skeptical Man, features Prague in the Czech Republic How Prague’s architecture and eerie beauty immediately captivated a Chicago-based writer The city’s rich alchemical history and the famous golem legend, from medieval mysticism to modern AI parallels Navigating grief while traveling after losing a close friend Rooftop dining experiences and local Czech specialties, from monastery beer gardens to traditional duck restaurants Books about Prague including Wolf on a String, Prague the Mystical City, and more You can find Lisa at LisaLilly.com You can also take a day trip from Prague to Kutna Hora where you can find Sedlec Ossuary, or The Bone Church, which inspired my thriller, Crypt of Bone. Transcript of the interview Jo: Hello Travelers. I’m Jo Frances Penn, and today I’m here with Lisa M. Lilly. Hi Lisa. Lisa: Hi. It’s so good to see you, and thank you for having me on the podcast. I’m really excited. Jo: Oh yeah, it’s going to be fun today. Just a little introduction. Lisa writes detective novels and supernatural thrillers, and also the author of Writing as a Second Career: Books for Writers. Her latest book, The Skeptical Man, features Prague in the Czech Republic, which we are talking about today. So Lisa, you are in America. Why were you drawn to visit Prague and research the city for this book? Lisa: It happened the other way around in a way. Two years ago, I went to Prague by way of Krakow because that was the main city we were going to. My travel companion and I went because my grandparents were originally from that area, came to the United States in the early 1920s or so. And I had never been. And so my friend Steve said, “Well, I’ve always wanted to see Prague, but let’s wrap that in too.” And I more or less just said, “Okay, yeah, that sounds good.” And from the second I saw the city, we took a train there from Paris, because we also went to Paris. I just saw the architecture and we came into Old Town. And I thought, “Oh, I’m going to want to come back here. This is a beautiful city.” And as we walked around, I was very intrigued by the history of alchemy in Prague and we did not get to the Alchemist Museum. That was on my list to go to next time. But I started thinking about it. All these story ideas – I’m very motivated by place and I had not even been sure I was going to write another book in the series right then. I was thinking of taking a break and all these story ideas started coming to mind and the more places we saw, the more I’d think, “Oh, this would be a great scene. This would be a great place to set something.” I think Prague is so beautiful and kind of eerie in some places that it just evokes so many ideas. St Charles Bridge and Prague Castle Photo by JFPenn Jo: Yeah, I think it’s interesting. Well, first of all, you said Krakow and you got the train from Paris. I mean, obviously Krakow’s closer. You could have got the train. Lisa: Well, we went Paris to Prague, Prague to Krakow. Jo: Oh, okay. Yeah, because it’s really – for people who might not know, you know, the Czech Republic is really right in the center of Europe, well connected with Germany, Austria, Poland, Slovakia. So, and the trains. And this always surprises me in America, because I’ve been over to the US a lot and the trains are terrible. Whereas in Europe, you could just get everywhere by train, right? So I love that you arrived by train as an American. Lisa: Well, it turned out for us, it wasn’t the best way to go because we had worked with this travel agent who specialized in trains because we thought, “Oh, trains would be great. We’d always heard this about Europe.” And it was in terms of connectivity, but she didn’t think to tell us we were doing this almost four-week trip, so we had tons of bags. We each had two big rolling bags, two smaller bags. And we were picturing – I know you’ve taken the Amtrak where you get the compartments and you could stow your bags above and check your bags. So we’re lugging all these bags and there’s nowhere to put them because — Jo: We all have backpacks! Lisa: Yeah, exactly. And people are just looking at us like, “What? What are you doing?” And there’s not a porter and we didn’t… so I would say to people, yeah, be prepared. I enjoyed the trip, and I talked to some people from Prague to Krakow. One of my favorite parts of the trip was talking to people in the compartment who were telling me – who were Polish and were telling me about all these traditions, and I’m asking them questions. It was wonderful. But yeah, don’t take eight bags. And don’t… yeah, do it if you’ve got like one bag and a backpack and know your stops. We got off on the wrong stop. We didn’t know there were two Dresden stops. So we’re out and we’re like, “Why can we not find this connection? We need to get to Prague.” But people were so helpful. I can’t tell you how many people offered to help me with a bag or like block the train door when they were going to close it on us because very serious in Germany about the train times or help me find… I just went up to someone and said, “I don’t know how to get the train to Prague” and they just happened to speak English and were taking that train and said, “Okay, follow, follow us.” Very patient. Very nice people. Just wonderful. Jo: Oh yeah. Well it sounds like you had an adventure in getting there. Lisa: It was. We flew the next time. Jo: Yeah. Okay, so let’s come back. So you said the moment you kind of saw the city and the architecture was all amazing. What were some of the highlights, like your favorite parts of the city? Lisa: Yeah. I loved, you know, this is very touristy, but I love the Charles Bridge because there’s just so much going on there. We walked through during the day and at night there are singers, we saw dancers. We saw a couple dressed up as a bride and groom doing a whole song and dance thing together, vendors. And of course I thought, “What a great place for a chase scene, a foot chase scene,” which ended up in my book. So I loved that. I loved the Old Town Square, the whole Old Town neighborhood. I really enjoyed… We went to see the – I’m sure you’ve seen it – the astronomical clock, which plays I think every half hour. And you can see all these figures coming out. And I think it’s the… Jo: I just wrote this down. It’s the from 1410, the world’s oldest working astronomical clock. Lisa: Yeah. It’s… and you see people just standing there watching, which is how we found it. We had trouble finding it because we came to the square in a direction where the way the buildings were and the churches, you couldn’t actually see it and finally saw all these people in this narrow area that’s along the side. That’s something else I love too, though, just the streets and how you could wander and you’d end up behind the buildings and come out another place. In Chicago where I live, we’re on a grid, so almost everything is square blocks, which is great for navigating but not as intriguing for walking around. So I love the cobblestone streets. I love the Prague Castle. I went there a number of times and we don’t have castles here either, so it’s very… that’s like a proper castle. Jo: Oh yeah. We should say, if you stand on St. Charles Bridge and look out, it sort of dominates the skyline there, doesn’t it? Lisa: It is what you think of as a castle and beautiful to see at night. And that reminds me just the river itself, the Vltava River. I found so peaceful. I spent a lot of time sitting by the river and reading and just watching it sparkle. And in any weather, just, I think it might be the prettiest river I’ve seen. The water seems so clear and it’s very tranquil. It’s also very shallow. I found out, so perhaps that’s why it looks so pretty. I don’t know. But the boat tours can’t go very far because they run into the bottom of the river. They just can’t keep going. Jo: You went this year as well, did you? Lisa: Yes. I went two years ago and went back this year and did a number of boat trips on it. Jo: I was there in 2015, so a decade ago. I don’t remember the river being low, but then I was there in the winter. And also this summer has been one of the driest. Lisa: Yes, I didn’t think about that. They were telling us as the river was low, and they did show us the different times that had flooded. We took one with a small boat where they could go into, I don’t know the right word, but the sort of offshoots of the river and would show us where the flooding had been and where the river level was at different points and that. Yeah, I didn’t think about that. It was very low when we went. Jo: And you’ve been both in the summer, both times? Lisa: Both in the summer in mid-May through mid-June. Just beautiful weather both times. We did a lot of rooftop dining, which you could see the whole city, and you could see the Prague Castle. And it’s particularly beautiful at night when the sun sets and it outlines the castle. Jo: Yeah, it’s very kind of gothic romance. But I was there in the winter, so we went for New Year and you don’t sit by the river reading in the winter. It is freezing. It’s proper furry hoods and boots kind of weather. But also you can eat outside, but there’s lots of heaters and things, so it’s very well set up for winter. Like a lot of people go at winter for the Christmas markets and that kind of thing. Lisa: Oh, I bet the Christmas market is… is it very big? Is it really something to see? Jo: Yeah, it’s something. Well that, yeah, it’s the square and all the little places, but again, quite touristy. But Prague’s also well known for its beer and general nightlife. Lisa: Oh yes. It’s funny, the other amazing thing was the monastery. I loved, you go upstairs and you see the cabinets of curiosity where the emperor had collected all these things that seemed very amazing and exotic from foreign lands. And then you see the notes and it’s like a fossil of some kind of fish that we know today. This is not a big deal, but people… they couldn’t travel the way you could now, and I love that. And they all these books that you can’t go into the area. But I loved seeing all the books and they kept saying to us, “Oh, you have to go. The monks make this wonderful beer, and you have to go to the beer garden.” I can’t tell you how many people told us that, and neither Steve nor I like beer. So we kept being like, “Well that sounds, that sounds wonderful.” And yeah, so many signs for beer. So apparently, if you like it, good place to try a lot of beer. Jo: It is. It’s definitely a beer capital of the world. So I mean, I guess one of the areas of the city is the Jewish quarter. I don’t know if you had a look around there. What about the Jewish Quarter? Lisa: We did get… the time that we went, there had been some incidents, they were limiting a lot of access, so we were only able to drive in and look at the main synagogue from the outside and we could see the gates to the cemetery. I would have really liked to go in. And our guide mostly was telling us about how much it has changed. But she told us some of the history. You probably know the story of the golem of Prague. She told us that story. There’s a number of versions. So the one that she told us was at the time the Emperor Rudolf II. This was like, I want to say 1500s. I hope I’ve got that right. He was very into alchemy and magic, and at the same time there was so much anti-Jewish sentiment trying to either drive the Jews out of Prague, or sometimes kill Jewish people, and yet he and the rabbi had something of a relationship. But the rabbi created the golem which was made of clay and brought it to life to help protect the people in the neighborhood. And the version, the story she told us was it could only act based on instruction. So by itself it just would stand there. And he gave it instructions, but it came the Sabbath and he forgot to tell it to stop. And it went on a rampage killing rampage, and he finally had to stop it at the end of the day and like not kill it, but deactivated it, I guess we’d say. And they say it’s still in the synagogue. That it’s still there. And the funny thing, I had heard the story from a friend who was writing a book that included it, that talked about it as the first robot. The idea of it only acts on instructions, and now our guide said it’s sort of like AI. It only does what you tell it to, but you have to be careful how you instruct it and what you tell it to do. Jo: That’s so interesting. I actually like that because the story goes that it’s sort of partly to do with Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. And you put, he put letters, the rabbi put letters onto the golem. And that’s the thing that brought it to life and so it’s words that actually brought it to life, that this text is on it, this holy text. And so I kind of like that with the AI stuff because it’s words that are activating it. But, well, I went a decade ago and went into the cemetery, and I think it’s really interesting because it’s an area that’s obviously been affected by war, and Hitler didn’t destroy that area to keep it as “a museum for an extinct race.” That’s why it was preserved. And I mean, that in itself is just awful in many ways. And yet that cemetery there because it, as you say, it was a ghetto and the people were hemmed in, they, that goes sort of 10 deep and there’s so many gravestones in there and people put stones on in remembrance. Jewish Cemetery Prague Photo by JFPenn And so if people listening, if at some point we’re at another point in history where you can visit that cemetery, it’s an incredibly moving place. And quite different because it’s very, I guess dark. And then the Spanish synagogue, which you said you were on the outside, but the inside of the Spanish synagogue also sometimes called the Golden Synagogue because it’s just incredibly decorated and beautiful. Spanish Synagogue Prague Photo by JFPenn So yeah, I mean that Jewish quarter is fantastic. But yeah, the time in history that we are recording this, it’s a difficult time again. Which in itself is so… Lisa: Heartbreaking and devastating that so long later and the same things are still happening. She was telling us she would get invited to events there and had to have someone come out and vouch for her and show her ID and let her in because there’s so concerned, understandably, about terrorists coming into the synagogue. We did get to go to two other cemeteries, I’m going to say it wrong, but Vinohrady and Vyšehrad cemeteries and that was, well, I know you’ll understand this. One of the highlights of the trip for me in the sense of the beauty and seeing these gravestones, we don’t do too many of the above the ground gravestones in the US anymore. It’s all flat. But seeing like family names and this history of the family, and I was struck by so many people put their professions on the headstone, which is another thing that we don’t do here. Or at least I haven’t seen it much. And it really got me thinking about… I mean feeling connected in a way to, we see these stories of people so long after they’re gone. And the names, I grew up in a neighborhood, lots of immigrants, lots of Polish immigrants, lots of Bohemian immigrants, and so many of the names were, I’m like, “Oh, that’s the name, last name of this friend of mine in grade school.” And many of them were names I knew. Now were they related to the people I knew, maybe, probably not, maybe distantly, but it gave me that sense of great connection with history and with here we are across an ocean. And that sense of being part of the human family and especially in a time when everyone feels so divided it felt very peaceful and very connected and not as sad as I thought you would think, “Oh, this is sad. You’re looking at all these people who are gone.” But somehow it felt like having a place in that history. Jo: Yeah. That’s interesting. And yeah, I obviously, I find graveyards wonderful places to think about how short life is, and so we better make the most of it — memento mori. But you did mention in our emails that a friend of yours died while you were traveling and so you were also facing grief on your visit and thinking about her. How do you think travel almost helps with grief? Lisa: For me, it was in a way the perspective of feeling that larger connected sense and that life. The finiteness of life having, of course, we all know that. But I was getting this news about my friend who we had expected she had had a surgery that there was an expected recovery. And I’d seen her a number of times before I left and was sending her photos. She loved travel photos. She always was like, “Send me more, send me more.” And then they found other problems and she was gone very quickly just in a couple weeks. And some of that news I was getting while we were in the cemetery that the type of news where you look and say, “This is not good. Like this is probably, I’m not going to see her again.” And it was really sad because I could not then be there at the time and couldn’t be there for the wake and be there with the family. And at the same time, I would think, “Well, I know Julie. She loved travel. She loved hearing about travel, like she wouldn’t want me to spend this time, all of it, just feeling sad.” Of course, I felt sad and was grieving, but it was a reminder that and this is the only time I have, and this is the time to enjoy this or experience it, like don’t miss the experience I’m in because I’m also grieving and feeling sad that trying to maintain both at the same time. One of your podcasts helped me because I was feeling very sad and then I was feeling not guilty, but almost like, “Well, but I’m here. Like I’m missing it. And I shouldn’t be dwelling on this, but how can I not?” And I listened. I think it was your first one when you restarted the podcast and your guest said something about the difference between vacation and travel and that travel is not always fun. And it is not always, you don’t always have a great time, like you look forward and think, “Oh, everything’s going to be fantastic.” And it’s not, it’s sometimes challenging, and I think she was talking about other things, but she said, “There is that value. “You still have the value. Even if it is challenging, you are experiencing something and when you come back, you’ll have experienced this journey.” And it doesn’t all have to be so much fun and wonderful that it is still a valuable trip and not just. Helped me. It put it in perspective that I am still having this experience and I want to be present in it, even though I’m also having these feelings and this sadness and loss. Jo: No, I love that. I think that’s really great and something for us all to keep remembering as well. And perhaps even a city like Prague and many in Krakow is another great example, of cities that have suffered in many ways. Obviously we have war in Europe at the moment and so it’s not everything is wonderful all the time anyway. Lisa: Right, exactly. I kept telling myself that, I’m like, “Well, if I was home, I would likewise, I would be feeling sad and, yeah, life is not wonderful all the time.” Yeah, there are many wonderful things in it. And that that also, my friend who passed, she was really great at focusing on the wonderful things in life. We had a tradition every year of going to this steak dinner after volunteering at our law school. And for weeks before, she’d say, “Oh my God, I can’t wait to that dinner. Like, they have such great food. Let’s get this as an appetizer, and oh, so-and-so will be there and tell us stories.” And then a month after, she’d say, “Wasn’t that a great time? Like, didn’t we have, remember this thing.” And so I thought about that a lot too. Like she had lots of ups and downs, but she chose to think and remember and anticipate, and I thought “That’s what I need to do. Like think about, oh, these were the great parts of the trip. This is what I really enjoyed.” Jo: I think that’s really interesting and almost you are honoring her by enjoying the time that you had there and yet, I wonder how many, as I was talking to someone recently who was like, “Oh, I really just want to go to this particular place.” And I’m like — “Well, why don’t you make a plan to do it because we’re not getting any younger, and you don’t know when something might happen like it did to your friend, or you don’t know when just things change.” And so I’m like, “Well, you just make a plan, and you save up the money. You book a ticket. We’re very lucky to live in a world where you are going to be able to get to most of the places that people want to get to.” So do you think sometimes we find it easier to honor other people than honoring ourselves? Like giving ourselves that kind of grace? Lisa: Yeah. I do, I feel like it’s almost giving, it’s like this person outside of you giving you that permission or that reminder. And especially for me, I’m someone who tends toward anxiety, which is all about thinking about what could go wrong. And I often deal with it by thinking of friends who think very differently than I do. And I think so now I will think, “Well, how would Julie approach this?” Or I have other friends who will think, “How would this person think about this?” And it helps because. You know, and why can’t I just tell myself to do it? I don’t know. But it works better when I think of that other person. And maybe it is what you said, it’s like someone else giving you permission and saying, “Hey, it’s okay. Like you can let go of. Oh my God, I’ve got to be sure. I know I’m prepared for everything that might go wrong or everything that might happen,” which is, you know, when travel, I always have a lot of anxiety going up to travel because I’m like, “Did I do this? Did I get that?” And then I’ll say, “You cannot prepare for everything. That’s part of it.” Jo: Something else, most people are lovely and they will want to help you. Like wherever you are in the world generally, people are just nice and they want to help you. Lisa: Yeah, I really have found that. I mean, of course here and there, you meet someone who’s not, which is also true at home. But yeah, for most people, for all that, people will say to me, “Well, do they like tourists there?” I’m like, “I don’t, I mean, people seem very nice. They seem glad that we’re there, and if they don’t like us, they’re hiding it really well.” Jo: I mean, it’s a tourist destination, right? It’s a tourist industry. Lisa: Yeah. It’s part of what they do. I actually found in Prague particularly, people are, yes, very friendly and seem very, either they’re really, they seem actually really happy at their jobs. So maybe working conditions are better there. And it also might be that they do appreciate this is part of the way, this is especially the Old Town area, it’s a lot of it is tourists and so it’s how people are making their living. Jo: For sure. Well, just, I guess coming back on the city in terms of the literary side of things, there’s obviously the Franz Kafka Museum is one of the top places. Any thoughts on the literary side? Lisa: Yeah, you see Kafka everywhere. Everywhere. And I have to confess, we did not go to the museum. Not that I dislike Kafka, but he’s not my first choice for reading. But yeah, there is so much. I read a book before I went this time in between the two trips that a guide that I work with both times recommended and it’s called Wolf on a String. So I wrote down the author and, let me look here. Benjamin Black and it is set in that time at the Emperor Rudolf II. And it is about this kind of amateur alchemist or someone who pretends to be an alchemist, but it has so much history and a lot of it is in the Prague Castle. So I was very excited to go there and my guide was pointing out, “Oh, this is where the small, they called them houses, but it was basically a room that was bordered on the outside and this is where they stayed. And this is what was called the Golden Row or the Golden Alley. And here’s why.” And that was really exciting. She took me to, took us to a place called The Alchemist, which borders on a courtyard where a very famous alchemist. Last name was Kelly. Lived in a tower and served the king. So everywhere. If you read anything about Prague odds are you’re going to be able to go there and find that place and still find traces of it. The place we went had alchemy symbols all over the wall, so you could go and trace that. And I love that so much of history is still there. When a historical novel you would read, you can go and visit. This is, again, probably not as much of a novelty to people who live in Europe. But here there’s so many things are just. It’s old if a building’s a hundred years old, and there I’m seeing these things from the 1300s. Jo: Yeah. And many of them very well preserved as well. I think, you know, there are a lot of them there. But it’s funny, I mean, like you say, Chicago, I remember the first time I went to Chicago, gosh, in the nineties, and I just, I love the skyscrapers and you can go on architecture tour of modern architecture. It’s just a very different view, isn’t it? You can see beauty of a different kind. Whereas I feel, you know, here we feel like — We live in a museum here in Europe. Lisa: Yes. That’s how it feels when I visit. So I kind of feel better that you say that too. Oh, because always think do, do people look at us and be like, “What? When, why are you so enthralled with this?” Jo: I find it beautiful, you know, I live in Bath where we’ve got like 2000 year old Roman baths down the road, so. Lisa: Yeah. And that point about beauty, I think that is what I love traveling, is I, yeah. One of the reasons I love Chicago is I love the architecture. I love the buildings. I love that we have a river, and I’ll take boat tours, architectural boat tours, and just see what else I learn. There’s always more buildings going up, but I go somewhere like Prague and it’s a very different architecture. It’s in some ways. There’s more continuity because much of it is still standing and more is built, but it’s built along the same lines and you have the cobblestone streets and it’s a totally different kind of beauty. But both places, I look around and think, “Oh, I’m so lucky to be here. I’m so lucky to see this.” Paris, same thing. I feel like so many cities have beautiful architecture. And I have to say in the US, that is not necessarily true. Most cities I go to having grown up where I did, I look around and I’m like, “Wait, what? This is the city. Where are the, where are the amazing buildings?” Jo: That’s true. That’s true. But just coming back, so earlier you said you weren’t so much into the beer, but — What food and drink you did enjoy since you said you were eating outside? Lisa: Yeah. My travel partner and I, we tend to plan trips around where we’re going to eat. We will make these restaurant reservations. So we went to, it’s called Miru. It is only open two months of the year on the rooftop of the Four Seasons Hotel. And last time we were there, we missed it. And this time we were able to go, and it is, they have maybe four or five tables only, and it’s one of these tasting menus. So each course is very small and very beautiful, and they have a drink paired with each, so wine at one point, sake, which I admit I could only have a sip of. And I was like, “Okay, that’s all for that.” But it’s at night. So you have the beautiful view of the castle and each dish is, you know, it might be salmon, but it’s salmon with a little bit of caviar and some tuna foam and something else. All very elaborate and fancy so that if you just want an experience for a night, it’s wonderful. This is also touristy, but there is a steak house there that is some of the best steak I ever had. It’s called George Prime, and ironically, the steak is from the Midwest in the United States. But it’s, it was, it’s something about the way they make it. I don’t know. Excellent. And we did two other rooftop restaurants. One is called Coda on the roof of the Aria Hotel and everything is music themed. The food is very good. Like I had a farm raised chicken that was wonderful. But it’s also just to be up there outside. And if you get a plate, every plate has a different drawing of a different musician on it. And the menu is music themed, so a little bit touristy, but but it is that’s good. Very fun. And then one, really good local place. Krčma U Fleku, I think, is it? It’s known for its duck. So if you Google duck and Prague and mostly locals there, like we heard mostly Czech being spoken, if you like duck, wonderful duck and wonderful atmosphere. It reminded me, again, as a kid, I went to a number of, if there was a party, it would be in a banquet and often in a Bohemian banquet hall. And I walked in and I’m like, “Oh, these are the furnishings that I grew up with. This is like being at my aunts and uncle’s houses only stepped up fancy and really, really good food there.” So if you like Bohemian food or Polish food or Czech, that’s a great place to go. I think duck is definitely… Jo: Duck is the thing for that region. Lisa: Yeah, really good. Jo: Yeah, that’s great. That’s fantastic. So this is the Books and Travel show. You mentioned Wolf on a String. Are there other books that you would recommend that are about or set in Prague or the area? Jo: Yeah, for research, so between the trips, when I decided to set something in Prague, I got a book called Prague, the Mystical City. It was written in 1970. It goes through 1983. I forget the publication date, but it covers the city 1907 to 1983 and I, it’s at least 10 years old, but it really gives you that feel of Prague. It talks a lot about the history of alchemy and magic and how alchemy worked into science, how much the alchemists were the basis of so many scientific and chemistry advances later. And it really gives you that feel for Prague if you want to read nonfiction. Interestingly, AI hallucinated for me, other books by the same author, and I was like, “Oh my God, that is a great book.” And I went hunting and hunting and I even asked like a librarian at the local university and she’s like, “Yeah, I think it made this up.” But that’s how I found this one. I was like, “Okay.” And the other book I just happened to read, I don’t know if you read the All Souls Trilogy. It started with A Discovery of Witches, so the third… Jo: Deborah Harkness. Lisa: Right. Deborah Harkness. And this book, they go back, I don’t think this is too much of a spoiler. I’m not going to tell any plot things, but they go back in time and they’re in Prague in the same time period. Somehow I kept running into this same time period with the Emperor Rudolf. And there is a golem in it and it is, she meets a number of these historical figures. So if you are interested in like supernatural books, I would read the first two first, but it was very neat and I just happened to read it maybe six months before coming back to Prague. So I love that one as well. And of course, Wolf on a String, I will say Wolf on a String. It has a mystery. So I like that. It is a bit bleak, a little bit bleak for me. So I persisted because I wanted to read about the city. And it is an interesting story. But, if you want something more uplifting, maybe, maybe not, maybe not that, maybe not. But if you’re good with a lot of darkness, then go with it. Jo: And we should say as we record this is not out yet, but The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown is supposedly set opens in Prague. So we shall, I shall be reading that when it comes out. Lisa: I am so excited about that. You had mentioned that in the email and somehow I didn’t know that until you said it. And yeah, I cannot wait to get that. I love his books anyway. And now to read it in Prague, that will be wonderful. Jo: And so your book, The Skeptical Man also has some scenes set there. But tell us a bit more about that. Because it’s also across the US as well, isn’t it? Lisa: Yes, most of it is in the US. I had never, this is the seventh book in my mystery series. I had never taken the characters outside of the United States and I was going to take a bit of a break because the sixth book was kind of a big thing that a mystery was solved that had been running. And taking this trip in the back of my mind, I always had this idea about a magician as the victim, as the murder victim. A magician who also debunks psychics a little bit like there was a real magician who did that. The Amazing Randi and I used a little bit of his life as a model. So when I went to Prague, I thought, “Oh, how interesting it would be if some of the people that are suspects are somehow connected to like a psychic.” I didn’t decide was it going to be a genuine psychic or someone who was a little bit of a little bit of a little scammy. And something about being in Prague, I started thinking, “Oh, what what if there was a whole network that was based here and that played into this magician’s death.” He had crossed paths with these people and it. It really inspired me. So in the story, the detective QC Davis is asked to try to solve this murder by a friend. She’s a lawyer, she’s a friend who’s a judge, and it’s her husband who has been killed. And they wonder like, is it someone he does this debunking of psychics? Is it somebody that he exposed that came after him, or of course there are other suspects as well in other parts of his life. And the Prague part, I just had such fun with, oh, the character’s going to get out of Chicago mostly she’s in Chicago, she’s going to get out and go somewhere else. And how would that be for her as not a world traveler? She has a friend who does a lot of world travel, so you know, it’s her taking her along and being like, “Hey, this’ll be fine. We’ll do this.” Jo: Oh, cool. Oh, well I’m glad you got to weave it in. Where can people find you and your books online? Lisa: You can find my fiction and nonfiction and my podcast, which is about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and story, at lisalilly.com Jo: Fantastic. Thanks so much for your time, Lisa. That was great. Lisa: Thank you. It was great to be on with you. The post Alchemical History And Beautiful Architecture: Prague With Lisa M Lilly appeared first on Books And Travel.

Why is Mexico’s Day of the Dead such a beautiful way to remember our loved ones who have died? What are the elements that go into the altar? How can tourists respectfully experience the tradition? In this fascinating conversation, Luisa Navarro, founder of Mexico in My Pocket and author of Mexico’s Day of the Dead: A Celebration of Life through Stories and Photos, shares her personal journey from rejecting her Mexican heritage to celebrating it, while revealing the true beauty and meaning behind one of Mexico’s most misunderstood traditions. Luisa Navarro is the founder and CEO of Mexico in My Pocket, and the author of Mexico’s Day of the Dead: A Celebration of Life through Stories and Photos. Luisa’s childhood struggle with being Mexican American and how she transformed from rejecting her culture to becoming its passionate advocate The true meaning behind Día de los Muertos, its indigenous Aztec origins, and how it differs completely from Halloween The significance of ofrendas (altars), including sugar skulls, pan de muerto, marigolds, and photographs of deceased loved ones How different days honor different types of deaths Traditional foods like pan de muerto, café de olla, and how families share meals with both the living and the dead How to respectfully experience Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico while avoiding appropriation and understanding the difference between authentic traditions and commercialized parades You can find Luisa at MexicoInMyPocket.com and Mexico’s Day of the Dead book here. Transcript of the interview Jo: Hello, travelers. I’m Jo Frances Penn, and today I’m here with Luisa Navarro. Hi Luisa. Luisa: Hi. It’s so wonderful to be here with you today. Jo: Great to meet you. Now, just a quick introduction. Luisa is the founder and CEO of Mexico in My Pocket, and the author of Mexico’s Day of the Dead: A Celebration of Life through Stories and Photos, which is fantastic. So first up, just tell us a bit more about you and your Mexican heritage and how you bring that into your life and your business in Brooklyn. Luisa: Yes, of course. So I was actually born in Dallas, Texas. I am Mexican American. My mom is from Tila, which is Northern Mexico, and my dad is from Michoacán, which is more central and it’s actually where Día de los Muertos is very much celebrated. Growing up in Dallas, I struggled originally with my identity a lot being Mexican American — because what happened was I went to school and I only spoke Spanish because Spanish was my first language. My mom insisted that all four of her kids learn Spanish first before going to school. And then when we were in school, we all struggled to make friends because we only spoke Spanish. The teachers would criticize my mom, but my mom insisted that we would be perfectly fine and that we would learn English eventually, and she was right. And so eventually I became bilingual. And during that time, at a very young age, I discovered young kids were saying horrible things about Mexicans and I didn’t know how to handle that. I realized, wait, I think I’m Mexican. And so long story short, I didn’t want to be Mexican at a very young age. I was about four or five years old. I have these memories very vividly. And so I came home to my mom in Dallas and I said, I’m no longer Luisa, I’m now Hannah. I think I said Hana, my mom always says I pronounced it very interestingly, but I was like, I’m Hana. And I will not respond if you don’t call me Hana. Yeah, I mean, it’s very sad. But luckily, luckily, luckily, thank God my mom and my grandmothers all came to my rescue and they were like, no, these kids are wrong, and here’s why, and here’s why being Mexican is incredible. And so luckily for me, I did a 180. I very much embraced my culture. I became a journalist. And during that journey as a journalist, I noticed that these negative types of stories continued to happen. But instead of getting upset with people, I never really blamed the kids who said these things because I realized they were being taught this by their parents. As you get older, you realize this is being learned. And so when I became a journalist, I realized that the media was always covering us in a very negative light. And being American is amazing because we have mainstream media here. We have the power to tell stories, but unfortunately I have seen as a Mexican American, a lot of those stories that are told about Mexico in the US are negative. I wanted to do something positive. So as a journalist, I started a side project called Mexico in My Pocket and it was a blog. And on that blog I would share very positive stories about Mexico and our culture, and — I slowly started to learn more about my heritage and I became very passionate about it. And I started that blog in 2015. So it’s been 10 years now. So basically my journalism career brought me to New York City. I went to Columbia Journalism School and then eventually I got out of the news and I started my own company called Mexico in My Pocket, where we sell beautiful handcrafted items from all over Mexico. And I have the privilege of telling the story of how these products are made, and the stories of our culture. Jo: I think that’s wonderful. It’s really interesting to hear about how that felt for you as a child. But of course, you’ve chosen one really interesting topic, Day of the Dead, which in itself many people struggle with negative stereotypes around Day of the Dead. So let’s just start with sort of basics. What is Day of the Dead? When is it? And why did you choose this topic? Because you could have chosen lots of different ones. Luisa: I could have chosen so many different topics. And the irony is that when I was little, I also very much struggled with the fear of death. And I actually don’t think I really loved Day of the Dead as a child because my mom would decorate with skeletons during that time of year. And I feared it and I was like, this is terrifying. I don’t want to talk about death. My biggest fear was my parents dying. But the reason that I decided to write a book about Day of the Dead, and for those of you who don’t know what Day of the Dead is, is once a year. It’s a Mexican tradition, it’s rooted in Mexico. Once a year we come together and we honor our loved ones who have died. And I think it’s the most incredible holiday. I think that everyone around the world should take time to once a year, honor their loved ones who have died. You know, we celebrate our moms once a year. We celebrate our dads once a year. We celebrate love. Once a year, we should be celebrating our loved ones who have died. And I think that Mexico is the true emblem and symbol and example for us to honor the dead once a year. And they’ve set an incredible example for us not to fear death, but to take control of it the most that we can and to celebrate our loved ones who have died and not forget them. And so the reason I wrote this book, there’s a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons was just like the reason I started my blog. I felt like — I did not see an accurate or beautiful representation of what Day of the Dead is, and I felt like I wanted something to preserve these traditions so that I could pass it down to the future generations, including my son. Because I worried that being Mexican American, I am the first generation to live here, but I’m so proud to be Mexican and I never want to lose sight of that. And I want my son to also know about his heritage, his ancestry, his traditions. And so I wrote this book for the future generations so that they could learn and always celebrate these traditions, no matter how far removed they are from their origin, from their ancestry’s origin country. Another reason I wrote the book was — There is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding when it comes to Day of the Dead. So I have a gift shop in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn, and people would come into our store and they would see the altar that I build in the store. And they would ask us if we were celebrating the devil. And I was like, okay. We need a book because I want to clarify just how beautiful Day of the Dead is. And I think the name Day of the Dead, I think anything associated with death can be very off-putting because I think just like me as a child fearing death. I think a lot of people fear death and I think they don’t want to talk about it. And so that inspired me to write this book and to shed light on how I think Mexico is doing an incredible job at basically honoring our loved ones who have died. And if you’ve experienced death, I think you can relate to this, that it is very painful, not just because the person died, but you feel like you’re not allowed to talk about them anymore. And Day of the Dead is a time where you can come together once a year and talk about your loved ones who have died without having to worry about anyone judging you. And I think it’s so beautiful. Jo: You mentioned your son there and I noticed in the book, which is a beautiful book, both the words and obviously the images, it is really beautiful and colorful. And there are children in the book, and this is another thing that I think some people get hung up on, like we should only talk about death if we’re adults or whatever. But Mexican tradition seems to bring in the children a lot more. Perhaps you could comment on that, like how is it so natural that everyone in the family is included? Luisa: I mean, everyone in the family is included because on Day of the Dead, we’re honoring our family members. And so it’s also a wonderful opportunity to educate your children on their ancestors and on their loved ones who have died. And quite frankly, one of the things that was most moving to me when I traveled to Oaxaca that I didn’t know about was an altar that honored babies. And so there’s room for everyone, like death affects everyone. It affects all ages. It affects different scenarios as we know. You know, I saw an altar where a woman was 35 years old. I’m 35 now. And she lost her baby and she died as well in giving birth. And so they honored her and her child on this altar, and I think that’s so beautiful because her story was not forgotten in spite of such a tragic situation. And I think that Mexico does a really beautiful job of that. Jo: So let’s come to the altar that you mentioned. What goes on the altar? What types of things might people put on the altar and what is the aim of it? Luisa: Yeah, so that’s actually another reason I wrote the book. So the altar has so many elements. I don’t even think we have time to get into every single one because quite frankly, I wrote a whole chapter on it and I even had questions about how to build a traditional altar because there’s so much tradition and history that is involved in it. We place the sugar skulls with people’s names to honor the sweetness of life, but also to honor and remember the specific person who died. We use pan de muerto, which is a specific type of Day of the Dead bread that only happens, that is only made once a year and it is made with anise and orange peels and orange blossom water. It also honors the sweetness of life, but then they decorate it with crossbones on top to honor the dead. So what I would say is that from all of these elements, it’s really coming together and honoring and celebrating and really showing that Mexicans don’t fear death, but they respect it and they choose to accept it. I think they choose to accept it. But one of the most important things that goes on an altar are the photographs of our loved ones, of our ancestors. And so that’s why I believe we include everyone. We include our children, and we show them and we teach them, and we tell them about their great grandparents and we tell them about their grandparents. It’s a wonderful time of year to finally share your family stories, and so that’s why I think everyone around the world should be celebrating Day of the Dead. Or doing it in their own way. Once a year, having a dinner at home and talking about their loved ones who have died. I don’t think we should not talk about this. And that’s why I love being Mexican. I’m Mexican, and I’m American, but being Mexican is incredible because of Día de los Muertos. Jo: I have some follow up questions there. So the first thing is the skull. You mentioned the sugar skulls. I wanted to show you and the people on the video. So this is the one I keep here with the butterflies, but they obviously, it’s not to be put on an altar, but it’s kind of, I like to keep it there and I bought it in the US. My sugar skull puchased in Austin Texas Luisa: You can put that on an altar actually. Yeah. You can put that on an altar. It’s beautiful. It’s hand painted. It’s clay. Yeah. That’s stunning. I love that. Jo: Yeah, so I kind of have it in my own way, not as part of your tradition, but as part of my own sort of eclectic tradition. But so tell us more about the skulls and the skeletons. Because you mentioned, and the point is that they are, the sugar skulls are more colorful, aren’t they? Because people think black and white and kind of that depressing thing. Tell us about the colorful sugar skulls Luisa: Yeah. It’s funny that you mentioned that. So I talk about this in the book. I talk about the colors of Day of the Dead actually. And that’s exactly why we chose the turquoise and the orange color. The orange, obviously is representative of the marigolds, which we use marigolds because of the scent and the color, because we believe that the scent and the color attracts the spirits to visit us once a year. So we place them on the altar and we sprinkle petals of them to lead the dead back to us, the spirits back to us to visit us once a year. But you mentioned the skulls and the skulls. What people might not realize is that it’s thanks to indigenous traditions and thanks to the indigenous people that Day of the Dead exists in Mexico. So the origins of Day of the Dead stem from the God of Death known as Mictlantecuhtli. And yes, that is a mouthful, but it’s important that we know his name, that we celebrate him, and that we honor the roots of this indigenous tradition. It was only blended until the Spanish arrived, thanks to Catholicism. But, I want to highlight him specifically because he was the god of death and he was depicted with a skeletal face. And so you were interested in why skeletons and I actually in my own research was very interested in why on earth Mexicans are obsessed with skeletons. It’s all thanks to him. So the Aztecs, once a year in the summer actually would celebrate him in his festival. And they would make tamales and they would burn copal. And some of these traditions we can see in modern day Día de los Muertos celebrations. These traditions didn’t evolve until the Spanish arrived, and they imposed Catholic religion on the indigenous people and eventually, there was a syncretism that happened, a natural syncretism. And the tradition moved from the summer because the Aztecs refused to get rid of their honoring of the god of death. And they would secretly kind of continue. And eventually it was moved to All Souls Day and All Saints Day. And so that’s the modern day celebration that we know today, and that’s why altars have crosses and Virgen de Guadalupe. And there’s a blending of indigenous traditions with Catholicism. So yeah, that’s why we have the skeleton. It’s thanks to that god and it’s thanks to the Aztecs and the indigenous traditions. Jo: Yeah. And I think, I mean obviously in many traditions there’s portrayals of death, but it’s never so colorful. And I think that’s what’s so lovely about the skeletons and the face painting and the beautiful pictures you have in the book. But also just to come back on the Day of the Dead, I was really interested. I didn’t know. And in your book you list, it’s not just one day. There’s actually different days for different types of people who died. Luisa: Yeah, that’s correct. So, traditionally it starts on the evening of October 31st. It’s not Halloween, it has nothing to do with Halloween. And then it’s November 1st when the kids arrive, and then November 2nd when the adults arrive. But the thing is that people don’t realize is that all over Mexico, there are different traditions. So in some parts they believe that it depends on where you are in Mexico and how they celebrate. But that’s like pretty much the basics, right? But yes, there are other days, I do have it in the book actually. So October 27th is the day to remember pets. October 28th is for the tragic deaths, including those who died from violence or suicide. And then October 29th is for the drowning. And the one I really like is October 30th, because it’s a day for those who have been forgotten or who don’t have a family member to remember them. But yes, there are different days to honor different people. People really like the day to remember their pets, which is October 27th. Which I love too. And like that’s the thing is like, I just feel like I’m just so proud to be Mexican and I’m so proud of these traditions and I really just want to shed light on them and shed light on the beauty of them and quell some of that misunderstanding that we’re celebrating the devil because that has nothing to do with that at all. In fact, I think more people, if they learned about Day of the Dead, they’d be inspired to host a dinner themselves and to maybe talk about their loved ones who have died and put their pictures up and maybe make their favorite meals. In my opinion, it is the most beautiful holiday in the entire world. So I’m very, very proud of it. Jo: Again, coming back to the altar, so you mentioned the pan de muerto. So do you eat that? Do people actually eat pan de muerto or is that an offering food? Luisa: We do eat it. So there’s two things there. So one, you’re right when we put it on the altar. Actually this is a great question. So there’s two schools of thought here. You can buy it in the bakery. So think of it like a sweet treat that’s once a year, kind of like, I’m sure you know this, but in the United States once a year, pumpkin spice is huge, right? So it’s like everyone wants their pumpkin spice. The difference is, is that this is rooted in tradition. So once a year in Mexico, the bakeries make and you can go and buy it, and it’s the most delicious thing in the world. And the one thing that most people don’t realize is there’s actually tons of different types of pan de muerto, and in my book, I do cover the different types because we visited different villages and how they make it. And there’s a beautiful pan de muerto that almost looks like embroidery. And it’s actually all made of flour. They’re like these flour, they’re actual flowers like floral. It looks like embroidery. And that type of bread is from Oaxaca. But it’s a sweet treat that you can eat once a year and we do put it on the altar. When I put it on my altar, I do not eat it after. But it, if you put it on the altar, it is meant for the dead. And so what a lot of people say, depending on where you travel in Mexico, but they say they put it on the altar and then after the dead have already had their chance, like let’s say they come November 1st or November 2nd and they’ve gotten their chance to eat the bread, then they will eat it and enjoy it. But what some people say who have eaten it and enjoyed it is they say that it’s lost its taste. Because the dead already had it. So I personally do not eat the bread if I put it on the altar. But some people do, some people do eat the bread after and enjoy it with their family during the celebrations, but it’s not until after the dead have arrived. So yeah. Jo: They’ve got to have their bit first. Luisa: Yeah. It’s all fascinating, right? And it’s like, I love, that’s the thing is it’s nuanced. It’s very nuanced. Jo: Yeah, and everyone has their own thing, but you’ve got some other recipes in the book I think as well. What are the other food and drinks that are associated with that time? Luisa: Yeah, we do. I’m very, very happy because we asked people to collaborate because something my dad has always emphasized is that I’m very privileged as a Mexican American to be able to travel between Mexico and the United States, and I can’t agree more. And so, recognizing that there will be people who will never have the chance or the opportunity to travel to Mexico to celebrate these holidays, I wanted to make sure that we included recipes in the book so that people could celebrate no matter where they live. So we have a recipe for sugar skulls in the book. We have a recipe, well, it’s a tutorial, a DIY tutorial to make papel picado, which are these gorgeous Mexican tissue paper flags, tissue paper garlands that we use to celebrate and honor the fragility of death. And they’re really gorgeous. I’m sure you’ve seen them. If you go to a Mexican restaurant, you’ve seen them. But we also use them during Day of the Dead to honor our loved ones. And they all have little motifs. So you’ll often, for Day of the Dead, you’ll see them decorated with skulls and skeletons. And then we have something called pan de muerto negro, and this is a specific type of pan de muerto, but it’s black sugar made from burnt corn husks, so corn husks, which we use to wrap our tamales in. And this recipe is beautiful because it represents the ashes of the dead. I found that it doesn’t taste that different from the traditional sugar one. I thought it would taste different for me. It didn’t taste different. But it is really fun and it is really beautiful. So it’s got a black color with the crossbones and traditional. But yeah, we had Fany Gerson who I absolutely adore. She is the owner of La Newyorkina here in New York City and she provided that recipe for us. Jo: That’s great. And then what about drinking? Is there any alcohol involved or is it a non-drinking event or is there special drinks that people have? Luisa: So the rule of thumb there, or when alcohol is involved, like it would be, let’s say my great-grandfather loved a specific type of beer, right? So I would put that on the altar for him so that when he arrives he can have that specific alcohol that he loved in life. But yes, you can, for example, if you’re having a dinner. Of course you can have a drink, you can have, I mean, Mexico is the land of tequila, mezcal, and we also have other delicious drinks like café de olla, which is a cinnamon type coffee that is made in a pot. That’s why it’s called café de olla. It’s so delicious. So yeah, basically you would drink the beverages that your loved ones really enjoyed. It could even be a Mexican Coca-Cola. I mean, I love Coca-Cola. I love specifically Mexican Coca-Cola. It’s made with a different type of sugar. And yeah, so those would be the beverages. Jo: And then I wanted to circle back to the religion element. Because the majority of Mexican people are at least nominally Catholic. And so when people come to the altar, are there prayers, Catholic prayers that you would say for the dead, or is the Catholicism kind of completely different? Do you pray at the altar or is it more of a memorial? Luisa: I would say it’s more of a memorial. That isn’t to say that you can’t pray at the altar. You can obviously pray, but yeah, it is a blending of Catholic and indigenous traditions because Mexico was colonized by the Spanish. They brought Catholicism and so you will find crosses. In fact, the top of the altar, traditionally if it’s a seven tier altar, should have a saint at the top. So I typically put La Virgen de Guadalupe, which every Mexican person will know. She is basically the patron saint of all of Mexico. She’s the Virgin Mary of Mexico. And my grandmother revered her, so I always put La Virgen de Guadalupe at the top of my altar. So yeah, you will definitely see a blending of Catholicism with these traditions for sure. Jo: And if you go to church over that period, do they have a special service? Luisa: Yes, of course, because since it’s celebrated on All Saints Day and All Souls Day, so if you went to All Saints Day and All Souls Day, you would, yes, you would go to church for that. I haven’t seen Day of the Dead altars in the Catholic Church. But you will see them outside, like all over Mexico. Jo: So you’ve mentioned a couple of places, you mentioned Oaxaca and some other places. But if people want to visit, so I mean, I’m really interested as a tourist. Are there places that tourists can go to? You know, not in a weird way, but people who are interested in the cultural elements, who want to come and have a look. Are there places where tourists can visit for Day of the Dead? Luisa: Yeah, a hundred percent. There’s definitely ways to do it. One of the things there, there’s lots of ways to do it. I would say one of the best ways is to go to Mexico City, because it is a large city and there’s celebrations all over. If you wanted to go to the cemeteries, I would recommend making a personal connection with someone before you go. Not just like visiting without having some type of connection or some type of invitation. Whenever I go, it’s because I’ve made some type of connection and have been invited. And to be honest, like I went because I was documenting it for the book, but I don’t necessarily just go to go like I wanted to learn more. I will say be mindful if you visit the cemeteries that you are a tourist, sadly, some people will take advantage and get drunk and act inappropriate. One of the things that I learned is that the face paint that it, they’re dressed as La Catrina, and that’s a whole other topic, but it’s the sugar skull face paint that you see. It’s not appropriate to go to the cemeteries with that. So it’s something to be mindful of as a tourist that those are separate traditions. So if you’re going to the cemetery to be very mindful that you’re in a cemetery, you will see music. It depends on the cemetery. That’s the other thing. And it depends on the location. So for example, in Michoacán, when I visited Michoacán, I found that it was a lot more quiet. It wasn’t somber, but the families were gathered and they might have been drinking a beer, but they were gathered more as like, I wouldn’t say it was this rambunctious party. Now there’s other cemeteries where I have heard and I chose not to go. But I have heard that there are concerts happening, like full blown concerts. So yeah, I mean, it does depend, but at the end of the day, I think you need to be mindful that you are a tourist and to do your research and talk to people before you decide to go. Just like if you go into someone’s home, right? You’re going to be respectful. If you go into someone’s home, like if someone asks you to take your shoes off when you go into someone’s home, you respect that and you honor that, and you’re visiting, right? So it’s the same when you go for Day of the Dead, is just have these conversations, be mindful, ask what’s appropriate, and trust your gut. You know, I think you’ll know too if you’re like something feels like you’re being, you know, you’re trespassing or that type of thing. Jo: Yeah. And are there processions and you know more, you see that in the movies and stuff? Does that happen too? Luisa: It does. And I have to say that so originally the only, it has become very commercialized, I have to say. The only reason the parade happens in Mexico City now is because of the James Bond movie. That’s not like a centuries old tradition. So people think that that’s like some centuries old tradition. That’s not true. It’s actually Day of the Dead has become extremely popular because of movies like Coco as we know. And so now there are parades, but you know what, like those are for the tourists and I think it’s great. If you want to go and celebrate and see, a lot of Mexican artisans participate in those parades, which makes me really happy. So you get to see like their actual craft and artwork, and I think it’s a wonderful way to go and celebrate if you’d like, and do the face paint. Like in that scenario, the face paint is totally fine, just know what you’re wearing. And I talk about that in the book, but there’s a whole section on who La Catrina is. And why that originated. But that is what the face paint is. I think the problem with the face paint is that people don’t know what they’re wearing, so they don’t know the history of her. Jo: And I wonder if those processions and like the Bond movie is part of, you know, you’ve started by saying, somebody said, are you celebrating the devil? And I wonder if there’s a confusion with the Carnival / Mardi Gras / voodoo, sort of the skeleton from Voodoo who comes out the ground, and then there’s processions and things. Do you think that may have got mixed up in people’s heads? Luisa: I think yeah, of course. I think there is a confusion between Halloween and Day of the Dead, but — Day of the Dead is not Halloween at all and it’s not voodoo at all. And I think that because of the skeleton imagery that it can get mixed up and confused if people don’t read about the origins. And that’s one thing I will say, people ask me all the time if they can celebrate Day of the Dead, and I mean, death is universal. It affects all of us. Of course, you can celebrate Day of the Dead, but it’s just like know exactly what you are celebrating and know about the history and research and read about Mictlantecuhtli and the God of death and the Aztec traditions, and how that skeleton imagery evolved into our modern day traditions. So it’s about educating yourself at the end of the day. And look, I’m Mexican American, but I also had to educate myself on these traditions and learn about them. Jo: So this is the Books and Travel podcast, so do you have any other books that you would recommend about Day of the Dead or Mexico in general? Luisa: Of course. So my favorite book that I read throughout this process, I read lots of books and articles and information, but my specific favorite one was called The Skeleton at the Feast. And I feel like they really got into the history of Day of the Dead. And so I recommend that book if you want to check it out and learn more about the history of Day of the Dead. Jo: Brilliant. And just show us your book one more time on the video because it’s so beautiful. It’s just fantastic. So where can people find the book and everything you do online? Luisa: Yeah, of course. So the book is available wherever all books are sold. So you can find it at Amazon, you can find it at Barnes and Noble Target, bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores, people from my community love shopping there. And you can find me at mexicoinmypocket.com at Mexico in My Pocket, all over social media. Jo: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Luisa. That was great. This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability while maintaining the authentic conversation between Jo Penn and Luisa Navarro about Mexico’s Day of the Dead traditions. The post Mexico’s Day Of The Dead With Luisa Navarro appeared first on Books And Travel.

Have you ever considered a radical change to mark a new chapter in your life? What fears hold you back from taking on a huge challenge, like walking for weeks on your own? Zoe Langley-Wathen talks about conquering her fears on the 630-mile South West Coast Path, and how it led to an even bigger goal: to walk the entire coastline of Great Britain. Zoe is the author of 630 Miles Braver: Midlifing on the South West Coast Path. She’s also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, an award-winning teacher, and host of the HeadRightOut podcast. Why Zoe chose the South West Coast Path to mark a rite of passage into midlife The beautiful highlights and the brutal, challenging aspects of the 630-mile trail Overcoming fears of walking and wild camping solo Practical advice on training, managing physical pain, and preparing for a long walk How the experience built lasting resilience and changed her life trajectory Zoe’s next epic adventure with her husband: walking the 7,300-mile coastline of Great Britain You can find Zoe at HeadRightOut.com You can find my tips on long-distance multi-day solo walking in my book, Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways, and more pilgrimage resources here. Transcript of the interview Jo: Hello Travellers, I’m Jo Frances Penn, and today I’m here with Zoe Langley-Wathen. Welcome, Zoe. Zoe: Hi Jo, thank you for having me. Jo: It’s great to have you on the show. Zoe is the author of 630 Miles Braver: Mid-life-ing on the South West Coast Path. She’s also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, an award-winning teacher, and host of the HeadRightOut podcast. Where is the South West Coast Path, how long is it, and why did you decide to walk it for a significant birthday? Zoe: Thank you for having me on. The clue is in the title, 630 Miles Braver. The path is 630 miles long, or 1,014 kilometres. It starts at Minehead on the south-west tip of England and travels all the way down to the toe of Cornwall, where you’ll find Land’s End. It then continues along the coast of Cornwall, Devon, and Dorset, finishing at Poole Harbour, the second largest natural harbour in the world. For people who need to locate it geographically, Minehead is about 60 miles or an hour and three-quarters south-west of Bristol. As for why I did it, it was to mark a rite of passage into midlife. Around 2010, I had a moment of what felt like divine intervention in a bookshop in Wells, Somerset. I walked in and there was a book on a shelf, and I swear there was a shaft of light shining on it: the South West Coast Path Handbook. I had been searching for a path for a long time to mark this rite of passage. I’d considered Kilimanjaro or the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, but none of them resonated. This one just clicked, because I had wanted to do it for about 15 years but never thought myself capable. I thought only gritty, athletic, strong people did the South West Coast Path, not me. I just didn’t think I was enough in any capacity. Suddenly, it was like a lightbulb had been switched on. I grabbed the book, paid for it, and thought, ‘Right, I’m going to do this. I don’t know how, but I’ll figure it out.’ And I did sort out figure it out along the way. Jo: You said you were ‘searching for a path for a long time,’ which is a really interesting phrase. You’d considered more iconic places, but felt a sense of calling to this one. I feel like I had that for the Camino de Santiago for a really long time. What do you think it is in us as humans that makes us search for a path? Zoe: That’s an interesting question. I’m not sure it’s necessarily a path that is calling us, but rather a need to make sense of our lives. Turning 40 or 50 is a pivot point in our lives where we might need to re-identify with ourselves. For a long time, I had been ‘mum’ and ‘teacher,’ completely immersed in work. For me, it was about challenging myself to do something I didn’t think I was capable of something out of the ordinary. I also wanted to fundraise to make it serve a purpose. But really, whether I was conscious of it or not, I was searching for another side of myself—a stronger version of me. Jo: It seems at midlife we often want to make a change. With a long walk that takes weeks, you have to plan for a literal pivot in your life, like taking a whole summer off. Is the scale of that commitment part of the appeal? It takes, what a month, to six weeks to walk it? Zoe: It took me 48 days to do it. I knew I was going to be scared ’cause I was scared. I was definitely fearful. By announcing it at the school where I was working, to friends and family, and even in assemblies, I created accountability. There was no backing out. I knew it was a challenge that felt out of reach, and I think that’s what I was looking for. Taking a week off work feels less momentous than a challenge that is going to take six or seven weeks, and doing it solo. I discovered I was carrying a lot of fears in my rucksack that I perhaps didn’t realise I had. These paths have a way of exposing all sorts of hangups and interesting thoughts, but they also help you sort things out. It can be problems or creative ideas; it was certainly magical for that. Jo: You can deny your problems and escape yourself for a week, but not for six or seven weeks, and all the challenges along the way. Let’s circle back to challenge. Let’s start with what were some of the most beautiful and memorable sections, and I guess we should say that as we record this in 2025, the film version of The Salt Path is out, which is set along the same coastal path and the book by Raynor Winn. You can certainly see some of these amazing sections. What were some of the most beautiful and memorable sections for you? Zoe: There are so many on the South West Coast Path, it’s really hard to choose. But I lived in Dorset for 30 years, so I have to say the Jurassic Coast, which is about 96 miles from Exmouth to Poole, is absolutely beautiful. [I walked part of this from Lyme Regis to Seaton.] The geology, the stunning scenery, the rollercoaster paths… they challenge you to your core, but they are absolutely, exquisitely beautiful. It’s hard to believe that nature has produced something so fabulous. I also really connected with the ruggedness of North Devon and Cornwall, particularly around Bude in North Cornwall and Zennor, which is down towards Land’s End. The quaintness of the cottages, the interest of the architecture, the churches… there’s a church on a beach, the Church of St. Winwaloe at Gunwalloe, also known as the Church of the Cove. That absolutely blew me away because it’s so tucked away in the most remote place. I love architecture, but I love nature as well. One more place that blew me away was the Minack Theatre, which is near Porthcurno. It was built by a lady named Rowena Cade and her gardener, starting in the 1930s. She worked on it for about 50 years until she died in the 1980s. I should say that I don’t like heights, and climbing down the narrow, steep steps carrying a full pack scared me, but it still wowed me. It left me in awe how somebody could dedicate their whole life to something that is now such an iconic feature of the Cornish landscape. Anyone performing there is performing with the backdrop of the sea behind them. Jo: Just to be clear, everyone, it’s on the coast at the edge of the coast, right? So you’re looking out to sea. Obviously it’s called the Coast Path, are you within sight of the sea the entire time? Zoe: I’d like to say yes, but no. I mean, mostly you are. Mostly, so wherever possible they try and keep the path as close to the sea as they can. But obviously for erosion reasons, that’s not always possible and safety reasons. Sometimes they have to reroute you inland. So yeah, there are moments – well, I say moments, miles – there will be miles through woodland and estates where it takes you into kind of very leafy green areas where you do not see the sea maybe for a whole day. But generally you do see the sea. And to be honest, if you don’t see the sea. Sometimes you are – well, generally you’re going to find things that are of great interest anyway. So whether it’s plants, whether it’s wildlife, buildings. One of those stretches, there was another church actually, within the first couple of days, a little church called Culbone and it’s in a valley. You just wander down into the dip through the woods. Lots of little holloways and brick built bridges from the Victorian times. But then you get down to this church and it’s a tiny church and I think it housed a leper colony many, many years ago. But it’s just very olde worlde. You would love it, Jo. The tombs and the gravestones that are covered in all the lichens and the mosses. It paints a very antiquated picture and it is beautiful. Just a nice energy there. Jo: For people who don’t really know England, there are some stereotypes, obviously. I guess the weather would be one thing, but also perhaps people think, ‘oh, it’s all quaint,’ so what are the more stormy aspects or the bits where it’s just like, okay, this is actually wild? Because some of that coast was famous for pirates and rocks. It’s not a gentle coastline really, is it? It can be quite violent with weather and waves. Zoe: Very far from it. Violent, brutal, challenging. Steep steps are built generally by volunteers, so very often they might not be of a standard height, so do be prepared for some steps to be even thigh height. So it is almost like climbing up them. That’s where walking poles come in handy. I found that having a pair of walking poles meant that I could lean on something. It takes the pressure off your knees. They say it takes up to 25% of the strain off your knees, but particularly useful when you’re going down steps like that. A lot of cliff paths that maybe have eroded, not to the point where they’re collapsing into the sea, but say for example, steps, again, if they have eroded away, you might end up with a slope that you have to descend that in wet weather would be quite sticky and actually quite nice to get down. But in dry weather, that creates a sort of gravelly slip. So, yeah, be careful of that. Cows – there’s a lot of people who might not like cows and you will come up against cows from time to time. But yeah, bad weather. My goodness. I mean, I had shocking weather in Cornwall and upon High Cliff, which is the highest point of the Southwest Coast Path. And I didn’t heed the advice of locals. I would say always take the advice of locals, but I didn’t on that day and I ended up hunkering down on the top of High Cliff thinking, what the hell have I got myself into? I just had my hood up and poles dug into the hill and just wanting to be transported, teleported off the hill. I did actually spot some locals and asked if I could walk back down with them because the wind was buffeting me at 40, at least 40, if not 50 miles an hour. It was so strong and it just didn’t feel safe to be up there at that point. So, yes, do keep an eye on the weather reports as well, and ask locals for knowledge if you’re unsure. Jo: I think that’s really important because some of the amazing sections in lovely weather are all wonderful. And then, like you say, over six weeks, seven weeks, there’s always going to be issues with the weather. I mean, this is England. Zoe: It can’t be helped. And actually that creates a whole new experience for you as well, and one that – People get grumpy about the rain, but actually when you are already out in it, you just accept it and it helps you to build more resilience — and just think, well, actually, I know it’s a cliche, but they say there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad gear. And so if you’re wearing the right gear, actually you can get through it. And you generally find there’s trail angels out there. There’s people who are so kind and if they see that you are a drowned rat will very often take you in and say, come on, come and have a cup of tea, dry off for a bit. It’s quite interesting how many times that happened. Or you just go and hole up in a cafe because actually you are never that far away. It’s not like you are in such a remote place that you are never too far away from civilisation. So there are cafes, there are shops, there are people pretty much most days. You’ll just have quite a few miles in between where you don’t see people, which is nice. I like that solitude too. Jo: That’s a really good point, is that this is not a wilderness walk. So even though it’s a long walk, it’s certainly not away from civilisation in any way. And there are pros and cons with that. As you say, you can get a coffee or an ice cream or something, but what are there sections? Because this happened to me on the Camino, it was like, oh my goodness. The industry here is a little much like this is a bit much, and sometimes Devon, Cornwall, these places can be pretty touristy. Any places where you’re like, grab an ice cream and move on as fast as possible because they’re a bit too touristy? Zoe: Most of the big towns, to be honest, the big seaside towns, I felt like that. Torquay for example, I mean, Torquay in my head, I had this romantic memory of how wonderful it was because we used to holiday there when I was a child and I was really looking forward to walking through Torquay again. But actually when I got there, it was a bit – sorry to any listeners who are from Torquay – but it just felt a bit sad and unloved and even though it was summer, and I don’t think we even grabbed an ice cream there. We just plowed on through there. There was another place, I forget the name of it now, but probably North Cornwall and there’s a beach where people can park on the beach if they want to. And it looked really lovely coming down from the cliffs into the town. But as we walked through. I say we, because I think I was walking with somebody that day, but as we were walking through, I felt like an alien. I felt like we were being stared at because, carrying this big rucksack and I wasn’t dressed in the usual kind of flip-flops and shorts and bikini top that everybody else was wearing. And so, yeah, that didn’t feel so welcoming. But then the majority of places, I have to say, the majority of places did. But yeah, just be prepared to move on through the bigger places and make yourself feel comfortable in the more natural landscape. That’s definitely my tip. Jo: Coming back to some of the challenges, so you’ve mentioned fear and obviously the title of the book has braver in it, so you’re tackling some of these fears. But one of the big ones is of course going solo. So I’ve done solo walking, but I have not solo wild camped, which I know was a big challenge for you and something that you wanted to face, but it’s not necessary, so people listening, it’s not necessary to wild camp on the Southwest Coast Path. There are places you can stay or go in groups obviously, but — In terms of some of the challenges that you faced and being a woman walking solo, tell us about that. Zoe: So the very first fear that I had was walking on my own. And I talk about this when I go and do talks with groups because particularly guys, they don’t realize that as a woman growing up, we’ve always had somebody to walk with because you don’t let children go and walk on their own, particularly girls. When I was a teenager, I always had friends with me. In my twenties I had a partner or a husband. Then late twenties, thirties, I had a child. So I always had somebody with me when I was walking and I felt almost ashamed to say that I had got to 40, and apart from going to the shops on my own, or maybe going round the park – I don’t even think I’d probably done that. I don’t think I had ever actively chosen to go on a walk on my own. So in itself, that is quite a big thing for a lot of women feeling uncomfortable. I’ve spoken to women about this. They’ve said to me, I can’t do it. I feel uncomfortable. I feel naked. I feel like people will be watching me. And so that’s a real big thing that I now try and promote to try and shelve, to try and put it to one side and just gain some of that power back, to go and enjoy the outdoors on your own. So there was that, there was obviously wild camping on my own. Camping was a little bit of an issue, but I felt okay once I was in a campsite and I was surrounded by other people, but it took me 35 days to actually pluck up the courage to wild camp on my own. And I think by then it was almost needs must. I haven’t got a choice. I was just plunked in that situation, I couldn’t go any further and I ended up pitching myself between a five bar gate and a kissing gate next to a footpath. In fact, that is the front cover of the book. So I am just squeezed in there like a tent sandwich, but again, I think I felt comfortable because I was surrounded by a boundary. I think it was that safety of the boundary. But once I had done it, oh my goodness. If I could just say about this experience I had that night. I felt very nervous about camping out there on my own for the first time, but I was woken in the night by that telltale tingle of needing the toilet in the middle of the night, which happens to most of us. Particularly, you know, 50 plus. But anyway, so I put it off, I thought about all the things that could happen or who might be out there and how would I feel, and I just got myself worked up into a real tizzy. In the end, after risk assessing for what seemed like hours about what could happen, I finally unzipped the tent and I gasped. I just remember that feeling inside me of going, oh my goodness, this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. The sky was full of so many stars. I had never seen that amount of stars. You know, when there’s no streetlights, no cars around, and it’s a clear night. And yeah, I just promised myself in that moment, I would never, ever pass up the chance to walk and wild camp solo ever again and have a wild wee in the middle of the night. Jo: Wild weeing is a thing! I think that was the turning point for you. Zoe: Definitely. Jo: And then you also do write about physical pain as part of the experience. I also felt that on my pilgrimages, blisters, all of that kind of thing. But you do do a lot of walking and you’ve done a lot of walking, so — What would be your tips for people who want to try and reduce their pain? Zoe: I’m going to just put this out there. I still get blisters. It doesn’t seem to matter what I do. I still get some walks where I get blisters, some walks where I don’t. So I think a lot of it is about combination. So combination of socks, having the right boots, making sure your feet fit in the boots properly. And I actually went for a fitting yesterday for new boots and they gave me some really sound advice about making sure your toes have got plenty of room, so if obviously it’s too tight, you’re going to be getting blisters. Lessening the weight of the rucksack is a big thing because more weight on your back means more weight on your feet. But something else I didn’t realize is that less weight on your feet – so lighter boots can really help with less blisters as well. Keeping your feet as dry as possible, so making sure you’ve always got a spare pair of socks in the top of your pack that’s easily accessible. So when you stop at lunchtime, take your socks off, let your feet air, dry them out. Foot powder if you’ve got some like Daktarin type powders. Something just to kind of keep them dry. And I would then say also, ease into the walk. Don’t try and walk too many miles too soon, because the last walk I did, I was fine for three or four days, and then the moment I started thinking I was falling behind and I started pushing to do more miles, I cranked it up too high and started doing 18, 19, 20 miles. And then boom, the blisters came. And that was during that first heat wave we had. I was going over Dartmoor and it was just way too hot because my feet were sweating and I was doing too many miles. So, yeah, ease into it gently. Keep your feet as dry as possible, lessen the weight of your pack and take ibuprofen. That’s the other key tip, if you are able to take ibuprofen, make sure that you take a couple before you go to bed at night because you will get heel pain, you will get foot pain from that constant pounding, and the ibuprofen is just magic, just takes the pain away and lets you sleep. Jo: Don’t underestimate some painkillers and maybe half a shandy or something as well before bed, but sleeping. Also some people might have in their mind like a coastal path, along a cliff, but you have mentioned the rollercoasters, like the hill climbs are some of the steepest, aren’t they? So talk a bit about that. Should people be doing hill climb training before such a walk? Zoe: It’s definitely worthwhile. And if you build it up gradually as well. So weight carrying in your rucksack and climbing hills or walking hills, not physically climbing, but ascending hills without that weight in your rucksack is going to make a huge difference. So I would say build up weight in your pack. I’ve got an iron that I carry with me when I’m training. It’s for an Aga and it’s got extra plates, hot plates that are obviously cold that fit on the bottom. So if I want to add an extra kilo, I put an extra hot plate. Jo: And then if you want to iron something, amazing?! Zoe: Well, you know, yes. But it’s instant weight in my bag without me having to rush around, filling it with bits and bobs. But yeah, certainly make sure that you do your weight training. Anything over a day is also going to change the dynamic. So if you could go out just for an overnighter somewhere would really help too. And other exercise. I mean, it’s not just about walking, it’s overall physical strength and stamina. So I practice yoga every day, just 20 minutes. It’s nothing mammoth, it doesn’t take too much out of my day, but 20 minutes every day and I’m finding that really gives me the upper body strength as well as the flexibility and the stretches that I need. If I’ve been doing walks and when it means when I’m on a walk, it’s almost like that muscle memory. My body and my head remember the stretches that I need to do to make it feel good in my thighs, in my calves, in my hip flexors. Because when we are sat down a lot, which as writers, we tend to be sat quite a bit, hip flexors and glutes tend to struggle a bit. Jo: Muscles atrophy unless you use them. I love that. And I think you are really right about saying you must do a multiday. Don’t go off and do a six week without doing – I did a five day, that was my first smaller walk, the Pilgrims Way and then the St. Cuthbert’s Way, which were five and six days I think, and then did the Camino. Because like you say, when you are overnight, there are just other things that you need and that you don’t really understand unless you do an overnight. And it’s definitely scary but as you say, it’s one of the best things. And you mentioned resilience there and just the self-development. But let’s fast forward to you now because it’s what, a decade ago? Zoe: It’s 14 years since I did the walk. And it took me four years and four months to write the book. And I would actually say that that was a whole adventure in itself. So when you think I could have – how many times I could have walked the Southwest Coast Path? I mean, okay. I might have had sore knees, but yeah, there were definitely some real mental ups and downs in the journey of writing the book. Jo: It’s got a lot of heart in it. I really appreciate that about it. I think it’s really honest. And just a lovely book about that, but as we said, you have done a lot more walking since then and you are actually planning what is, for some people – in fact, for me it seems quite an extreme walk. So tell us what you are planning to do. So we are recording this in mid 2025. Tell us what your plan is for your next big walk? Zoe: So last year Mike came to me. Mike is my husband. He came to me and he said, ‘Zoe, if we don’t go off and do this walk soon, I might never get the chance to go.’ And I gulped because we have both always wanted to walk the coastline of mainland Great Britain. But I could have quite happily waited another couple of years because I’ve got another two books I want to write in the Miles series, which are some of the other walks that I’ve done. But so I dug my heels in. I hoped he’d forget about it, and then he came back to me again. He said, come on, we really need to start organizing this walk. I should say here. So there’s 19 years difference between Mike and I. So I’ve just turned 54. Mike’s just turned 73, and yeah, rightly so. He’s concerned that either his body or his mind is going to let him down, and he’s not going to get the opportunity to do this wonderful thing that we’ve both always wanted to do. So I will say I am happy with it. Now, it doesn’t mean I’m not apprehensive. I’m still nervous about certain aspects of the walk, but we are both excited and we’re both in the mode of getting the house ready so we can rent the house out. We anticipate it’s going to take two years. Jo: Two years. Everyone’s like, what, two years?! Zoe: Two years, yes. But 7,300 miles. Mike is on two brand new hips. He has tested them out on the Camino last year, and it worked well for him, which is good. So we are taking off. It’s not going to be a race. It’s going to be eight to 10, 12 miles a day. It’ll be eight miles a day round Scotland, 12 miles a day round England and Wales, and eight miles a day for the Southwest Coast Path, which we’re saving until last, because that was the very first path that I walked, which is obviously what the book is about. It’s also where I met Mike. Jo: So 7,300 miles. So if people don’t understand Great Britain, because of course we talk about England, we talk about UK, just if people aren’t from here, just explain that. Zoe: So it’s Great Britain, mainland. It includes England, Scotland, and Wales, not Northern Ireland. So it’s England, Scotland, Wales, and we are not taking any ferries. So we will be walking, we’re starting on the western edge of Poole Harbor at the end of the Southwest Coast Path. And instead of taking the ferry across, we’re walking around Poole Harbor, which is about 35 miles. So we anticipate that’ll take two and a half to three days. We are then heading anti-clockwise, so going east towards Brighton and then up the east coast. We’re going towards London, over Tower Bridge, back down the Thames again, and then up the east coast for the winter. So beast from the east maybe. Who knows? Jo: And when will you hit Scotland? Zoe: So we’re going to hit Scotland at the end of March next year, beginning of April. So there is method in our madness for doing the East coast in the winter. It’s so that we do the east coast of Scotland in the summer, where it will be less midge. And then we will be coming down the western side, the western highlands during the winter. So a bit tricky perhaps, but yeah, we shall see. Hopefully it won’t be too snowy for us. Jo: So then, everyone’s like, but — What on earth do you pack for two years of walking? Is it just – do you change, you getting things sent at different times or are you going to buy different stuff along the way because you don’t want to be carrying winter stuff when it’s the summer and all that? Zoe: So we’ll probably start off with winter gear because we take off on the 4th of October. That’s our starting date. We’re obviously walking into the latter part of the autumn and winter. We will have a bag each of spare kit for the summer stashed somewhere. We haven’t yet figured out exactly where that’s going to be. We’ve got an offer from two or three different people. But yeah, so there will be kit at points where we can say to people, look, we really need, I don’t know, a warmer sleeping bag or, I’m too hot in these trousers. Can you send me my summer weight trousers? So they will be with somebody, they’ll post them on to us. And we also have an arrangement with one of the shops as well. So as we run out, not run out, as we wear out of things, they will send us new kit to whatever destination we’re at at that point, we can find somewhere just slightly ahead of us on the trail. People, I’ve spoken to quite a lot of people in recent months who are saying, oh, well, we’d be quite happy to come out and meet you, or we’ll help you, or you can come and have a shower at ours. So those are the sorts of people that I’ll be contacting ahead of time saying, actually, do you mind if we have a little package sent to you? Jo: Because that seems huge. How are you a different person from the woman who set off on the first walk who basically couldn’t even do much, to where you are now? Zoe: It’s absolutely intense when I think about it now. I mean, that was only supposed to be a one-off walk to mark my rite of passage into middle age. And it turned out to be a whole new trajectory. And I just went on walking each year, facing new challenges because I think I realized that in having a focus, in having a challenge, in being in the outdoors, particularly in my own space with my own thoughts and my own ideas to kind of mull over, I was becoming a more resilient version of me. When I’ve been off, even when I’ve been off on a sort of 5, 6, 7 day walk – I did one just a couple of months ago – I come back and I find that that resilience has topped up. You don’t just do a walk like that and then say, yay, I’m more resilient, and that’s it. You stay more resilient for the rest of your life. It needs to be maintained and it needs topping up. So I find that a big walk will last me two or three months. It boosts my confidence. I get imposter syndrome quite a bit. I don’t – some people don’t like to call it that, but yeah, definitely a belief in myself wavers quite a bit throughout the year, and then I go off on a walk and suddenly I feel like I can face the world. So there’s all sorts of things that come into play there, but resilience is the biggest thing and I guess that’s why I do it, but we just love being outside as well and appreciating nature and seeing the things that you wouldn’t normally see when you’re driving. And although I am an introvert, I still love to meet the people on these walks because if you are out walking, you’re generally meeting other people who have a similar frame of mind to you because you’re both out in the countryside walking. So we tend to meet some amazing people and some of those people are best friends now. Jo: If people want to follow you and Mike virtually, not physically, are you sharing this along the way? Zoe: Yeah, we will be. So we’re called One Coast Any Age – a Head Right Out Adventure. Head Write Out is my little brand, my baby that has been going since 2019. So they can go to headrightout.com and find more details there. We’re on Instagram and Facebook at Head Right Out. We’re just keeping it simple. We’re walking in aid of Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance as well. So there’s information on the page if people feel like they want to go and have a look at more about what they do. Jo: Fantastic. Right. Well this is the Books and Travel podcast. What are a few books that you recommend either about the Southwest Coast Path or long distance walking in general? Zoe: Do you know this had to be one of the hardest things that I needed to think about because if you could see my bookcase, it’s absolutely full of adventure memoirs and walking. And so I’ve really had to kind of finely tune this. The number one, I know it’s been said before on your podcast, but it has to be The Salt Path by Raynor Winn, because that was the book that triggered my realization that I had a story to tell. I really connected with Raynor’s story. So connected with me on so many levels. And then my book number two, also by Raynor Winn would have to be Landlines. That’s not – this one is not about the Southwest Coast Path. This one is about walking long distances around the country. So starting from Cape Wrath and working their way down through the country. And again, it’s the beauty and the connection with these long distance paths and the humour in it as well. Have you read Landlines? Jo: Yes. Zoe: I found some really gentle humor in there that I really appreciated about other walkers and their view about them walking and who they were. Anyway, I won’t spoil it for anybody. Wild by Cheryl Strayed. I know that’s also another one that you’ve had, and I was trying to think of different books. I do have some different books to recommend, but those are my top three. So, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, I definitely resonated with the rawness and the honesty in Cheryl’s book. I think I understood the healing that she experienced while walking long distances. I experienced grief when I was walking the Southwest Coast Path, and so I definitely felt that. Ursula Martin is my number four. One Woman Walks Europe. Ursula, I should say is a friend of mine, but I have read One Woman Walks Wales, which was her first book and her second book was One Woman Walks Europe and just the intensity, the almost incomprehensible nature of walking for years from Ukraine back across the whole of Europe to Tierra del Fuego and then on up to Wales, and it happened to end up through the COVID years as well. So it’s how she navigated being told that she had to go home, lock your doors and go home and don’t, when she is actually essentially homeless because she’s transient, she’s a traveler, she’s walking, where does she go? So that brought lots of thoughts up about how you manage as a long, long-distance walker. And my number five, I’m actually sneaking in two here because I’m just finishing Simon Armitage. Walking Home. He’s mentioned in The Salt Path, and I realized I’d never actually read a book by Simon Armitage, which I felt really ashamed about. So I read it and I’ve been really enjoying it. I’m on the last chapter, so that’s quite funny in places. He’s walking home along the Pennine Way as this troubadour who is reciting poetry in village halls and pubs and homes and having money donated to him. But yeah, that’s a good one. But my last book I read before that was Windswept by Annabel Abbs. Have you read this one? Jo: I’ve got it. I’ve actually got it on my list. Zoe: Yes, yes. I love it. I just really enjoyed the exploration and the research that she had taken the time to delve into with each of the women that she writes about. So there’s Nan Shepherd who is an author back from the thirties who wrote The Living Mountain about the Cairngorms. She talks about Daphne du Maurier and her friend Clara Vyvyan, I think, who again, they are women who of their time wouldn’t normally be going off doing long distance walks. But they show the appreciation for being out in nature and what it gives them. Simone de Beauvoir, who was known as a staunch feminist and partner to Jean-Paul Sartre. And yet she also, there’s this side of her that not a lot of people knew about how she really connected with the outdoors, but was going out for like nine, 10 hours a day sometimes just to collect her thoughts and think out what was going on in her head. And that’s really kind of how I feel about walking. There’s a quote I jotted down about that. De Beauvoir came up with: “I was walking and the world seemed to open up before me, no longer enclosed or narrow.” And it’s just like, yes, my world feels so small and our comfort zones – my comfort zone tends to shrink so much if I haven’t been doing things like this. And then when I go on a long distance walk, it just opens up before me. I just love that quote. Jo: Brilliant. Well just remind people one more time where they can find you and your book and everything you do online. Zoe: So it’s headrightout.com. Head Right Out on all the socials and the book is available at Amazon, but it’s also available wide so you can go into any independent bookshop – and we both do that – and ask for 630 Miles Braver. Please support the independents. Jo: Brilliant. Well thanks so much for your time, Zoe. That was great. Zoe: Jo, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much. The post Facing Fears And Finding Resilience In Midlife: Long-Distance Walking With Zoe Langley-Wathen appeared first on Books And Travel.

What makes a place sacred, and can you find spiritual transformation without traveling thousands of miles? Why do ordinary English villages and Scottish islands continue to draw seekers from around the world? Award-winning travel writer Oliver Smith talks about British pilgrimage sites from Lindisfarne to Iona, and Walsingham to Glastonbury, and how these ancient places still draw even secular pilgrims today. Oliver Smith is a multi award-winning travel writer and author of The Atlas of Abandoned Places, and On This Holy Island: A Modern Pilgrimage Across Britain. The double lives of pilgrimage places, and how ordinary locations can offer transcendent experiences Lindisfarne’s tidal causeway The tension between commercial tourism and genuine spiritual seeking at sacred sites Iona’s remote Scottish island setting and the challenging journey required to reach it Walsingham’s remarkable history from medieval powerhouse to modern multicultural pilgrimage destination Why Glastonbury might be Britain’s best pilgrimage The philosophy of traveling deeper not further, and finding extraordinary meaning in familiar places You can find Oli at OliverSmithTravel.com You can find more Pilgrimage Resources here, as well as my book, Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways. Transcript of the interview Jo: Hello Travelers. I’m Jo Frances Penn, and today I’m here with Oliver Smith. Hi Oli. Oli: Hello, how are you doing? Jo: Oh, it’s great to have you on the show. Just a little introduction. Oli is a multi award-winning travel writer and author of The Atlas of Abandoned Places, and On This Holy Island: A Modern Pilgrimage Across Britain, which we are talking about today. It’s a fantastic book. Now, Oli, I wanted to get straight into it. So you say in the book, although you’ve traveled all over the world, you say quote from the book, “What interested me now were those places that promised a kind of travel beyond what could be charted on an ink or pixel map.” So I wondered if you could start with that, because you’ve been to all these tick list travel places. What about those that are these soulful journeys? Oli: I guess what really interests me is that a lot of these places that feature in the book, they sort of live double lives, you know? If I pick one at random, or one near where you are in the country. If we think about Glastonbury for example, it’s fascinating because people go there with such huge expectation. For some people it’s a place that unlocks other worlds to them. The tor might be a portal to some world of the fairies or some world of Arthurian legend, or it might be something to do with Joseph of Arimathea. Jesus Christ walking in Somerset and that old legend, you know, so much is invested in it. Yet at the same time, Glastonbury is a place where if you go to the high street, there’s a Boots. There is a pub selling the usual repertoire of lagers and warm beers and Nobby’s Nuts behind the bar, you know, these places. I think all of them, to some degree in the book, they are ordinary, mundane places that people live in and people pass by every day. But then they offer, they promise a kind of an extra level, which is detectable to some people and isn’t to others. So it is that kind of duality. I think what really interested me when I was writing this book. Jo: Yeah, and I guess, well it’s almost a bigger question because when you look at your career as a travel writer and you mentioned their expectation, which I think is a fantastic word for so much of travel, you could pick any of the tick list places in the world and say, well, you know, that would be amazing. And then perhaps it’s not. I always think of Venice because I went to Venice one winter and it flooded and it stank and it was meant to be amazing, but it wasn’t. So I did really just wonder like — Why write a pilgrimage book when you have traveled so many wonderful places? Oli: I think one thing that can be said about all the places I’ve visited in this book is that there are places where you learn an awful lot about humanity and the human condition. People often gravitate to pilgrimage places at these kind of weightless moments of their lives when they’re sort of on a hinge. Perhaps they’ve lost someone who is dear to them. Perhaps they’ve been made redundant. Perhaps they’re looking for direction, they’re going through a rite of passage. But they are often people who are quick to tell you their story. They’re quick to open their heart. And I found myself getting in such deep and involving and fascinating conversations with people. I think my pilgrimage book is possibly a little bit different to a lot of the other ones that are out there. It’s not really about me. I’m more of a kind of witness perhaps. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that these places didn’t have some magic that I felt on some level. But I think it is primarily about looking at these 12 places, sort of different characters as well as being character places – they are rich in characters themselves. So yeah, I think you will have the best conversations if you go to wherever it might be. Walsingham on a pilgrimage day, or Stonehenge solstice or whatever it might be. Jo: Well one of the places that you went is Lindisfarne and I love that you slept in the rescue box. Now I’ve walked across the sands. It was one of the highlights of the St. Cuthbert’s Way. I had just a wonderful time. Tell us about the crossing to Lindisfarne Oli: I think what makes Lindisfarne really interesting is its geography. That tidal element to Lindisfarne is something that’s not entirely unique, because you also get it at St. Michael’s Mount. You also get it at a couple of Holy Islands in the Severn Estuary, I think as well. But on that scale, the idea of taking a walk of three miles across a path that twice a day is completely submerged, is quite a wonderful thing. And I wrote in the book that I think that path has many lessons. The idea that you only have a finite amount of time. The idea that you need to make the best of that time, that’s something that’s instructive for life on a much bigger level. But I think probably what’s more interesting is the element of vulnerability there. You know, the idea that you are walking across the sea and the sea will be coming back for you very shortly, and you run the risk every time you step onto that path. And it’s fascinating how there’s this sort of perpetual drumbeat through the summer of stories of people getting stuck on the causeway. It can be someone who often has got some quite flashy car and they think they can go straight through it. And then they go in the drink sort of halfway across. It’s also quite often people who are from countries where there aren’t tides. So people from central Europe, even the Mediterranean, you know, people sort of drive halfway across the causeway and they think it’s a car parking space, and they go for a little wander and they come back and the sea’s risen again. And suddenly their car is steering wheel deep in water. But there’s so much biblical symbology in that, you know, the idea of the floods, the idea of the seas parting for Moses. I think all of that kind of echoes very slightly around the Lindisfarne Causeway, both the tarmac road and the Pilgrims Way. I think all those things are important. I mean, I guess the other thing to say is the start of it all, Saint Aidan chose Lindisfarne because of this tidal rhythm. Because there’s these hours where the island is closed off from the world and the monks there would be in their solitude. They would be praying. And then there are those hours where the door opens in a way and they can go out into the world. They can spread the word. So it’s not an accident that the monastery is situated there. I think the one thing that is absolutely extraordinary about Lindisfarne that just doesn’t get spoken about enough is that almost every weekend or every other weekend in summer. Maybe that’s a bit too much. Maybe every other weekend or once a month, something like that, a car will go under in the causeway and these people will be in the car. The water will be going up, they’ll be calling the RNLI, they’ll probably be in a panic. RNLI will turn up in their lifeboat and then they’ll fish them out and they’ll go back to the sea houses and their car will be absolutely kaput. And there’s even a cottage industry. There’s a little garage by the causeway that seems to – I mean, it seemed to me that their business was essentially going out there, picking up the car and dragging it back. But in living memory, there’s no record of anyone ever having drowned. You see how fast that water moves and you see how dangerous it can be. And you can see how clueless people are. And there were a few people who did sort of weigh it over in their minds and say to me, well, there is, that is almost miraculous. The fact that nobody has ever come a cropper there in living memory, or even, I think even longer than that. I think there was sort of a muttering of something happened a hundred years ago. But it’s quite extraordinary how that’s the case. Jo: So I gotta come back to the box. Because we can picture this in our mind. So just explain what the walk looks like and what is the box and the poles and everything. Walker on the sands crossing away from Lindisfarne Photo by JFPenn Oli: Sure, sure. Sorry, I got carried away there. So you go across the causeway and say you’re going out at low tide, it sort of looks almost like a little bit of a desert. And then you’ve got the two routes, the Pilgrims Way, which is the walking path, which sort of goes in a straight line, and then the metal causeway, which is for cars. And on both of them you find these shelters. On the Pilgrims Way, it almost looks a bit like a tree house without a tree as it were. This sort of rickety, kind of slightly precarious platform on stilts that’s designed that, if you get caught by the tide, you can rush up there and you can wait it out. But on the metal causeway where the cars are, I think just by the deepest point, but just by the point where people tend to get stuck, they’ve essentially put what looks like what looks like a garden shed on stilts. And that hovers by quite a deep channel. So it is this really weird thing that looks like someone’s sort of taken their garden shed from B&Q or from Homebase or wherever, and they’ve propped it on four concrete legs and stuck it sort of up in the sky. Almost like the umpire at Wimbledon or something. Do you know what I mean? And if you go in there, you actually realize it’s a bit more sturdy than that. It’s actually built bespoke by the council, by Northumberland council, I think it was. And it’s quite cozy in there, but I went up there because I thought the most interesting thing about Lindisfarne for me was that betweenness, that sort of being halfway between being an island. Not an island, being a tidal island. And that kind of act of the water, severing it, cutting it off, and then retreating and it’s like this umbilical cord that kind of gets cut and then reattaches every – so, I mean, reattaches, it’s not particularly good metaphor, you know what I mean? But yeah, I sat out there for however long it was, eight hours or something. I was really careful to make sure no one spotted me so they didn’t try and rescue me. But when you are up there, it is quite a kind of, you know, you’re at this gateway to a holy island. And Lindisfarne in high peak season is so crazy busy. But if you’re there, you know, in the middle. Kind of in the causeway on the gatehouse as it were. It’s just total silence, total peace, beautiful views and just seals kind of swimming up and down the channel. And you maybe there more than in the village. You get a sense of what it might’ve been for Cuthbert, for Aidan, for those saints who are so important to the story of Lindisfarne. Jo: When I walked over, I heard this sound and I was like, what is that sound? And it was the seals singing, which apparently happens sometimes. And then of course it’s a bird sanctuary as well. So it is incredibly beautiful. But you mentioned earlier about the duality of these places, and you did mention there that the village is really busy, and this is one of the interesting things about pilgrimage in general. There is an industry and I guess there always was, you know, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Obviously there’s always been an industry and I found that really hard, walking into the village with my wet boots and everything and my backpack and I was like, this is, and everyone looks at you weird because they’ve come off a coach. How was that, with many of the places you visited, the industry versus the spirituality side? Oli: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. Because you said it was always there. I think it was always there. The commercial side of life is almost impossible to escape in pilgrimage locations. I mean, one example I often talk about is if you go to the square that marks the finishing line of the Camino and you see these people gathering there. And they’re often in extremely heightened states and some of them are almost euphoric. And it’s this extremely kind of beautiful, poignant moment. And then there’s the cathedral, which is obviously extraordinary itself, but then parked between the pilgrims and the cathedral. There’s often one of those little sightseeing road trains. Do you know the one that’s sort of like halfway between a bus and a train and there’s someone on a loudspeaker and maybe it plays a little song and it might even have a smiley face on the front of it, but that’s standing between the pilgrims and the cathedral and is just evidence for me of just how people will spy a buck in places where people spiritually gravitate. And that’s always been the way I think. I think it also applies to lots of things. It applies to souvenirs, trinkets, pilgrims’ badges, whatever it might be, rosary beads, these, I think these are the original gift shops in a way. You know, when pilgrims go somewhere and they want something to take the magic of that destination back with them. But it also applies in terms of the commercial side of things. I think it is to do with, I mean, you said the Canterbury Tales, like, I think pilgrimage for many people is about boozing and about going out. And if you hear about those stories of Shikoku Japan, where pilgrimage for many people is just sort of a pretext to go out there and just live the high life and kind of see the world a bit and have some fun. That’s one strand of it. I’m not saying that’s definitive for many people. It is a really lofty endeavor. And for a lot of people, I think these two things kind of mingle, sometimes comfortably, sometimes not so comfortably. But yeah, I think the commercial side of things, bathos, these things will always be there, I think. These places they promise escape and transcendence on one level, but then on another level, totally fail to deliver that. And I think it’s worth being honest about that. Jo: I think so too. And again, it comes back to what you said about expectation. And in fact, the only place I sort of found that solitude and nature was on the St. Cuthbert’s Way because it’s so remote, in terms of the walk, whereas then arriving at Lindisfarne. But I wanted to ask you about somewhere else, which is Iona, because I haven’t been, and part of me is kind of scared because of these expectations. So you say in the book “More than anywhere I traveled for this book, Iona seemed a place that prompted wild infatuations. Dreams drifted northward to settle on this little Scottish island.” So tell us about Iona. Oli: I think here again, it’s to do with geography. I mean, I think the fact is for most people in Great Britain, Iona will almost certainly be a long way away from where you live unless you happen to live on the island of Mull or Oban or wherever it might be. It’s somewhere that through our modern eyes is at one removed from the rest of the world. You know, it’s an island off an island off an island. If you count Great Britain as well. It’s at the edge of, it’s the edge of the Ross of Mull. It’s also kind of quite, it has a different feel to the Isle of Mull, which it neighbors and which is the route there. It’s geologically different. It looks kind of different. And the way it’s regarded by many people is, you know, this is one of the first Christian outposts in Great Britain, happening around the same time as Canterbury emerges and that it’s at the wild edge of the world. You know, that this kind of little perch on the cusp of the Atlantic, which is kind of untrue in terms of history. Because Iona was actually very well connected. It was close to Ireland in those times. The way of getting around was not by land, but by sea. And it was on a kind of fairly established network of sea roads. But I mean, yeah, that doesn’t stop the fact that it’s sort of seen as a sort of wilderness pilgrimage in many ways to, and there is no way getting there is easy. You will have to get a ferry or you have to get to Oban for a start, which could be umpteen train connections through riding the West Highland line through beautiful glens, a ferry to Mull, another wild road across Mull, which is kind of only just very slightly wider than your car, possibly narrower. And then you get to a ferry, another ferry port. Then you get a lot. So by the time you got there, whether you like it or not, you’ve made a kind of pilgrimage of one sort. So I think that those are some of the reasons why, I mean of, and of course it’s hugely historically significant. It’s where Saint Columba, one of those early Christian saints of the British Isles established his monastery, in whatever it was, the seventh century I think it was. It’s at the very beginning of the story. It has the same elements as many pilgrimage sites across Britain, which is they were destroyed by reformations of one kind or another. And so that, you know, the ruins are often part of it. And some people might find that kind of disappointing. Perhaps people from a Roman Catholic background might go there and see things being smashed to rubble, but I think perhaps in England we’re a bit more conditioned to find some kind of poetry in that, when we think of Tintern Abbey or Glastonbury Abbey or great monasteries like Rievaulx and Fountains and places like that. They almost have their own kind of majesty in decay. And there’s an element of that I think about Iona. When you get there and you just sort of see these kind of slightly weathered. Pieced back together, Christian crosses. There is certainly some, yeah, there’s something stirring about all those things, I think. Jo: And I guess one of the other things about it is where it is, physically as you said, so for people listening who don’t know the geography sort of very northwest. Realistically, you’ve got a lot of weather arriving, so, and you, I think you were there for a week, right? How was the weather? How was that wildness around it? Oli: Yeah, I mean it’s one of those places that you go and you can go and stand on a west facing cliff and you’ll have the kind of entire Atlantic blowing up down your face and you sort of almost get this kind of facelift from quite how intense it is. And that’s hugely stimulating. And some people in the community there, of community with a big C that religious community in Iona Abbey today, someone said that’s almost like an image of God, this kind of sea, which is all powerful, which is vast and unknowable and it has that kind of element of the divine, of the almighty about it, I’d say. That’s certainly part of it. And then the origin story of Iona, of St. Columba coming from Ireland. Sailing in this tiny little coracle across these insanely wild seas. These are kind of real, Channel Five trawler program seas where they’re just flinging around boats and it’s all rags of white surf. It’s not something we’re used to if you live near the English Channel or the North Sea or even the Irish Sea, they’re not quite on the same scale. I think all those things are part of Iona’s appeal, you know? I mean, it is a hugely historically significant place. There’s no two ways about it. Jo: I like that kind of, we can’t control the weather and we can’t control God, and we’re sort of trying to find that in that place. I also want to ask you about Walsingham because there was a point in history when it was a super, super famous place. And I would bet that many people listening, probably most people listening to this, have never heard of Walsingham. So you say it’s unique in Britain in being a tiny village, shouldering the weight of its holy past. Tell us about that. Oli: Yeah, I mean it’s a little village in Norfolk, which is sort of, I mean it’d be wrong to say Norfolk is remote in the context of England, but it’s a little bit more out the way. It’s kind of this bit of part of this bit of land that sticks out into the sea that incorporates a few, a couple of other counties as well. And it’s kind of a bit of a holiday heartland as well. Some lovely beaches there. And has a lot of very, very pretty kind of villages with flint, these kind of flint on the facade that makes all the houses kind of quite sparkly and lovely in a way. But it’s fascinating that sort of in the midst of this kind of quite quintessentially English, slightly Miss Marple-esque landscape. There’s a lovely little village, which at the dawn of the, well, no, actually, was it 1061 something? There was an apparition of the Virgin Mary before a Saxon noblewoman. That’s a long time before other sites of other more famous sites of Marian apparitions, like Lourdes, like Fatima, like Medjugorje in Bosnia. This is a good several centuries before all of those. And yeah, the fact is that this tiny little village was one of the kind of major pilgrimage sites of Christendom. It was ranked alongside Canterbury, and kind of only a few pegs below Rome, Santiago, it was mentioned in the same breath as Jerusalem by some people that, you know, people would go to this little village, that there would be royal pilgrimages there, kings would be going there. And then suddenly, the English reformation happens. And this little place experiences the same fate as all the pilgrimage destinations in England at that time. These monasteries are all taken apart, smashed to bits. The icons, the shrines, are destroyed. Suddenly this sort of sleepy village goes back to being sleepy again for another 400 years or so. And it was only at the dawn of the 20th century, where the local vicar, Alfred Hope Patten. He decided to kind of resurrect it in a small way. And so when you go to Walsingham today, it’s a place that kind of, you know. Its sanctity is originally medieval. Originally about a thousand years ago there was this Marian apparition, but then you go there and everything looks like something from the start of the 20th century. The church sort of looks almost a bit like a kind of early BBC building or something. And the shrine is conspicuously quite new and shiny and is only, you know, only less than a hundred years old. And that this place has sort of had this sort of second life after its sort of renaissance at the start of the 20th century. I mean, the counterpoint now is that obviously with the decline of church going that fewer and fewer people are going there. I mean, in the 1930s, there were special trains laid on from London, taking people there. Right through the 20th century, coach loads of people would go from their home parish on pilgrimage there. And now those numbers are dwindling. COVID dealt a big blow to the place. And now it’s just sort of quietly kind of ticking along. The really fascinating thing for me about Walsingham is how it is, you know, almost, I mean, like you said, a lot of English people will not have heard of this place. And even people in Norfolk will probably not have heard of this place. But if you go there, you will find like large numbers of Latin American people who happen to be working in London, you’ll find huge numbers of Tamil people, from Birmingham or from the Midlands, even from London, who, I mean, the biggest pilgrimage to this place now is the Tamil pilgrimage. Where these fields fill up with cars and this place that’s in the middle of Norfolk. It’s in the middle of kind of Brexit land and a large majority of people, they’re kind of white, Anglo-Saxon people. And then suddenly there’s this very highly diverse and really quite wonderful little village in the middle of it all. I think that’s something quite lovely. Jo: And I wonder, because you said it looks quite modern and you also mentioned there the decline in church going, but actually there is a renaissance in pilgrimage. And people do like visiting. I mean, I’m not a Christian and I’ve done several pilgrimages and I feel an attraction to the ruins and the great cathedrals and these things. I haven’t been to Walsingham, I’m not attracted to it because maybe it’s too modern. Do you think that’s maybe one of the reasons it hasn’t come back like some of the other places? Oli: Yeah, hugely. I think that’s really interesting. How some pilgrimage places will speak to people of kind of less certain faith and others don’t. I mean, someone asked me the other day for a piece they were writing what I consider to be Britain’s foremost pilgrimage destination now. The classic answer would’ve been Canterbury. Or indeed, Walsingham would’ve been a candidate for a lot of British history. And then, you know, Lindisfarne is also important, but I think even though it’s kind of second tier in the kind of more historical stakes, I think Glastonbury is the biggest pilgrimage destination now in Britain. Just because it means so many different things to different people. It is of importance to Anglican and Catholic communities. But it also brings in neopagan new age people. It brings in people who are looking for some kind of nebulous idea of nationhood as well. Those Arthurian legends that somehow this place has a kind of seed of an origin story about Britain embedded within it. But also, I mean, I think there’s a logistical argument that the biggest gathering in Britain, the Glastonbury festival, which happens just a few miles down the road and a few days ago. I mean, that’s a pilgrimage for many people. If you look deep. If you kind of look a little bit more closely, you can see that those, some of those things, things like the pyramid stage, that was kind of an energy center. And there are pilgrimage elements to the Glastonbury Festival today. So, I mean, yeah, I mean, Walsingham, it doesn’t have that ancient kind of draw of Iona, it doesn’t have the wilderness feel of Lindisfarne. It’s not got an enormous cathedral at the end of it, like Canterbury. And accordingly, while pilgrimage is in renaissance in many ways, it’s being left behind to some extent. I think, relative to those other places. Jo: So I wanted to also ask you, so you have almost a call to action at the end of the book about “finding Jerusalem in our own backyard to travel deeper, not further to break through the crust of the familiar to find the fantastical.” So I think this is really important and you do mention changes in attitude to travel perhaps with climate change and things being a bit different now. So how can we do that though? How can we travel deeper, not further and see things differently? Oli: That’s a very good question. I think the way I saw things differently in this book is sort of being in the right place at the right time. If I kind of give an example of that, I mean, every time I, well, not every time. Because sometimes you take the M4, but a lot of times when you go on holiday to Devon and Cornwall, you drive down the A303 and there’s that horrible sort of choke point near Amesbury and traffic’s crawling really slowly and it’s really annoying. And you look out the window and you’re like, oh, there’s Stonehenge. And you’re like, oh, hi Stonehenge. Then you sort of push on down the road and then you don’t think about it again. Or you might go there on a school trip or something like that. We might kind of go with your family and walk past the barrier. And you’re like, oh, this is very interesting. I think that had been my attitude to Stonehenge until I started reading about its modern history as a place of gathering at Solstice about the free festivals and visited there on one Summer Solstice event. And you see that its history for many people is not abstract. That it is a kind of, it is not a heap of old stones. It’s a temple for many people. And the historical sources suggest that people can to a large extent make it what they want it to be. And they do. And the lack of a dogma, the lack of a creed about that place means that you are free to kind of complete the picture yourself. And I didn’t know, I mean, maybe was a bit too young to know about the free festivals of the seventies. The Battle of the Beanfield where Stonehenge was sort of closed off to the outside world because of the parties that were going on there. And I didn’t realize that it was kind of reinvented, rediscovered as a shrine about 40, 50 years ago and now it’s just sort of ticking along, but you can still get a sense of those people for whom it was a kind of, it was a sort of. They were holy stones. And that had never crossed my mind until I’d been to some solstice. That I’d read the sources around it. And I think, yeah, that’s part of it. Just learning more, speaking to more people. Waiting until the tourist tour buses have thinned, and when the sun started going down, perhaps, or whatever it might be. Those are often the moments when you start to see a little bit more clearly the magic that some of these places possess and were chosen for in the first instance. Jo: Fantastic. Well, this is the Books and Travel podcast. What are some of the books you recommend about pilgrimage or British travel? Oli: Okay. Yeah, probably if I was to pick one book about British travel of the last 10 years that kind of opened my eyes a bit more widely. It’s probably not particularly original answer, but probably the The Book of Trespass. I think that’s just a fantastic book that, you know, so much of kind of landscape writing and nature writing is so polite and so deferential and just something that turns that on its head. I really like it. I think it was really fantastic and so much fun. It was a really great book. So I really enjoyed that. In terms of pilgrimage writing, I really, I’ve not quite finished it yet, but I really enjoyed Holy Places: How Pilgrimage Changed the World by Kathryn Hurlock, I think I like it because it’s very kind of clear-eyed and sees through an awful lot of the kind of cloud of mystery around these places to just sort through historical facts. That’s a really fun one. British kind of landscape books. I mean, I would say probably my, those kind, you know, I think probably every writer has a few kind of holy texts of their own. And probably, again, it’s not hugely original, but for me it’s As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, which obviously only has like a few pages of England before it starts hightailing over to Spain. But that kind of landscape around the Slad Valley and I guess not very far from you. Really. Jo: We should say that’s Laurie Lee if people don’t know. Oli: Yes, of course. That’s another really, that kind of is writing about a place where, you know. It kind of almost jumps out the page at you really, and you feel that you’re there in some ways. I really love that kind of classic British travel writing that came out of the kind of seventies and eighties, those are maybe not quite as fashionable now, the kind of Bruce Chatwin and Patrick Leigh Fermor and all that stuff, but that’s what really kind of inspired me when I was young. And I know that there, there’s a lot of those kind of books are kind of quite flawed in many ways and a lot of stuff is made up. Jo: Oh, we are all flawed. Oli: We are all flawed. But yeah, those guys get away with it because they could do it so brilliantly and make it feel so real. But yeah, those books are all hugely important to me. I think you can often tell quite how important a book is by how well thumbed it is. But for me, I’m just looking up on my shelf now and I think the most battered book up there is Wind, Sand and Stars by Saint-Exupéry. That’s like another really kind of sacred text for me. Sorry, I rattled on. Jo: Oh no. We love books. That’s why we’re here. Where can people find you and your books online? Oli: My website is oliversmithtravel.com. And my social media handles are OliSmithTravel on Instagram and Twitter. Jo: Brilliant. Well thanks so much for your time, Oli. That was great. Oli: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thanks for reading the book. The post British Pilgrimage: On This Holy Island With Oliver Smith appeared first on Books And Travel.

What does it mean to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time? How can travel shape our sense of self, and how do we find our way home when faced with unexpected grief abroad? In this episode, I talk with author Becky Doughty about her traveling childhood as a missionary kid, a life-changing trip to Tuscany that resonated with grief, and how traveling alone helped her become more resilient. Becky writes heartfelt and wholesome, contemporary commercial fiction and Christian fiction, including the Autumn Lake and the Tuscan Romance series. Growing up as a missionary kid in West Papua Being adopted, from “nowhere, anywhere, and everywhere.” How a dream trip to Tuscany turned into a journey of grief after the sudden death of her father. Turning a traumatic travel memory into a heartfelt romance Overcoming the fear of traveling and why embracing the moment is more important than worrying about what might go wrong. Becky’s solo backpacking trip to run the Dublin marathon and how it stripped away everything except her own inner strength. You can find Becky at BeckyDoughty.com Jo: Hello Travelers. I’m Jo Frances Penn, and today I’m here with Becky Doughty. Hi Becky. Becky: Hi Jo. How are you? Jo: I’m good. It’s great to have you on the show. For a little introduction, Becky writes heartfelt and wholesome, contemporary commercial fiction and Christian fiction, including the Autumn Lake and the Tuscan Romance series. We have lots to talk about today, but as a starter — How did travel play a part in your childhood? Becky: Well, I always say I’m a missionary kid in recovery because travel made me fearless. Being a kid that traveled all around the world, I never really had a place that was home base. Even though we didn’t live in a lot of different countries, we did primarily live in Indonesia. My dad was an airplane mechanic and pilot, and he oversaw most of the hangar operations at our base camp in what is now West Papua. For me, travel was just a way of life. We traveled back and forth to the States, which was home, and I traveled to school. I was a boarding student in high school and we traveled all on our own, with no parents. It was two days of travel, and we had to get to the right place during our stopover. Travel was just a part of life and it made me a fearless, “I’m just going to do whatever I want to do” kind of person. But the flip side is that it also leaves you feeling a little bit, not unrooted, but wondering where to put your roots down. Especially since we were always told that America was home, in particular where our grandparents lived. But it never felt like home because we were always only visiting. That’s a big part of why I write stories about people finding their place. I’ve always written stories and escaped into other people’s lives for that reason. Jo: It’s fascinating that you were told where home is whilst living elsewhere. Because you are living there, in West Papua or PNG as it was, with a very different culture, climate, and religions. I worked in mining for a while, so I know that sort of ‘Wild West’ idea of what was going on in PNG, and of course, there were wars and everything. So that’s very different. To be told, “Your home is in America, you belong in America,” must have been very strange. What age were you? What were your formative years? Becky: My parents went to the mission field with three kids under three. My older brother and I are adopted, not biologically related, and then the next two siblings came along naturally. My sister and I are only eight months apart. So when they went to the mission field, my brother was around three, I was one, and my sister was younger. I lived away until my senior year of high school. We came back periodically. At the beginning, it was every four years. Then, as they realized how isolating that was for some people, it changed. I think now furloughs are closer to every two years. Jo: And of course, no internet. International phoning was really hard. A very different world. Becky: Completely different. We had to travel to phone home to our grandparents. Once a year, we would travel into the capital, Jayapura, and make a very short call at the embassy. Our main mode of communication was cassette tapes. We would record and send them, and it could take four to six weeks, or even two months, to arrive. Our grandparents would record these long cassette tapes with Grandpa reading stories and singing songs, saying things like, “Here’s a song that reminds me of Becky.” We had these wonderful treasures because communication was so difficult. Jo: Do you still have them? Becky: I don’t have them anymore. My mom has a few things from back then, but those are some of the memories that we just lost. One of the issues we had was that we often had to pack up and leave everything behind. You get used to taking only what you can put in your suitcase, and with the idea that we were just going ‘home’ to see the grandparents, a lot of stuff that we should have kept wasn’t. My mom has kept all of her prayer letters and has compiled them in a book, so that’s cool because we get to see the journey through those letters. When we came back to Indonesia, we would often pack a crate and have it shipped by sea. By the time it arrived, it would often have holes cut in the side and things taken from it. So even when we sent stuff ahead, things were often missing. We never knew quite what we would get at the other end. We started shipping things in 55-gallon drums that you could seal, which were harder to break into, but you can cut the lock on one of those. It was always a free-for-all; you never knew what was going to meet you. Jo: A far cry from Amazon next-day delivery! I want to come back to something you mentioned. You were adopted, and I was reading on your website that you say — “I am adopted. It’s pretty cool. I come from nowhere, anywhere and everywhere.” This fascinated me, because I don’t think I’ve ever read a description of being adopted in terms of sense of place before. That really caught my eye. Why did you choose those words to describe it that way? Becky: That’s a really good question. I’ve had to really think about this and how to answer it succinctly. One of the things I struggled with growing up was a sense of belonging. It’s not because my parents were problematic; they were wonderful parents. I am a success story as far as winning the lottery with parents through adoption. But I still always felt that there’s something of me out there somewhere. If I could find my people and my place, I would know where I came from, and that would give me a better sense of where I’m going. Because I have such a deep connection to the people in my life—my adopted family, my husband of 37 years, our grown kids and five grandkids—I have a very stable life in terms of people. But because of the travel and never really having that sense of place, I always thought it would be cool to find out that I’m from some random place and get there and find a bunch of people who look and act just like me. According to my birth records, I have both Japanese and Spanish in me, which you’d never know. But wouldn’t it be cool to go to Japan and find where I started from? So a sense of place is almost more important to me because I already have a sense of people. Ironically, there’s a funny twist. We’ve been living in California for most of our marriage, but we moved to Indiana, which is in the middle of the Midwest. We ended up living on the exact same street, just four houses up from where my husband grew up. For my husband, Kevin, coming back to his street has been like coming home. There’s a little bit of me that gets to live vicariously through him regarding where home is. But I think I’ll always be searching for where home is. I am a believer, and that is actually one of the few things that has kept me grounded. The reason I came back for my senior year of high school was because I got kicked out of school. I really struggled with authority, especially not being able to question it. It was a very conservative boarding school for missionary kids. If you questioned anything, you were the troublemaker. That really played a lot into my feelings of “Why am I here? I don’t fit here.” I was told, “This is how Christians act and behave,” but that’s not the way I believe. That set me as an adult in this direction of searching. I walked away from my faith for a long time in my thirties, and then at the end of that journey, I realized that’s the only thing I can really depend on because people are just people. This goes back to that idea of place. The older I get, the more I feel like maybe I’ll just keep traveling while I’m here and wait for that feeling of home for Heaven. Jo: That’s really interesting. I have heard many people of faith say they will go home to God or Jesus. Let’s stick with different places because you have your Tuscan romance, ‘All The Way to Heaven’. Everyone loves Tuscany. Tell us about the trip that inspired the book. Since a sense of place is so important to you, what places from that time still stick in your mind? Becky: A friend of mine and I had “Go to Tuscany” on our bucket list because we were massive fans of ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’. Ironically, it was the movie that we loved so much. I always read books first, but this was one that I didn’t, because I didn’t know it was based on a book until after watching the movie. My husband, bless his heart, hates flying, but I grew up on little tiny puddle jumpers and never thought of flying as something to be afraid of. So, he stayed home with the kids. We wanted to go to a few places that were a little less chaotic, especially since we were going in October, during the harvest and tourist season. We started our trip in Lucca, which is a medieval walled city. It was a perfect introduction to Tuscany because it felt like what you see in the movies without being super touristy. One of the coolest things about Lucca was the walls that circle the city, which have a walking and bike trail on top. You could rent a bike for the day and go all the way around the city, pulling off for gelato, stopping at the little merchant market, or popping into the square. It was a fully immersive, self-guided tour of this wonderful little town. The first morning we were there, we woke up to the sounds of a woman singing Puccini under our window. And Lucca is actually the birthplace of Giacomo Puccini. It just felt like it was straight out of a movie. Then we went to Siena and were a couple of months late for the Palio, the crazy horse races. But we discovered that there are little neighbourhood competitions that go on year-round. At one point, around 10 or 11 at night, we heard a group of people coming up the street singing at the top of their lungs. We went running down from our fifth-floor balcony—stairs only—and joined the back of the group and walked with them down to the Piazza del Campo. There was another group coming from the other end, and they were launching good-natured taunts at each other. We just got to sit there and experience it and have celebratory drinks with everyone. It just felt like we were part of this much bigger picture. Our goal was to go from Tuscany down to the Amalfi coast and then back up to Rome to go home. We headed down to Sorrento, settled in, and the next day we went to Naples, saw the museum and the secret room. We went back to Sorrento and took a day trip to Capri, which was beautiful. The next day we were supposed to go to Positano and Amalfi, but I got a call from home that my dad had had a stroke. I got to speak to him, and he said, “Don’t come home. I’m going to be okay.” But everything had changed. When he had a second stroke, we knew we had to go home. We headed back to Rome the next morning and were able to get a plane that afternoon to Paris. We had a six or seven-hour layover, so we overnighted in the airport. I got a call in Paris asking if it would be okay with me if they took him off life support because he was otherwise gone. Because of my belief in Heaven, I was comforted by the fact that I will see him again. I didn’t need him to wait for me; he was already gone. Needless to say, I got home and Italy got shelved. Everything that happened there was put on hold, and it was full-on into processing grief, taking care of my mom, and gathering family. It was just pretty brutal. Jo: That’s fascinating, because some people never go anywhere because they’re afraid of something happening while they’re gone. And then there’s your experience, where one of the worst things did happen while you were away, and you dealt with it. But now, whenever you think back to that trip, that grief is the overwhelming memory. So, I’m interested — How did you write a romance about an area that resonates with that grief? And do you have any thoughts for people who are afraid to travel because of that kind of fear? Becky: Ironically, my friend is quite a bit older than I am, and her father was in ill health. We had talked about what would happen if we got the call about her dad. She had said, “I’ve said my goodbyes to him, we won’t come home.” We never imagined it would be my dad; he was only 67. When I came home, everything got put away. I rarely even spoke about Italy to anyone. Then, seven years later, almost to the day—two days shy of the seventh anniversary of Dad’s death—I was woken up hearing that same woman singing Puccini outside my window. I lay there for a minute thinking, “Where am I?” I could hear her voice just echoing, even after I woke up. I thought, maybe this is Dad saying, “Let’s go revisit this place that had these wonderful memories for you that turned sour because of me.” Of course, I projected all of that into it, but that’s how it felt. So I pulled stuff out and started going through it. It was so hard for me to see the good in it while also remembering how every little moment felt once I learned what had happened with Dad. I finally said, “I need to look through this stuff and pull out these memories as though they’re somebody else’s,” to give myself that distance. I created a character who was completely different from me, a different person who went to all these places and sort of told me about them. It was a very natural progression; my creative mind put this together. It became her story, and I decided to write it. It wasn’t a conscious decision to conquer anything; there’s a lot of guilt when you’re away. There’s always that regret. But I think living with regret is one of the worst things we can do in life. It keeps us trapped where we are rather than moving forward. Bringing this book to life was a way to honor the trip and the memory, but it’s also a way to honor my dad. At the back of the book, I have an author’s note that tells a brief version of this story. Sometimes we have to let time pass, but other times, I think we have to face things. I’m a bit of a warrior, so I want to face the demons and the hard things. But even if we face them, we have to give ourselves grace and space, a place where we can withdraw if we need to. The book is not at all about someone losing a father. It is a romance about a girl who plans a trip to surprise the guy she’s dating, finds out he’s already married, and ends up going by herself. To me, that’s another element of facing your demons—facing them alone. Jo: I never get the audio guide in museums. I don’t want to be told what to pay attention to. I want to be the one drawn to something first. Becky: Bad things happen no matter where we are. If we’re going to have regrets, I would rather regret missing being at the right place for a bad thing than regret not experiencing good things. Jo: Ninety-five percent of all the traveling I’ve done has had a positive net effect. Bad things have happened, but they have not taken away from the overall importance of the travel. Becky: Yes, absolutely. In the year 2000, during what I call my “running years,” I decided I wanted to run one marathon in my life. And if I was going to run a marathon, I wanted to make it a good one. So I ran the Dublin marathon. There were monumental weather issues—flooding all over England, Scotland, and Ireland. I flew into London and backpacked up through Leicester. A friend and I then drove up through the Yorkshire Dales, stayed with friends of hers, and then went into the Lake District. We were at Derwentwater, and the lakes were overflowing the docks. It was crazy. Then I crossed over from Cairnryan to Northern Ireland and stayed in Belfast. Had I known anything about what was going on in Belfast in the year 2000, oh my gosh. At the youth hostel I stayed at, the windows were shot out and boarded up. They said they weren’t replacing them until it was over because they were tired of replacing them. Waking up at 11 o’clock with gunshots outside was just crazy. Jo: We should say it’s not like that anymore. The Troubles have passed! Becky: Oh my gosh, no, it’s wonderful now. Leaving Scotland, I was back by myself, backpacking down to Dublin, staying in youth hostels. I ran the marathon, and it was raining the whole time. My sister, who lived in Sweden, had planned to come over but had to have surgery. I ran this epic race by myself. The start and finish line was a mile from the youth hostel. I walked there, crossed the finish line, walked back, and just cried for an hour in the showers. It was a complete release of endorphins with no one to share it with. It was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. It was like having everything stripped away. I ended up leaving a day early and heading down to Wicklow and Glendalough, just hanging out at St. Kevin’s monastery and its ruins, walking and processing all by myself. Then I had to go down to Rosslare to take the ferry back across to Wales. The storms had kicked up again, and I got the last ferry across. I got into Pembroke, made it to Swansea, and found the train tracks had been flooded out. They were shutting everything down, and I had to be back at Heathrow the next day. I just thought, “I’m not going to make it. I just want to go home to my people.” It was utter chaos. By the time I made it home, it really was a stripping down of everything—all my plans, all my expectations. Everything that I thought would happen, happened, but in a different version. I realized I have no control. The only thing I can control is the people I love and what’s inside of me—what I give to the world, what I put out there. To me, that’s what self-control is. It’s not putting limitations on myself; it’s me determining what I put out there. When we go on these trips, I can either be afraid that something bad will happen, or I can embrace the moment that I’m in. You just never know. You don’t know what you’re missing out on if you don’t go. Jo: Well we are almost out of time, but this is the Books and Travel show. What are a few books that you love and recommend? Becky: Of course, Frances Mayes’ ‘Under the Tuscan Sun‘. I think everybody should read that. It’s actually a memoir and very different from the movie. We talked a little bit about grief, and one of the authors I really love is Caitlin Doughty. She’s written several books on death, and ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ is another take on it. To me, understanding and embracing death is a good way to process grief. We also talked about the idea of home. My husband and I have always made a home by planting a garden; it’s the first thing we do wherever we end up. I also have a morbid fascination with poisonous plants, but this is a beautiful book called ‘The Complete Language of Flowers’. The art in it is just wonderful. A lot of my books are a little ‘gardeny’ anyway. I’m a hobby herbalist, so I have a lot of herbal and home remedy books, and my garden is also my medicine chest. And of course, then my books. Jo: Yes, absolutely. Where can people find you and your books online? Becky: I am an author and an audiobook narrator. You can find my books at beckydoughty.com. I narrate most of my own books, but I also narrate for many others—I have over 200 audiobooks out there. You can find my books and audiobooks on Amazon, Audible, and Apple. Just look up my name, Becky Doughty. Jo: Brilliant. Well thanks so much for your time, Becky. That was great. Becky: Thank you, Jo. The post Fearless Roots: Travel, Grief, And Resilience With Becky Doughty appeared first on Books And Travel.

How can a physical journey trigger profound inner change? What draws a non-religious person to undertake a Catholic pilgrimage? What happens when you encounter both the best and worst versions of yourself on the same path? Bradley Chermside, international best-selling author, entertainer, and host of the El Camino de Santiago Podcast shares his transformative journey. You can also find my memoir, Pilgrimage, and lots of pilgrimage and Camino resources here. Bradley Chermside is an international bestselling author, copywriter and multi-award winning singer and entertainer. He’s the host of the El Camino de Santiago Podcast, and today we’re talking about his book,The Only Way is West: A Once in a Lifetime , 500 Mile Adventure Walking Spain’s Camino de Santiago. Life before the Camino and why walk a pilgrimage if you’re not a Christian Spiritual and personal influences Highlights of the Camino, and the challenges along the way Meeting people, walking together and alone Balancing life after Camino — and why Bradley continues to walk the routes Recommended books You can find Brad at BradleyChermside.com and also on the El Camino de Santiago Pilgrims Podcast. I was also on Bradley’s Camino podcast talking about my own Camino experience here. Transcript of the interview Jo: Hello, travelers. I’m Jo Frances Penn, and today I’m here with Bradley Chermside. Hi, Brad. Brad: Hello. Jo: Hello. So just a little introduction. Brad is an international best-selling author, copywriter, and multi-award-winning singer and entertainer. He’s the host of the El Camino de Santiago podcast, and today we’re talking about his book, The Only Way Is West: A Once-in-a-Lifetime 500-Mile Adventure Walking Spain’s Camino de Santiago. And on the video, Brad’s just showing the book there, it is fantastic. So we’re going to jump straight into it. I wanted to pick out this quote from the book. You talk about, “A meaningless, empty existence, exacerbated by the Monday morning blues.” Why was pilgrimage the answer? Take us back. What was life going on in your life at that time and why was pilgrimage your answer? Brad: Well, exactly what you just described there was a meaningless existence. I knew it had a limit on it. I knew it wasn’t a sustainable way of living. Jo: What was it though? We’re dying to know. Brad: I don’t really need to go into details! but it was just doing what you do as a youngster. You’re experimenting with different things, and it wasn’t really fulfilling in any way. And the work I was doing at the time wasn’t fulfilling either, even though I was making a good living out of it. And I thought, you know what? There’s got to be a drastic change here, and I’d read two books about the Camino during the time. The Camino by Shirley MacLaine, which is mad. I was like, “Whoa, I wouldn’t mind some of these crazy things happening.” These really vivid lucid dreams and hallucinations in her dreams and stuff. And also The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho, which is one of my favorites. Jo: And I read that one. That was my one. Very different books. Brad: Oh yeah, definitely. And again, a bit woo-woo, as they say. But I’m into woo-woo so it was definitely preaching to the converted. And I thought, you know what? And anyway, I bumped into a friend of mine in London, just by chance, a serendipitous event, and they said to me, “You should… I’ve been trying to get in contact with you. You should walk the Camino.” And this person was never ever present on social media, literally disappeared off the earth. And I just bumped into them on the wrong train on the London Underground. So I got onto the wrong train on the London Underground and I was like, “This is a sign.” I decided to go and walk it, and the massive change was exactly what I needed. It was a chance to look back at the life I was leaving and realize that it was going down a dead end and that changes were needed. Jo: So what year was this? Brad: This would have been 2015. Jo: Oh, okay. So as we speak now, like a decade ago. And so, how old were you approximately at the time? Brad: 2015, so going back I would’ve been 36. Jo: That’s really interesting. So I do think that in that mid-30s, I also at that point, I was working as a business consultant, and I was like, “What is the point?” And I wasn’t living quite the high life that it sounds like you were, but it was also a similar, “What am I doing with my life?” I think there’s probably something that starts to hit at mid-30s when that happens. Brad: Yeah, I think it comes at different points for everybody, doesn’t it? But you just know, like, you’ve got to make a big decision. And it was very, very necessary. Jo: So you read those two books, but you… as far as I know, you’re not a Christian, right? Brad: No, no, I’m not, no. Jo: So how did you go from… I mean, obviously you read those two books, but something was drawing you, and you said you’re a fan of woo-woo. What in your background prompted you to want to go on what is essentially a Catholic pilgrimage to change your life? Like, you could’ve gone to India and done meditation or something, but you chose this. Brad: Yeah, it’s a very good question because I have done stuff like that. I’ve spent time with Hare Krishnas. I’ve chanted with them and stayed in a Buddhist silent retreat, which for me is a really big challenge. The silent retreat was in Hertfordshire in the UK. And I’ve always been spiritually curious. I’ve also worked in a church, worked for a church. You know, this was part of my journey, like, where is my spiritual destination? Where’s my spiritual home? Still haven’t found it, if I’m being honest. But that is all part of the journey so I’m always open to religion, always open to spirituality. And I just knew that this was a place where it was a kind of a bastion of European spirituality. And my brother is super spiritual. He’s older than me but he’s super spiritual and he’s been an influence definitely. He’s a Christian, actually. Jo: Okay, so there was something there. Brad: Yeah, yeah. And he was shoving Bibles under my nose as a kid, and I’d pick it up. It never really resonated with me personally. But always aware, always open, always, and I knew this was just a place where I’d probably meet like-minded seekers. Jo: Yeah, and I use that word too, seekers. Brad: Mm-hmm. Jo: And I think that’s, I guess, what I’d say to people listening, if you’re not religious, you can still be a seeker, like a spiritual person. Which Camino route did you walk at that time and what were the most beautiful parts, the highlights? Brad: The Camino Francés, which is the kind of official starting point, is in France at the foot of the Pyrenees, Saint-Jean Pied de Port. And you cross the Pyrenees, then you walk all the way to Santiago de Compostela across the whole of northern Spain. I went on to the Atlantic and finished in Finisterra, which is the supposed end of the Earth until the Americas were discovered. So I love that idea. And that’s where the Camino Francés trail, the official trail, goes from. You can jump on and off any point along that trail. There’s not like a gate that opens up and closes until you get to the end. You could just get on there and walk it. And the first day is stunning. It’s a really tough walk. It’s up and over the Pyrenees. There’s a stop along the way in a place called Orisson. That’s a really good stopping point. I went all the way over and all the way down on the first day, 27 kilometers, but the views are incredible. It’s like you’ve walked through the gates of heaven and you’re up in the clouds and you’re above the clouds and you see the serrated mountainous skyline and the jagged peaks poking through the clouds. It’s unfathomable to the mind. You never think that such natural beauty exists. And also, another beautiful part would be Santiago to Finisterra. That’s an official start of another Camino, which is the Camino Fisterra. You get another Compostela when you get to Finisterra as well. And me and my wife did that again last year, March 2024. It’s four days walking, three days if you really want to give it some. But wow, I mean, that is something else. Forest all the way, pine forest, walking alongside… I just got goosebumps saying it. And the energy, the energy, oh my Lord — There’s something in the air there between Santiago and Finisterra that I guess you could call it a higher vibration, a supreme energy, a purer energy — I don’t know what it is, but you go there and your whole soul just breathes a sigh of relief when it gets there. Jo: Is it a lot less busy? Because one of the issues, I guess depending on the time of year, but the main Camino routes and the Francés particularly can be very, very busy, and that last 100 kilometers is particularly busy because that is the one that a lot of people only do the last 100 kilometers. So is that separate one on to Finisterra, is it a lot emptier? Brad: I guess it depends on what time of the year you do it, but it definitely has less people than the main Camino routes. I don’t know the official statistics. I know the two most common routes are the Camino Portuguese, which would be in second place, and the Camino Francés. So where the Camino Finisterra ranks on that, I don’t know, but there’s definitely less people. It’s a harder walk, so that’s why there’s less people as well. It’s not an easy walk by any stretch of the imagination. Jo: Is it more mountains again? Brad: There’s a lot of ups and downs. There’s a Spanish guy I met along the way and he described it as, “Bing bong, bing bong, bing bong.” But it’s not just the fact that there’s lots of ups and downs, but it’s like you go really vertical up and down. I found myself doing zigzags to get down because it was so steep. Jo: Okay, because of the knees. That’s the thing, it’s the downwards on the knees, right? Brad: Yeah, it’s a stretch, but it’s a challenge, but beautiful and just the scent of pine forest everywhere and then you kind of get to the last day and you’re walking alongside the beach and there’s all these lovely places to stop off and eat seafood. And I don’t know what it is about Finisterra but because it’s the supposed end of the world. Again, I’ve just got goosebumps. My hairs are standing on end here. When you get there, it’s just like, oh my God, it’s quite emotional when you get there. Me and my wife just kind of got there and we were like, “Oh my God, this is just something else.” Jo: And your wife is Catholic, right? Brad: She is, yeah. She’s a very, very devout Catholic girl, my wife. Jo: Yeah. So it’s interesting that you both have a different experience of what is spiritual, but if you both find that place so important, that’s really interesting that you feel that way. But winding it back to your original Camino — What were the hardest parts of the journey? —when you didn’t know anything about any of this stuff and presumably hadn’t done a walk that long either because it’s like six weeks, isn’t it? Brad: Yeah, I mean, I did it in 29 days. I was going great guns. But I’ve got experience like running marathons and triathlons and stuff like that. But I will say even though I’ve done marathons and triathlons, nothing can prepare your body for walking day in, day out those lengths of kilometers. That was definitely the hardest part, adjusting to the physical challenge. They say that the Camino is kind of split into three different challenges or three different areas of growth, where the first is the physical and then it’s the mental. The middle part of the Camino Francés is quite tough because there’s a stretch of about 200 kilometers or so between the cities of Burgos and León, and it’s called the Meseta which is like the breadbasket of Spain. So it’s very mind-numbing terrain, there’s long stretches where there’s no cafes or bars. It’s just you and your thoughts walking alone with the hot sun beating down on you. Very, very tough mentally. Physically as well, but mentally, I’d say it’s harder. And then you get to the last part where it’s more the spiritual awakening supposedly. That doesn’t happen for everybody and you shouldn’t ever put pressure on yourself for that to happen, you just get on walking. But there are also the mental challenges, like you alluded to, Jo, is the fanfare around the last 100 kilometers. I’ve had some kind of hate mail about this from people saying that I wrote in my book that they’re a ‘plastic pilgrim’ because they only walked 100 kilometers. But that isn’t what I wrote. I wrote that you do encounter more plastic pilgrims along the 100 kilometer mark, because it’s where you get all clapping, all dancing, school groups, tours, people with a flag in the air being followed, singing, dancing, people that are up until 1:00 in the morning in the hostels, singing and clapping. It’s a real challenge because you’ve walked so far, and you’re so tired, and then these people are just, they’re not walking so far, it’s just a party to them. Fair enough, but I kind of defined a plastic pilgrim as someone who didn’t really respect the ethos of the Camino and fellow pilgrims. And they happen to appear around the 100 kilometer mark. So you have to shift your perspective a little bit and not be so judgmental. And I was definitely guilty of that. Jo: Oh, me too. I was just thinking there, I was judgmental of, at the time, of the people who weren’t carrying their own stuff. Brad: Me too, I’m ashamed to say. Yeah. Jo: Yeah. And now, looking back, I’m like — “Look, there shouldn’t be any shame in however you do the Camino, and it’s your Camino your way.” But at the time, I remember one particular point, and I was like, these older people who I’d seen at the place we were staying that morning, they’d left – I’d left really early with my pack on, all my stuff, and they just whizzed past me later in the day with just tiny day packs on. They were like, “Oh, hi again.” And by then I was like, [sigh]. And that day, I remember thinking, “Yeah, you don’t carry your own stuff.” This judgmental voice in my head. But like you said, one of the challenges is coming up against your own issues, right? Brad: Absolutely, yeah. And I think that’s the point where I was definitely guilty of being a pilgrim snob, no doubt about that. And I look back and I’m a little bit ashamed of myself really. But at the end of the day, everyone’s pilgrimage is different and because you’re doing so much physical exercise, there’s a lot of cortisol coursing through your veins as well. So your stress hormones are at the peak as well. So you have to forgive yourself a little bit for that. Because when you step back you’re like, “Okay, there was no need to think like that.” And you’re only souring your own experience as well, being like that. Jo: Yeah. Again, all of this, it’s meant to be a challenge and there are different levels of the challenge. What about some of the more emotional things? You do at one point talk about crying and you also talked about a rumor of some spiritual ley lines among the Camino paths. So tell us more about that sort of emotional and spiritual side? Brad: Yeah, it’s hard to define it or explain it, really. Because first of all, alluding to those ley lines, again, a bit woo-woo, but I’m reading from the Britannica website here, these are not my words. I’m not this articulate, okay? So, “Ley lines, invisible lines that, according to new age thinkers, join significant landmarks across the world. They believe them to hold sacred powers.” So, this is the theory behind it. I can tell you from experience that they say that believers will say that there are ley lines that run across the whole of the Camino Frances, supposedly in the ground, I guess. I don’t know where they are. And they’re also say that the Milky Way runs directly above it as well. So there’s supposedly this explosion of spiritual energy. And I guess lots of people have spiritual energy blocks, and it helps to really open that up. And I guess when that happens, there’s an explosion of emotions as well. And with lots of things going, there were different challenges mentally, professionally, emotionally in my family at the time that I was going through. So it was like, “Why am I crying?” I don’t know. You don’t know why you’re crying, you just do. It just happens. And there’s also just the great natural beauty that’s all around you. You’re walking through vines, like red wine vines, and mountains on the sky. Everything’s just so beautiful. And you’re meeting people from all over the world, lovely people. And on the pilgrimage, I often think, like, you sometimes encounter the worst version of yourself. You’re also meeting people at their best version of themselves as well, because they’re open, they’re traveling, they’ve released themselves from the shackles of the nine-to-five. And so, just that great mixture, that cocktail of beautiful energy just opens up something, I think. And I guess whether the ley lines are a result of that, or whether they cause that, who knows? Who knows? But I can tell you there’s a special energy on that Camino, and there’s something beautiful going on there. And maybe the ley lines are the culprit. Jo: Yeah, it’s interesting. I like that you said there, “Whether it’s the cause of it or because of it.” Because I also feel that when people of either faith and belief, when you worship in a particular place, this is true anywhere in the world with any religion, it’s not specifically Christian, there are places where people have worshiped over the years. That might be a pagan place. And there is energy that you can sense there if you are open to it. And I agree, I think there’s places like that along the Camino. What’s interesting, of course, is the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, which is really like, a thousand years old and full of all these relics, and a very holy place for Catholics. I didn’t get that sense in there. I don’t know. What do you think about the difference between the sort of more humble senses, and the really grand places of worship? Brad: So it’s really interesting you say that, because the word I take from that is energy. And even though I don’t consider myself a Christian, I love to go into churches, because I love the energy in the churches. Yeah, I love the divine, spiritual, purer energy where people go there and they emit and they transmit beautiful energy. And I think that’s why it’s such a good place. And when you go to a place like the cathedral in Santiago, it’s more of a tourist site these days. So maybe the energy’s different and people aren’t really in there to worship, are they? They’re there to take pictures. Jo: I was, to be fair. Brad: And understandably. It’s a stunning cathedral. There’s no doubt about it. It’s beautiful inside and out. And that special energy, I have actually felt more in the city of Santiago, in the squares, there’s the place outside, Praza Obradoiro. That’s my very poor attempt at Gallego there, which is the national language of Galicia, the local dialect. Or, actually it’s a language, to be honest. It’s not a dialect, it’s a language. And in Praza Obradoiro, I love the energy there, because that’s when you see all the pilgrims turn up and finish, and they’re all so jubilant and celebrating. Again, it just gives me goosebumps, just seeing them come in, throw their backpacks to the floor and celebrate. It’s really nice to watch. When you’ve finished your pilgrimage, it’s nice to just go and sit there and have a cold beer and just watch everybody do that. It’s really nice. In your book, I felt that your experience was quite different to mine, because I was solo, and I’m quite a solo person, so I wouldn’t say I hung out with people at all. And I got private accommodation, so I wasn’t in hostels and all that. But your Camino did seem like pretty people-based, pretty chatty, lots of relationships. How did people shape the route and how can others who might want to walk it meet people but also have time alone? Brad: A great place to meet people is always the albergues, the hostels. When I’ve gone on my own, I’ve stayed in albergues, specifically because I wanted to meet people, more than anything. And they are really economical as well. And just a cheeky little hint, there’s this really special albergue along the way in a little village called Granon. And it’s like a donativo, they call it, so you give a donation based upon what you can afford to pay. And everyone gets together. There’s about 40 pilgrims. They get together. They all make a meal together. Then they go to worship together in the church afterwards. The albergue is an annex to the church. So a really beautiful experience. I really recommend that as a place to meet people. But albergues are a great place to meet people along the way. Also in the cafes and bars along the way. That’s when you often encounter the quirky locals. The locals are very quirky, very helpful. Even if you don’t speak Spanish, it doesn’t matter, because they talk with their hands. They’ll still talk at you anyway, they won’t care if you talk Spanish or not. And then you’ll meet your fellow pilgrims as well. And that’s when you say, “How far have you walked today? Where are you going to? How are you feeling? You want some cream for your blisters?” All this kind of stuff. Everyone’s very helpful with each other along the way. So that’s a great place to meet people. And how does people shape my Camino? I guess, again, it falls back to energy, doesn’t it? You meet people that have got this lovely energy and sometimes you’re tired along the way and you might bump into someone and they’ve got a really engaging, uplifting conversation. And I found that when I got tired, I started talking to people that put an extra 10K in my boots or an extra bounce in my boots. And I guess you’d call me an extroverted introvert. And I think that probably describes me, because I love to be with people, but then I’ll just crash and burn and I can’t be with anyone for a while. I need to go and just sit in a corner and be quiet with myself. So I think the pilgrimage, the Camino really affords you to do both, to be honest. Because you can just go and tuck yourself away in a little cafe in a plaza when you’re finished walking, and journal. That’s what I did anyway. And from that point of view, it really does have something for everyone. The solo walker, as I think you prefer to do, Jo. But I know you found it hard to find that time alone the way, that time alone. Jo: Well, sometimes, when it was busy. But I wasn’t chatty, like you are. But you went on your own, you didn’t go with other people? Brad: Yeah, I went alone, all alone. I went all alone. For anybody, that’s a scary thing to do, because you don’t know where you’re gonna sleep the next night. And I didn’t plan anything. I just wanted it to be… Sometimes I just slept where I felt. I slept in a church tower one night, which was something I wouldn’t repeat, to be honest. The pigeons were very busy, that’s all I’ll say. But yeah, there’s definitely something for everybody. And there was one time where I just remember really wanting to walk alone, and there was a French gentleman. This was on my final day, my final walk into Santiago, and I felt really bad because I know he wanted to walk with me. But he didn’t speak English, I didn’t speak French, so it was really difficult and tiring to communicate. And in the end, I had to kind of get the message across that I wanted to walk alone. I felt really bad, but I wanted that last stretch into Santiago to be alone. Jo: Although that last stretch also, so certainly the very end bit, is in the city, so it’s quite weird, isn’t it? You’re like… It’s kind of a strange ending, because you were out there and then you’re in this city and there’s everyone going about their normal lives. Brad: Well, yes, a little bit of an anti-climax. Now, when you say people shaping your way, I just remember an old fella outside, really old man outside a cafe. The Spanish, they love to smoke, and there’s a guy smoking a cigar, and he just raised his cigar to me as I walked past him, and that really, really gave me a lift. I don’t know why, it really did. Jo: That’s nice that you remember that. Well then, let’s talk about the ending, because — You went with a purpose to make, you said, a drastic change, a dramatic change in your life. So what did happen as a result of that first Camino? Brad: Yeah, it’s more like what didn’t happen. To be honest with you, I changed everything. I dropped the business I was running. I just closed it. I could’ve sold it, but I was like, “You know what? I don’t care about the money.” I just didn’t want to do it anymore, so I closed that down. Changed jobs and yeah, I decided that I was gonna move to Spain, so I moved to Spain. My plan was never to write a book. I didn’t know I was a writer at the time. I’ve always written. I’ve always enjoyed writing, but I kept a journal and I was sending emails, because I was like, “I’m gonna get off social media.” I’ve found that social media drains my mental battery, and staying off it charges it. So, sadly as part of what we do, social media’s an integral part, and sometimes it uses you rather than you use it. But massive changes and I ended up writing a book. After I got back, I’d just kind of put together all of my journals and my Dictaphone commentaries and I sent it to friends and family at Christmas, just as a “Yeah, this is just a…” And so many of them got back to me and said, “This is so good. You should do something with this.” And I was like, “Eh, not sure.” But in the end I decided to do so and this little baby was born. And an alternate career was also born as well, so I’ve kind of got two careers that actually complement each other now, which is great. Jo: Which is the writing and your entertainment? Brad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m one of those cringey entertainers, that’s me. Jo: I love that though. It’s so interesting, because to me — The way you talk about the Camino and being a spiritual seeker, and then an idea of you being in some nightclub doing entertainment, how do those two things go together? Brad: It’s really interesting because I don’t really drink alcohol these days. Because I live in Spain now, the odd beer, a cold beer in a lovely cafe, that’s nice. That’s about as much as I’ll drink. And in my industry, I’m always being like, “Push drinks,” you know? And I just have to turn them down. There was one time me and my wife did a gig a couple of weeks ago and the barmaid just came and put two shots in front of us and insisted we drink it. I was like, “Oh, do I have to? Oh.” And it just felt like poison. So it’s strange. They’re very two contrasting lifestyles, but in actual fact, they really complement each other, because I have all day to write and then I go to work in the evening, and it’s great. I’ve found my vocation, which is an alternate vocation, which is writing. And I love doing the entertaining as well. Really enjoy it. And I really feel like it was something I was born to do, you know? I’ve got this kind of bubbly personality. Some people might call it annoying. I don’t know. Jo: I think it’s charming that you do both. Do you sometimes, like if you’re in a club or something, do you sometimes see young men who were like you were, and you can’t really say anything because you’re so old and mature now? Brad: Oh, of course, yeah, of course. I look at them, I’m like, “Yeah, that’s me. That’s the annoying version of myself.” And in some ways it helps me to do the job, because I’m able to permit them, tolerate them in a way as if I was thinking, “Oh, I’m something special. I’m better than that.” At the end of the day, I’m just a PE teacher that ended up being a singer, an entertainer and a writer. And thankfully I make a living out of it, and I’m really grateful for that. I’ve just always been the cheeky chappy, the happy-go-lucky character, and like I say, some people might find that annoying, but that’s me. Jo: It’s also really important, because I know I’m quite a serious person. The point is — You can enjoy doing the Camino. You can be a happy, laughing pilgrim. You don’t have to be like a serious, super spiritual, “Oh, my life is so awful,” kind of… You know, sometimes it all gets a bit too serious. Brad: I think the Camino definitely has that element to it, and pilgrims, obviously they’re there to search, they’re there to seek, they’re there to find answers. So when they meet a character, some of them might meet a character like me and think, “Who is this idiot?” You know, like, “Just leave me alone.” And I don’t blame them for that. I might probably think the same, to be honest. But there should be a bit more of a fun element. Like for example, I’ve been on certain Camino forums and gone on there with the way I am, a bit jokey, and I’ve just been trolled by people. So I’m like, “I’m not going back on here.” And I haven’t since, to be honest with you. I think because I’d said about showering with your clothes. I said it’s a good way to clean your clothes. And then the people are on there saying, “You shouldn’t shower your clothes. You’re wasting water.” And I was like, “Oh, okay. I didn’t know that.” Jo: I would agree that showering with your clothes is the best way. I mean, that’s what you do. You put them under your feet and you wash yourself and then you stamp on them because the soap of the shampoo… I mean, that seems not like wasting water to me. Brad: Yeah, exactly. Well, maybe it uses less… You’d use the same amount of water doing it in a sink, wouldn’t you? So, I don’t know. To me, I’m killing two birds with one stone, you know? I got trolled for that. I got trolled by someone because they said I was putting stickers all along the Camino Portuguese. As if I would… Why would I do that? Jo: Maybe someone else did it on your behalf for your book or something. But you’ve done more Caminos since then? Tell us why, and also why the podcast? Like, you haven’t just let it go and moved on? Brad: Well, I think the podcast just came… The idea came to me when I was walking the Camino Portuguese a few years later. My wife is obsessed with the Camino more than I am. She absolutely loves it. You look around our house, there’s Camino memorabilia everywhere. We’ve got shelves, we’ve got fridge magnets, we’ve got paintings. You name it, they are everywhere. And so why I did just… I love the Camino, I love nature, I love exercise, I love physical challenge, so there’s that element to it. My wife loves it, so I’ve since walked the Camino Portuguese, the Camino Ingles, the Camino Finisterra again. So we’ve been back to the Camino a good few times since. I think there might be another one. Can’t remember off the top of… We were gonna walk the Camino Invierno this year, but in the end, we didn’t do it, but it’s definitely on the list. Jo: On the list. Brad: And we’ve also walked a lovely walk in England, which people don’t know about very much, but the Leeds to Liverpool canal walk, oh my Lord, that is amazing. And it’s so easy as well, because it’s flat all along the way. It’s just a canal. Jo: I love walking. I live near a canal, and it’s really easy because you just keep it on one side of you. Brad: Yeah, yeah. You never get lost. You never get lost. You just follow that body of water from Leeds to Liverpool, stunning walk. And so easy, you just literally hop off the canal, stay in some accommodation, hop straight back on it, it’s a really beautiful walk. And why the podcast? I mean, it just came to me. I was like, okay, one, it would be a good marketing tool for the book, and I just enjoy talking about the Camino and meeting other pilgrims. And in all honesty, I got to the point a few years ago, it was 2022, but I’m about to resurrect it, and I’d been let down by a few guests who said they were gonna come on and they didn’t. And I was thinking, “Is this a sign that I should stop it? Have I exhausted talking about practical elements of the Camino?” And I felt like I had, so I’m gonna be going on resurrecting it with yourself as one of the first interviews. Which is a real honor, so I’m really grateful for that. Jo: It was lovely. And it’s a different conversation to this one. Like, you were interviewing me about my pilgrimage, so it was quite different. And people can find that interview over there, hopefully by the time this goes out. Brad: Yeah, and your book is really interesting as well, because it’s not only a memoir, it’s also kind of like a bit of a self-help guide as well. And there’s also loads of practical tips for planning the Camino and training tips. Jo: Yeah, our books are really different, don’t you think? Brad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely, yeah. Jo: Your book is full of characters, and that is fantastic. Whereas on mine, because it was solo, I’m the only character pretty much. Brad: Yeah, well, my writing mentor kind of said to me… He’s always said to me, “Character squeeze, character squeeze, character squeeze, character squeeze.” And it was like, when I was thinking, “Wow, there’s so many people, I don’t even need to.” They’re dripping character. No need to squeeze them, you know? So that’s got to go in there. And the podcast is something I’m really excited to resurrect, to be honest with you, because it’s continued to grow in its listenership and its following. Even though I haven’t done anything for three years, I’m still getting messages regularly saying, “Oh, it was so inspirational, your podcast.” I think because for someone who’s never walked the Camino and someone that’s maybe a pilgrim looking to refine their routine, they’ve got a lot from it. And you’re going on there listening to people who have had such a good time on the Camino, and it gives people that haven’t walked it that motivation and that incentive to do it. Jo: Have you done a solo episode on there about the Finisterra? Brad: Mm, I don’t think so. Jo: Well, I’m gonna ask for one. I love the conversations, but the solo episodes I think sometimes with the host talking about that is really cool. Or maybe you could do it with your wife or something. Because I literally, and I only said to you a few weeks ago when we recorded my interview on your show, I said, “Oh, I have no interest in walking another Camino.” Like, as far as I was concerned, it’s done. Now you’ve given me the idea to walk that Finisterra, and I’m like, “Oh, okay.” Because I always had in my mind, ’cause Paulo Coelho went there at the end, probably Shirley did as well, it is what some people do for sort of the end of the world type moment, and I didn’t do it. So that, you’ve put that in my head now. Brad: That’s not a bad idea actually, because I know my wife would be more than happy to talk about it, and she always takes like, a thousand photos. Jo: Yeah, I would love that. That’s the episode I want to listen to, because now I’m thinking about it. But yes, your podcast is fantastic. This is the Books and Travel Podcast. We’ve obviously talked about our books, but what are a few more books you recommend about the Camino or pilgrimage in general? Brad: Well, there’s four Camino books that jump out of my mind. We’ve mentioned two of them already. And the other two, which would be Spanish Steps by Tim Moore. Very similar to mine, quite irreverent, kind of a humorous angle on it. He walked it with a donkey. Jo: What, leading the donkey? Brad: The donkey carried his stuff. He wanted to make it like a medieval or an ancient pilgrimage. And I felt sorry for the donkey, if I’m being honest with you. But maybe donkeys are just like dogs, they like to do that, you know? Be by a human’s side. So, I did take pity on the donkey a lot. But it is very funny, I have to say. And the writing’s brilliant. There’s another book called The Journey In-Between by Keith Foskett, that has some really lovely descriptive writing in there. And talking about walking, Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods is very, very funny as well. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that one, but really good book. I read it and I listened to it because I liked it that much. And my favorite book ever, which is similar to the Camino in a way, it’s called The Brazilian Adventure, and it’s by a guy called Peter Fleming, written in the 1930s. So it’s kind of written in Cholmondeley Warner style English, you know? It’s, “Rio de Janeiro is a lot like Reading, but with less people.” You know? And you have to permit the guy politically incorrect language, because it’s the 1930s, you know? Like, you have to just put that aside and say, “Okay, probably he wouldn’t write that if he was writing that in this day and age.” There’s a few things that you would read, you go, “Oh, should be writing that.” But fantastic writing. My God, he’s a vocab gymnast, that guy. Oh my God, the writing is incredible. So The Brazilian Adventure, and he’s trying to find… He’s going to virgin territory into Brazil, to look for a guy that he’s not sure if he exists or not still, in an area if he’s not sure if it exists or not either. So the whole thing is just a calamity the whole time, but the writing is incredible. And the adventure, you know, the beasts, the crocodiles, the snakes. All of this kind of stuff, it’s just amazing. And through the lens of someone who’s very understated, where these days, we have to overstate everything to get attention. But, “Oh, I saw a snake and it tried to kill me. I shot the bugger.” You know, stuff like this. It’s very funny. Jo: Oh, excellent. Oh, well, this has been fun. Where can people find you and everything you do online? Brad: My books are on Amazon. Just search for The Only Way Is West, and you’ll find it on there. It’s got 4.5 out of 5 stars, 1,500-plus reviews. So it’s reviewed quite well. And I’ve written another book, which is Not from Around Here, Memoirs of a Soft Southerner Up North which is about me being a Southerner living up North during the pandemic. And so just, I write funny memoirs basically. And you’ll find them all on Amazon. Jo: And the podcast? Brad: The podcast, you could just go onto wherever you listen to your podcasts and just type in Camino de Santiago pilgrims podcast. Camino de Santiago pilgrims podcast, and you’ll get 87 episodes of lots of Camino tips, tricks, and hacks. Jo: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Brad. That was great. Brad: Thanks for having me. It’s been a pleasure. The post To The End Of The Earth: Walking Spain’s Camino de Santiago With Bradley Chermside appeared first on Books And Travel.

Why does Egypt continue to fascinate curious travelers? What hidden chambers might lie beneath the pyramids of Giza? How does the duality of Egyptian mythology influence thriller writing? Join thriller authors J.F. Penn and Luke Richardson for a conversation that weaves together archaeological intrigue, travel insights, and the creative process behind crafting compelling adventures in one of history’s most enigmatic settings. Luke Richardson is the bestselling author of the Eden Black Archaeological Thrillers and the International Detective Thriller Series. Why Egypt continues to capture the imagination: Ancient myths, tombs, and timeless sites Modern Cairo and Garbage City The Oasis of Siwa The Pyramids of Giza, and recent archaeological finds about what might be underneath Travel tips for modern Egypt Recommended books You can find Luke at LukeRichardsonAuthor.com and his books on Amazon. You can also find his trip notes and pictures at LukeRichardsonAuthor.com/egypt If you enjoy thrillers inspired by and set in Egypt, check out The Giza Protocol by Luke Richardson and Ark of Blood by J.F. Penn. Transcript of the interview Jo: Hello Travelers. I’m Jo Frances Penn, and today I’m here with Luke Richardson. Hi Luke. Luke: Hello. Jo: I’m so excited to talk to you. Just for the listeners, Luke is the bestselling author of the Eden Black Archaeological Thrillers and the International Detective Thriller Series, and today we are talking about Egypt, which inspires locations in several of our books, Luke’s thriller, The Giza Protocol, and also my Ark of Blood. We share an enthusiasm for action adventure thrillers. Obviously, we both write them and this is a topic we like to geek out on. What is it about Egypt for you? When did this fascination start and why did you want to go? Luke: There’s so much about Egypt as a country, isn’t there, that just, it’s so evocative of the stories that we write, you know, there’s so much mysticism and so much magic there and, and it conjures up images from Hercule Poirot on the Nile solving murders to the glamor of Cleopatra, to the ambition of Rameses. And we are not the first writers to be captivated by this. This has happened from Shakespeare all the way forward through the romantic movements, people have been captivated by the magic of Egypt. But there’s also that mystery to it there. There’s things that people don’t know about Egypt. What were the pyramids for? How were they built? Of course, people say they’re tombs for the Pharaohs, but it’s far more interesting, I think, to consider some of the other theories about maps and power plants and really imaginative, fun stuff that makes our stories tick. Jo: Yeah. And it’s funny ’cause I was thinking about this in terms of why did I become obsessed with it? And you and I both have read a lot of the same books, you mentioned there that so many writers have done Egypt. And then of course I’m a little bit older than you, but Indiana Jones obviously and yet we still want to go and see it ourselves, I guess. And I remember when I was little, we went to Bristol Museum and there was a mummy there and we actually went back quite recently and it was a pretty crap mummy, to be honest. It was pretty bad. But as an 8-year-old, it made me think, what the hell? Who are these people? How is there a dead body here? Do you remember being interested in that macabre side and the Book of the Dead and hieroglyphics? Luke: Yeah, certainly. I think when I was maybe 12 or 14, The Mummy film, the first one, I think it, maybe it’s 1998 or 99 or something like this came out, and the whole thing about the mummification process, cutting the tongue out and pulling the brain out through the nose and all this grim stuff that just the kids just go wild for that. You’ve got a very sort of sick sense of humor, haven’t you, when you are of that age, and I remember that being fascinating as well. For sure. Jo: Yeah, and I had these hieroglyphic like activity books where I would try and draw the hieroglyphics and I, I really, I really did think I was gonna be like an archeologist, but then of course I went myself in the, I guess, more than a decade ago now. Thriller author Luke Richardson in Luxor, Egypt Tell us about your modern day trip. Luke: Yeah, so we went in 2000 and I have to remember now, 2003 in January, 2003, and I’d written the first draft of the book, I did it a bit backwards on this. I had written the book and I wanted to go to check if I got it right, and then it was with my editor at the time or my first group of readers. And then I took it back and then made all the changes about, no, it actually takes this length of time to walk from here to here or do this thing or that thing and, and sort of jiggled things around after going on the trip. But I knew for me it was really important. I was writing this book. I wanted it to be right. I wanted it to feel right. And for me, making that trip and I was fortunate enough to have the resources and have the time to be able to do that and incorporate that into my writing. Jo: Was it 2003, did you mean 2013? Luke: I meant 2023. Sorry, I’m getting completely confused. It was like two, three years ago! Jo: I was gonna say, how old were you?! Luke: It was 2 or 3 years ago, yeah. Jo: This is interesting because I went in, it must have been 2005, and one of the interesting things that we’re both obviously interested in is the pyramids. The Pyramids of Giza and when I went, there was still a really big distance between Cairo and the pyramids, but I imagine when you went, it was actually really close. Thriller author JFPenn in front of the pyramids of Giza, 2004 So tell us about that specific trip. Luke: Yeah, it’s, it’s Cairo, just sprawled. It’s an incredibly vast city that’s so noisy and polluted, and busy. I love places like that too, because it’s fun and it’s vibrant and there’s great markets and mosques and monasteries and temples. It’s a real sort of fusion of this African, Asian, with the European elements in there as well. It’s a really interesting city. And that’s featured in the book as well. Actually, I based part of it in this place called Manshiyat Nasser, which is the Garbage City they call it. And it’s become a little bit of an alternative tourist attraction. It’s on the hill or one of the hills in, in Cairo. And on the top of the hill there’s a monastery carved out of the rock. And you go inside and it’s this giant cave that seats about 600 people in this auditorium. And then you walk down the hill and you walk through the borough of the city where the people sort out the rubbish, they recycle Cairo’s rubbish. And on the ground floor of all these buildings, you’ve got people there sorting the the plastic forks and spoons into different trays and milk. Bottles from other bottles and glass for things to other things. And people coming in with donkeys and trucks laid them with this rubbish. And the thing that I loved about that is you walk through this place, and this is modern Egypt, right? This is the way life is in lots of places around the world. You walk through this place and there are people living this sort of simple life, doing the job that they do, but yet there are still hair salons and nail bars and tea shops and restaurants and all the stuff that we have in our towns is there too, just in a different way, you know? And I absolutely love that. It makes you think about your own existence. It helps you reflect on, I think, on some of the things that we hold important in our lives. Jo: And well, and in fact, even thinking about the ancient Egypt that’s inspired our modern thrillers as well, is that they have the same thing, you know, hair salons, and the like. I remember being fascinated by the little Egyptian glass jars that still you can find in the museums, and they were full of perfumes and all that kind of thing. That was just fascinating to me. And I was just thinking also, what’s different between our two trips almost 20 years apart. The other thing is when I went, I visited the Old Museum of Antiquities and it was crazy. I remember going in there and what was weird is it was crammed full. I mean, talk about the terrible mummies at Bristol Museum. This was mummies, mummies everywhere, like literally just hanging out and then everything had these tiny little handwritten notes on. It was a very strange experience. What kind of experience did you have with the museums? ’cause I think that has changed. Luke: Yes, it has. It is very different now. It’s this beautiful marble and chrome building. Really expansive, very sort of modern. It’s, it’s clearly had had a lot of investment in it. And you see that in the mummies and you can walk around and see them. They’re all arranged in their sort of family groups through the various eras of Egyptian history. But you’re right, it’s still, you look at it and you, you think that is a person. And I feel in our society, Europeans perhaps. Death is quite detached from us, isn’t it? It’s not something we see and experience in a visceral sense. We know about it. We know that it happens and we know people who have gone through it to put it in that sense, but we don’t often see them and actually seeing that person there and these are long dead people, you know, seeing that person there is is quite moving, isn’t it? Jo: And I guess the other thing we should talk about cliche, because this is the problem with a place like Egypt, I often find where like Venice is the same, right? People have this idea in their head and then it really might not be like that. Tell us about visiting like the pyramids. Everyone in their head has the pyramids. Tell us about that and the sphinx. What was that experience like? Luke: Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it, to think about that because you do have that sort of idea of what they would be like. And I think the thing that resonated with me was just the vastness of not just the pyramids themselves, but the plateau on which they are created. It’s absolutely, it, it, it’s, it’s massive. You think about it, you know, the size of something like Stonehenge or the Vatican. These things that we’ve seen, which are tiny in comparison to these giant blocks of human created stone that are some distance apart, and then the desert just sprawls out of sight on all directions. And that was one thing that resonated with me, or I remember from it, but I also quite like how you can get up close to them. You can stand next to that block and even that first level of block is out of my arms reach. And I like that you can be very tactile with that as a monument. Whereas in some places, in some monuments, you’re kept at a distance, aren’t you? Away from them. Jo: Well, that’s interesting ’cause I also have a picture standing on that first level— Luke: Oh, you wouldn’t get away with that now. Jo: Oh, really? Interesting. And of course you can’t go inside. I mean, I wanted to talk about this — as just in the last few days as we are recording this, there have been these new findings of potentially a vast complex of underground chambers and shafts extending nearly two kilometers. This 3D radar thing that they’re showing could revolutionize the understanding of ancient Egyptian engineering. Tell us a bit more about how you’ve woven that into your thriller and your thoughts on what the hell is going on with all that? Luke: Yeah, I know, and there’s always you, you use the word conspiracy theory there, which is an interesting one, isn’t it? And there’s always people that say, it’s this, it’s that, you know? There’d always be this back and forth between it. But ultimately, I love the fact, and I say this to people all the time, I get quite a lot of comments saying this isn’t true. We know it’s not true. And it might not be true. Okay? But my point is. Isn’t it fun to think that the conspiracies might be true? Isn’t it more fun to be open a little bit and go, there’s a possibility that this is true and this exists. And I really enjoy exploring that possibilities both in my writing and in the stuff I read and the conversations I have and those sorts of things as well. So yes, that’s my first thing. It would be fun to consider that it isn’t true. Now, here’s an interesting story. Have you heard of a guy called Edgar Casey? I don’t think so. He was a clairvoyant. He’s American. Never went to Egypt. He was a clairvoyant in, I want to say sort of the 1920s, but I might be wrong. And he used to go into a meditative state and predict stuff, and he predicted stuff like the war and the Wall Street crash and stuff like this. And he also predicted in one of these things he predicted that beneath the pyramids of Egypt was this massive library that contained all of the lost scripts from Atlantis or the Alexandria Library, and I just thought, that’s amazing, isn’t it? Now. Of course, it might not be true. He might have just made it up, but he said some things which did become true, and that’s one of the things I’ve played with on this story, the idea that that could be there and no one exactly knows, because most often digs and archeology on that site is not allowed to take place. Jo: And then of course you could say, well, they don’t let it happen because there is something there. You mentioned modern Cairo and how it’s not at all like how people would have ancient Egypt in their head. I mean, like you said, well, for a start it’s Muslim and in thinking interestingly about Egyptian gods. The mythology that is so rich and in The Valley of the Kings, the stories that are painted there, and the Book of the Dead and all that kind of thing. How did Egyptian mythology and the ancient religion come through for you? Luke: I play a lot with this idea in my story in quite a lot of my stories, actually, not just specifically this one, with that idea of duality that the Egyptians loved, you know, as above, so below. The ground representing the stars, the heaven representing the Earth, and mirroring each other. You know, the monuments that set up to supposedly mirror the constellations and the sphinx supposed to look at the constellation of Leo during the point at which it was there and the Nile that reflects the Milky Way and all of these different things that they talk about, the mirror image between the skies and the earth. I like that. And I think that’s particularly important or relevant in when we talk about ancient Egypt because you think about how clear the skies must have been. We have so many electric lights now, and cars and all these things that street lights and whatever that turn our skies, that bleach them, this orange that we see all the time. But in those days, it must have been so crisp that the night sky, you’d have seen so much that it would’ve been hard not to have been enchanted by what you saw and what you saw after dark. And that’s something I’ve really lent on heavily in the book. Jo: And then I guess a lot of the monuments do have these figures of gods. I was thinking then of Abu Simbel, which I went to visit in the desert towards like what would’ve been Nubia back then and just how, again, the size of it to stand there right by the Pharaoh’s feet. And of course that’s, although that was moved for the Lake Nasser, it still is orientated towards the sun, so the rays of the sun will hit the statue of the God at the back. Thriller author J.F.Penn at Abu Simbel, Egypt What are the other places that stick in your mind from your trip? Luke: We visited Luxor as well on that trip, but we started off taking a trip out to Siwa, which is an Oasis right out in the desert. It’s about 50 miles from Libya, in fact, and it makes its way onto a lot of countries Do not visit list, perhaps including ours. But I didn’t check. I make a habit of not checking because I feel like if I do know, I’ll be worried about going. I generally find, by the way, that places that are on do not visit lists are the best places to visit at the most. Interesting. Jo: That is not travel advice, everyone! Luke: Yes. Certainly not travel advice. So we visited Siwa, which is this Oasis in the middle of the Sahara, it’s an eight hour drive in on one road and an eight hour drive back on the same road. There’s only one place to go on along this road, and it’s just a fantastic mystical place. Thriller author Luke Richardson, Siwa, Egypt The Templars are said to have visited there. Alexander the Great is said to have made it that far. If you were traveling across the Sahara during any point before air travel, you’d have stopped there because it was the only place within three or 400 miles to get water and to have a meal. Because of that, it’s just a really fascinating mystical place. And I remember on one of the days, we hired a local guide and he drove us out to the start of the desert, and what I didn’t realize is that the oasis itself is probably a hundred feet lower than the surface of the desert, hence why it’s got the water. So we climbed up, we reached this giant wall of sand, literally like the end of the earth. It looked like it just absolutely vast ahead of us. And we scrambled up this wall of a wall of sand and sat on the edge to watch the sunset over the desert there, and I just sat there thinking about the enormity of it all. This body of sand stretches from where we are right the way over to Morocco at one side, right the way down to Sub-Saharan Africa at the other side, and thinking about how that has remained unchanged quite a long time, and how our lifespans don’t even compare to this thing that I’m witnessing now. It’s very powerful. Jo: Yeah. Well I think this is another sort of my obsessions as well, this Memento Mori — remember, you will die — and making the most of that time. And of course that sunrise, sunset over an oasis, the ancient Egyptians would’ve seen that too. So I think that that is lovely. And it’s interesting what we discover that changes our perspective. But I guess water is a really big deal. Obviously you mentioned there the desert, but also the oasis, the Nile is hugely important in Egypt, the dam and Lake Nasser and the coast. You went up to Alexandria I think as well. Talk a bit about how some of the other aspects of water played a part in your trip. Luke: Most of the people in Egypt, I think like 95% live within 50 miles of the the Nile because it’s the only part that’s green and and lush. And there’s obviously a couple of oases dotted around through the desert, but water really is the most powerful thing for them. And you can see it, it switches from night to day as you travel up the up the Nile Delta and then out into the desert. It just dries up instantly and it becomes this desert that stretches forever. And that’s an important thing to both the modern Egypt and I think the ancient ones as well, and that’s something that’s changed, I think. I don’t know exactly how much, but I know that when the dam was built in the 1950s or sixties, the Nile has become a lot smaller than what it was prior to that period, and that’s affected, obviously the way I know it used to actually run past the pyramids a lot closer to Giza, whereas now it’s about five or six miles away near the center of Cairo. Jo: The other thing that’s weird of course, is that, I dunno why we think this, but I think it’s because our maps have Egypt, and you think, oh logically the river must go south, but it doesn’t. Luke: Yeah, I think it’s one of the only major rivers that runs south to north, isn’t it? It’s quite unusual. I mean, there would be no logical reason why it would have to run the way of our maps. How convenient! Jo: But it’s interesting ’cause where you went, you went to Alexandria, right? Luke: MYeah, we started there. Jo: Which I haven’t been to, but of course that’s more like a delta with lots of little tributaries and all of that kind of stuff. But how was that? ’cause of course, again, Alexandria, you mentioned the library earlier, has a mythological status in people’s minds. What was Alexandria like? Luke: It wasn’t our favorite. It was noisy. It was busy. It was just an industrial sort of city that you’d expect. And there isn’t much left of the old things. The library obviously isn’t there. The Alexandria Lighthouse isn’t there. One of the famous wonders of the world that isn’t there? So after a couple of days of being in Alexandria, we moved down to get out of the city, but it’s a real snapshot of proper modern Egypt I feel. Jo: I did a story called The Dark Queen, which is based on the sunken city of Thonis Herakleion, which isn’t far off the coast. Luke: Oh, wow. Jo: I mean, that’s another thing, like a lot of this is underwater or under sand or buried or drowned, and I think that’s what’s so fascinating with that. But just coming back on modern Egypt. Because let’s just say this is the Books and Travel show. We hope people are going to go travel places. So people might have in their minds. You’ve mentioned noisy several times. Luke: Yeah. It is noisy. Jo: Yeah, it is noisy. It is very, very full of people. Obviously Cairo. I remember coming in the road was just jam packed. What are your tips for surviving a trip to modern Egypt? Luke: It really depends on who you are and what your travel experience is. We are quite, my wife and I are quite experienced travelers and we were happy to wander around on our own and ward off people who offered us things. And you get a bit of people shouting, buy this, take this, have this, and that’s fine. You just wave and get quite used to it. But if you are not, if that’s something that would affect you or you’ve got mobility issues or whatever, get a guide, get someone to drive you, that’s absolutely fine. And there are people that will do that. You can book through a tour operator or even you could go to a hotel and ask them to book it for you. There are loads of people that will help you see things. We tend not to do that because we find it’s a lens through which you see the thing, isn’t it? If you’ve got a guide, and whilst that’s nice. And that’s great. ’cause they will tell you a lot, they rush you past some things and they make you look at others and they stop you here and take that photo and whatever. So we tend to try and see it under our own steam, if at all possible. Jo: I went with a small group tour, so at the time I was a solo traveler. As a solo woman in the Middle East, being with trips, I feel safer that way. Yeah. I think as you said, it depends who you are, how experienced you are, but there are lots of trips to Egypt. What I would say is the small group tour is much better than the big coaches. I mean, you can turn up at the Valley of the Kings and there’s like massive coach parks stretching off into the distance. I agree with you though. What I don’t like is people telling me what I should be interested in. You know what I mean? Luke: Yeah, I think things have become a lot easier now with like ride hailing apps. Like they have Uber in Egypt. It’s a fantastic thing. Anywhere you wanna go, you call a taxi, you know it’s gonna be trusted. It’s all tracked by satellite and whatever. So perhaps if I’d have gone in when you were talking, what, two early two thousands? It would’ve been a lot more crazy trying to sort public transport and things like this. Jo: Yeah. And we went on the train actually, from Cairo to Luxor. It was the overnight train and I will say like, I found the food to be wonderful. What did you think of the food and any tips for people there? Luke: Yeah, I loved it. Breakfast was the best meal of the day. Even in the most basic hotel, they just bring trays and trays of sort of flatbreads and fava bean tahini type things, and fresh vegetables. And coffee. And coffee and, yeah. Oh, the coffee is Jo: very thick for everyone listening. Yes, it, the coffee is very thick Luke: and sweet. If you react badly to sugar, don’t have that, you know? Jo: Come back to Luxor because II remember that very well because it was one of the hottest days I’ve ever been in. And it was, frankly, it was pretty awful. But it is that the Temple of Karnak, isn’t it? It was in Indiana Jones, the really famous columns. Amazing place. But for me it was just the hottest, hottest, hottest, hottest day. How was that for you? Luke: We actually did a really good thing by going in January. Jo: Brilliant. Luke: Firstly, because England’s weather is rubbish in January. For anyone who’s never been to England in January don’t come. It’s a waste of time. In fact, in Luxor, we stayed in this really cool hostel and there were these Australian travelers there, a bit younger than us, mid twenties and they just had a month in Europe and they were really disappointed by how rainy and cold it was. I said, well, didn’t you look that up? Like a Google search would’ve told you that. Anyway, we went in January, so it was nice sort of 20 degrees Celsius. We knew we were gonna be out and about looking at things, spending days not in the shade. For that reason, chose that time. Jo: That is very sensible. I think I must have been there in June, June-ish and it was like 42 degrees Celsius. But Luxor was amazing and just beautiful. And then I was on a felucca going up the Nile, which was also cool. Did you go on any boats? Luke: No, unfortunately not. We didn’t get to do that at this time. We ran out of time when we got to Luxor, we didn’t make it to Abu Simbel either, which I’d have loved to have done, but that’s for another trip. Jo: Oh yeah, that was very memorable. You actually have to fly there, even from Luxor because it’s so far into the desert. Okay. Anything else you want to tell us about Egypt or about any aspects of the book? Luke: Well, one more bit of travel advice, which someone gave me a while ago, which I thought was genius, and I give this to everyone dependent wherever they’re going, but particularly in places like Egypt, and it sounds obvious when you think about it. Just don’t take anything valuable with you. If you’ve got nice jewelry or an expensive watch or anything like this. Leave it in your hotel room. And that’s not because, I’m not saying that because someone’s going to take it from you, but when you are in a place like this, it’s so, you feel much more comfortable knowing that you haven’t got something expensive on you. You can be much more free with yourself and with conversations. Not always having to watch over your bag or your stuff if you just don’t have it. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it in that way. Jo: My first thought is, what about my phone, which is also my camera? Luke: Yes, that’s true. That’s, that’s perhaps your one thing, your one thing that you have to take. Jo: I mean, Egypt is obviously like many countries. It’s certainly got a very rich group of people, but it’s also got poor people. People will try and sell you stuff, particularly at the tourist locations. And as British people, you feel like you don’t wanna be rude. Luke: You lose that quite quickly. I found within a couple of days. You just get on with it. Jo: Absolutely. So this is the Books and Travel show. Can you recommend a few books about Egypt or set in Egypt? Luke: Yes, yes. I’ve got three. The first one is not a book, but it’s an essay and it’s by a guy called Rolf Potts, who I’m sure you’ve heard of. Jo: Mm-hmm. Vagabonding. Famous. Luke: Yes. It’s not in that one, but it’s in his book. Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, and he talks about his first trip to Egypt and he talks about his anxiety not to see the pyramids because he fears that he’ll be disappointed by seeing something that he’s got so much expectation about. And in fact, in the essay, which is probably a few thousand words, he doesn’t even mention the pyramids, but he talks about how vibrant and interesting Cairo is. He talks about how he’s meeting really interesting characters there and staying in this sort of funky backpacker hostel and all of these sorts of things. And I like that. I like the idea that Egypt is so much more than the pyramids. The second one is by a guy called Stel Pavlou, and it’s called Decipher, and that’s an archaeological thriller, similar to ours, which plays on a good amount of the same sort of mysticism to mine about hidden vaults underneath the Giza Plateau. But they discover, and I love this, they discover a Hadron Collider underneath the Giza Plateau that’s been there for tens of thousands of years. It’s a great idea. Jo: Okay. I haven’t read that. I’m always shocked when there are things I haven’t read that are thrillers about Egypt! Luke: Yeah. There you go. And the third one is a guy that I think you know Sean McLachlan. Jo: Yes. And, Luke: and his Masked Man of Cairo Books. The Case of the Purloined Pyramid is the first one. It’s set in Cairo in 1919, I think this first one. The rest of the series goes into the 1920s, but it’s a particularly interesting time because it’s talking about Cairo evolving as opposed to what Cairo is like now and how Egypt’s fight for Independence showed on the streets and all of these things. It’s a really interesting book. Jo: Slso just tell us a bit more about The Giza Protocol and also your thriller series. Luke: Yes. So my thriller series follows the exploits of my heroine, uh, Eden Black, and she goes all around the world finding ancient relics, dodging ancient curses, and finding out about secret societies, these sorts of things. If you love Indiana Jones or Clive Cussler, Tomb Raider, or any books or films in that sort of world, I think you’ll absolutely love them. The first one is The Ark Files and The Giza Protocol, which we’re talking about today, is number two, the second one in the series. Jo: Fantastic. And yes, if you enjoy my ARKANE thrillers with Morgan Sierra and Ark of Blood is my third, but they can all be read as standalone. I think that’s the same for yours, isn’t it? Luke: Yeah, yeah, Jo: You can pretty much start anywhere and you’ll get the hang of it, but yes, both with the female main characters, which we love. Where can people find you and your books online? Luke: Fantastic. So I talk about the adventure stories behind my stories on my podcast, The Adventure Story Podcast. You find that wherever podcasts are the Adventure Story podcast, and as I say, if archeological adventures are your thing, search online for the Giza Protocol by me, Luke Richton. Jo: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Luke. That was great. Luke: Thank you. The post Ancient Mysteries and Modern Travels. Egypt With Luke Richardson appeared first on Books And Travel.

What makes the tiny island of Lindisfarne a “thin place” where the spiritual and physical worlds seem to meet? How does living in such a close-knit community shape one’s identity? And what secrets lie beyond the tourist paths on this ancient sacred site? LK Wilde and J.F. Penn talk about their love of Lindisfarne.Laura is the award-winning author of historical fiction, romance, and uplifting feel-good fiction. Her novel Silver Darlings is set on the Northumberland Island of Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island. Where is Lindisfarne and what makes it unique as a tidal island? Holy Island, the rich Celtic Christian heritage and Viking history What it’s like to grow up on a remote island with only 150 residents Lindisfarne as a “thin place” where spiritual experiences feel more accessible Natural wonders: sand dunes, seal colonies, and bird sanctuaries Essential safety tips for crossing the tidal causeway The fishing heritage that inspired Laura’s novel Silver Darlings Local delicacies: fish soup, fresh crab sandwiches and the potent monastic mead You can find Laura at LKWilde.com and her books on Amazon and other stores. Transcript Jo: Hello Travelers. I’m Jo Frances Penn, and today I’m here with LK Wilde. Welcome, Laura. Laura: Hello. Thank you for having me. Jo: It’s great to have you on. So little introduction. Laura is the award-winning author of historical fiction, romance, and uplifting feel-good fiction. Her novel Silver Darlings is set on the Northumberland Island of Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island, here in England, which we are talking about today. So just to get us started. Where is Lindisfarne? How big is it? What makes it so special? Laura: It’s quite a famous place considering how small it is. It is off the coast of Northumberland, which for those who don’t know, it’s probably about halfway between Newcastle and Edinburgh. It’s really close to the Scottish border, and it’s a tidal island, so you can get across twice a day, there’s a road to drive across and it’s about eight or nine miles round, and there’s a population about 150. So you’ve got a very small village in one tiny corner of the island and then a big nature reserve. But it’s got quite an important historical significance considering when you look on a map, it’s a tiny little pinprick. Jo: It is really small. And so you said the eight or nine miles, just so people know, you can easily walk around that? Laura: You could. There’s not a path all the way around, so you’d have to do a bit of scrambling over rocks and things. But yes, you could definitely walk around it. Jo: As you said, really near the borders. And when I was there, only briefly, which we’ll come back to, but on that one side you are looking towards the coast of England. On the other side, what do you see looking off the other side? Stone cairns on the eastern coast of Lindisfarne Island Photo by JFPenn Laura: You can see the Farne Islands, which are a cluster of islands a bit further down the coast. And then a lot of sea. Jo: Exactly. And that’s the way the Vikings came, right? Laura: Yes. And I think you can still almost get that a bit in the accent. It’s quite unique. The accent on the island is a real mixture of Newcastle and Northeast and Scottish and they have their own words and things. I wonder how much influence from Scandinavian is in there too. Jo: That’s interesting. Do you speak that accent? Laura: No. I had to get a narrator to record the audiobook for me because I’ve tried, and when I went to school there, everyone used to say “Aye” instead of “Yes” when you did the register. And for me, with my very obvious Southern accent, it was so embarrassing. Jo: It’s great that you mention the accent because, for people listening who aren’t English or from the UK, it’s not that far. From where I am in Bath and you are in Cornwall, I mean, this is in our country and you can get there in a five or six hours train journey, I would think, and I was there and I also felt like an outsider with my accent. I didn’t really understand some of what people were saying, which really shocked me. I just wasn’t expecting that. Laura: No, it’s so different. People used to talk about a “muckle bari gaji,” which would mean a very attractive young man, but it’s just a whole set of words I’d never heard of. There’s quite a lot of examples like that. It makes it a very unique place, I think. Jo: I think that’s right. You said you went to school there, you lived there as a child. Tell us a bit about that. What do you remember from that time? Laura: So I moved there when I was 14 and I lived there till I was 18 and I was there with my younger sister and brother. My memories are in two categories, either extremely positive or extremely negative. I think with the passage of time, you tend to forget the boring moments in your life. But living there, there were no boring moments. It was either brilliant or terrible. And the good bits were amazing. The freedom of living somewhere like that. We’d come from a city, so there, we had our door open all the time. People would just come in and out as they wanted to. We could go off in the morning and my mom was fine with us coming back late at night and my brother was seven. So for him especially to have that freedom was really incredible. It’s for a relatively short period in my life. It’s probably the most significant group of years, I would say. Because it’s such a unique experience to live somewhere like that. Not just the remoteness, but everything that comes with island life. Jo: Well let’s get into that. So the freedom you said and the safety of being there, and I guess the natural side of things, but as a teenager, between the ages of 14 and 18, what were some of those negatives? Laura: Well, I think the main negative was when we weren’t on the island. There’s a primary school there and when we first arrived, all the national press came up because my brother was the only pupil in the school, and it was all in the papers that he was saving the island school. But for me and my sister, we would be picked up on a Monday morning outside our house with our suitcases and we’d be taken to a hostel in Berwick-upon-Tweed, the nearest town, and we would be there until the taxi came on Friday afternoon to take us home. So we effectively had to leave home. And it wasn’t like being in a boarding school where you’d have all that support. There were two wardens, but they had their own flats. You didn’t really see them. And it was a building that had been built for 30 to 40 kids. But by the time we were there, there were only five of us. So there were whole sections of this building that were shut off. And actually it was so bad that we were the last kids to be part of that setup. After us, they changed the system so kids would go to a local boarding school where they’d have all that support. Jo: Well, I think, I mean, really what you’re talking about, it sounds like the middle of nowhere. And that’s what’s so interesting because it is, Northumberland really does have a lot of remote areas, but it feels like you said Berwick-on-Tweed, it’s not that far to Edinburgh from there. So you weren’t in the middle of nowhere. But let’s, coming back to the island itself. So you mentioned island life. What does island life mean? Laura: I think it means very different things depending on why you are there. Which group you fall into. So there’s the religious community there and we were there because my dad was a church minister and he was sent there to – there was a church which had had no members anymore, and his job was to turn it into a visitor center. So we fell between these two groups where you had the religious community and then you had the everyday islanders who would do work in hospitality or fishing, or all sorts of other things. So I think within this one, very small community, people are living extremely different experiences. Ruins of Lindisfarne Priory Photo by JFPenn And as a teenager it was, we were removed from some of the politics within the community. The best times were in the holidays when other kids, like grandchildren of islanders would come and stay or holiday makers, and suddenly you’d have friends and you’d have people to hang around with, but it also meant the times that they weren’t there, we were with people of all ages. I think it gave us lots of skills in later life to be able to relate to people, not just our peers. Because we’d be going to these music groups with people in their sixties from all different backgrounds and things like that. So it is a very small community, but lots of different lifestyles within it. Jo: For your book, Silver Darlings, why did you want to revisit the island, and what community aspects did you bring in for that book? Laura: I wanted to revisit it. First of all, I started off with a memoir and writing about my experiences of living there as a teenager, but so much happened to our family. We went there as a what I considered a very strong family unit, and left as a broken family. My parents had separated, and so we all left separately, so I realized I couldn’t do anything with it. It was too personal. But I still wanted to capture that feeling of being a young person on the island. And then I started looking into the fishing heritage because the Celtic Christianity and everything is so famous and so many people go their own pilgrimage to experience that and the history. But there’s this whole period where the entire island was focused on fishing and everyone on the island was part of that community, and it was far more cohesive as a community than I think it probably is or certainly was when I was living there. And I really wanted to experience myself through these characters, what that side of it would’ve been like. And how all these, so I had people I knew in mind, like there was this lovely old fisherman called Eddie who was just a wonderful island character. And I had people like him in mind while I was telling this historical story. But I suppose it was a way as well of me revisiting this place that I loved so much that had been so important to me that I couldn’t tell through my own story, but I could inhabit these fictional characters and tell it through theirs. Jo: Yeah, the personal side of memoir is tough and I understand that. It’s interesting and, obviously we don’t need to get into why your family broke up, but one of the nightmares that I feel as someone who is an urban city girl, I mean, I love being in nature, but I want to know I’m coming back to the city. I like to be able to walk to a bookshop and some restaurants and coffee shops and all that. And when I was on the island just one night, I was like, this is fantastic, but oh my goodness. It’s so small and everyone would know your business and everybody would know everyone. And like you said, the positive is it’s safe and people look out for you, but the negative is really there’s no privacy. There’s no way of being different. A lot of people say island life is quite insular and people want to stop you from being different. And so to be different you have to leave. Is that something you recognize? Laura: Yeah, definitely. That feeling of lack of privacy. And I think because we had such an open house as well, there were people, like even when my parents went away for a week and I was there on my own, people would wander in and out of my house, and you’re never – everybody knows everything that’s going on. And as a teenager, sometimes you want to let loose a bit, but you can’t really because there’ll be someone there watching you. Jo: That’s interesting. Okay, so you mentioned the religious side of the community and the Celtic side. A lot of people won’t know the history, so maybe just — Tell us a bit about the religious history. Laura: So it’s a very famous site of Celtic Christianity. I think it was about 635 AD. King Oswald of Northumberland invited Aidan, St. Aidan now, and some other monks from the Scottish island of Iona to come and set up a monastery on the island. And it became an incredibly important Christian site for spreading Christianity throughout the kingdom of Northumberland. And then after, so Aiden became Bishop of the island, and then after him, St. Cuthbert became the bishop. And I think it was during St. Cuthbert’s time that the Lindisfarne Gospels were written, which are very famous illustrated, incredibly beautiful, unique pieces of artwork. And people came on pilgrimages and St. Cuthbert is still very much celebrated. The church that my dad was turning into visitor center was called St. Cuthbert’s. Looking out the small island where Cuthbert lived Lindisfarne Photo by JFPenn And there’s St. Cuthbert’s Island, you may have seen it, when you are near St. Mary’s church, you go down to the beach and there’s an island off the island. Jo: It’s got a little cross on, I think. Laura: So sometimes people will go there and sit at tide out on that tiny island and just contemplate. So it was a really important site and then the Vikings came and destroyed everything that had been there. And then later, they set up a priory on the island so that you can still see the remains of that. Now you can walk around the ruins of the priory. So it still has that legacy of being extremely important in the spread of Christianity. Jo: And the sacrifice of those monks who were raided, and it was one of the first documented Viking raids, was on the island. Laura: Yeah, it’s pretty interesting history and it’s kind of the first place you would land. You come over and you hit Lindisfarne and you would see what was a rich pilgrimage center and the monks had money and obviously you’re going to go raid it. That’s what you’re going to do. But yes, St. Cuthbert’s, the St Cuthbert’s way, which is part of the pilgrimage walk. Yeah. Fantastic walk from where he started in Melrose in Scotland. And for people who don’t know, his relic, part of his body is still in Durham Cathedral. Part of me thinks it should be on Lindisfarne, but it just wouldn’t cope with the number of visitors, I guess. Jo: No, I think it would be logistically tricky. Laura: I mean, it’s a miracle that they managed to get him and also the gospels out and down to Durham. Because the Vikings, it wasn’t just one raid. They kept coming back. So there was a lot lost – a lot of important historical things and money and property and all sorts. But to have saved St. Cuthbert and the gospels is quite remarkable. St Cuthbert’s Cave Photo by JFPenn Jo: Yeah. And you can go to a cave where supposedly his body rested overnight. And it’s interesting, of course, because we’re not Catholic anymore. This is not a Catholic country. And your dad would not have been Catholic. And the church now on Lindisfarne is not Catholic. And yet that’s where it all came from. I find it quite funny sometimes, this discussion of relics and the body of St. Cuthbert and all of that when it’s like, that’s not quite what the religion is anymore. So how do you think that was dealt with, this sort of Catholic history and the modern? There is a spiritual sense there now, isn’t there? I almost say it’s beyond Christian. It’s spiritual. Laura: I think it is. I think a lot of people coming there now come for a much broader spiritual feeling. And the Catholic side is still, there is a Catholic, a small Catholic church on the island. And there are big services and pilgrimages at Easter, for example, but I think the Catholic side of it is far less dominant. It’s far more about the spirituality and Celtic Christianity almost as a brand is perhaps the wrong word, but I think in recent years, Celtic Christianity and spirituality has really become far more popular outside of its Catholic origins, I think. And there is a feeling you get from – I think you mentioned ‘a thin place’ in Pilgrimage, didn’t you? And that would often be mentioned when I was living there. This is a thin place and we would have people come and stay with us who were extremely rational people who would never go in for anything otherworldly who would have experiences there or feel certain strong feelings that they’d never experienced anywhere else before. And whether it’s partly being cut off twice a day or whether it’s the history, I don’t know what it is, but there is something almost intangible, but you just feel it when you are there. It’s quite special. Jo: So do you have any feelings of that thin place? Are there any experiences that you would look back on as that, or did you get that sense? Laura: I think I got that through the natural beauty of it. So although I was raised in a city, I was always far happier in the countryside and it was when I would go off exploring and I would go on the North Shore and just walk and this long sandy beach and that’s when I would feel that sense of something special. Not when I was in a church or because actually often there were squabbles between the religious communities and there was a human side that wasn’t always that nice, but when I was out in nature and you get these huge, wide skies on the island, and that’s when I would feel it. And it definitely does something to you, I think, especially if you are on your own, and I would go off – I mean, I wasn’t a very typical teenager living on an island. But I would just go off for hours walking on my own or on my bike, and you feel this thin place, I suppose. Jo: And is that God, for you, was it God back then? Is it God now or is it something broader? Laura: I think back then it would’ve been far more straightforward for me than it would’ve been God. I think now, I really don’t know. I don’t really subscribe to organized religion these days, but I still, normally still feel – I still experience that spiritual feeling when I am somewhere beautiful. Or when I’m swimming in the sea, that’s a time I’ll get that kind of feeling that you can’t really name, but you feel surely there’s got to be a creator to have made somewhere so magical. Jo: Yeah. And it’s funny, obviously my book Pilgrimage being about these pilgrimages and yet not being a Christian and yet also a lot of the feelings the same as you. And one of the times I really felt it and I still get goosebumps even right now thinking about it when I crossed over to Lindisfarne, walking over the Sands and it really was one of the most spiritual moments I think, of my life. There was a sound and I didn’t know what it was, and then I realized it was the seals singing and there’s a lot of seals in that channel. And of course it’s a bird sanctuary, so there were so many birds and you’re following. And I had my back to the road. There is a road, but I had my back to the road and I was kind of trying to ignore it. But there, as you know, there are these white poles leading you across the sand to the island, and I just felt this, I think this timelessness of how many other feet have walked this, how many pilgrims, the monks. I mean there’s, well, at least 1800 years of history. But before that, there would’ve always been islanders, people living on that island. And so that was kind of a moment that it really hit me. Tell us a bit more about the nature of the island or any aspects of the nature reserve and all of that. Laura: I think what I love most about it is especially when the causeway’s open, the village will be packed. And the ruined priory will be packed. And there are people everywhere and you either you can walk to the castle and walk along, or you go down a little farm track and there’s nobody. And my favorite place would be to go to the sand dunes and there’s little pools among the sand dunes as well. But when I was on my own, you’ve got these massive expanses of sand dunes and then you climb and you’ve got these huge stretches of beach and you’ve got the seals and you’ve got all the birds. There’s a bird hide that you can go and just spent hours watching. You’ve got the coast all around, and then you’ve got these little pools and the nature reserve and the birds, and in a place where there’s quite a lot of people and chaos packed into one corner, just this wide expansion to walk and see seals, just sunbathing. Or just spend a time sitting on a sand dune and just watching all the birds go around you is really special. And it’s something that never grew old. I think sometimes you can live in a beautiful place and you stop seeing it, but I think there, you never stop seeing it. You are always aware that just down the end of a path, you’re gonna have this open space where you can just breathe and experience a bit of peace, I suppose. Jo: Yeah. And I think Northumberland also is one of the areas of dark sky. You know, the dark sky areas where you can actually see the stars without so much light pollution. When I was walking out that way and on that beach, looking out to sort of Norway, there’s lots of rock cairns. When I went, people had built rocks up in piles. And then as I was walking back I saw a murmuration of, I guess it was one of the swifts or something, and I always think when you see a murmuration, and for people listening, if you don’t know, it’s when all the birds kind of flock in patterns and they make patterns in the air. And when I’ve seen them and I’ve seen them, I saw them at Stonehenge as well. And that was again, in one of those moments of like, that’s incredible. It was like, okay, there’s definitely something, again, that thin place, and you feel just part of nature and it puts life in perspective when you just stop for a moment and you notice that you are part of this, you know, a human in nature. And the morning I got up and I had my coffee in a little flask and watched the seals in the water. And it’s so funny because I was only there for one night and I think about going back a lot and yet I’m kind of worried about going back because it was so perfect. That 24 hours or whatever it was that I was there. Have you been back? Has it changed your mind since? Laura: Yes. I didn’t go back for a very long time. I went, so when did I leave? I left in 2000. I did go back while I was at uni to stay with some friends once, but for a couple of nights, and then I didn’t go back again till 2008 when I had my son as a baby. But literally because so much happened there, it is quite a hard place to go back to. So I went back on the island, had a quick walk round and left again. And then it was last year I finally felt ready to properly go back again and I took – it was just me and my two sons and they were the ages me and my sister were when we moved there. And I took them up there and it was incredibly healing. Going there reminded me of all the things I loved about it. And seeing it through their eyes. So I’ve got a picture of them standing on top of these really tall sand dunes, just with their arms in the air cheering and seeing how much they loved it and hearing them say, “wow, this must have been an amazing place to live.” And it was really – I’m so pleased I did it. I mean, it was a beautiful, sunny day we went, we didn’t – we were meant to stay on the island and then there was a flood where we were staying, so we had to stay on the mainland. And I was quite pleased in a way, because we spent two days there, but we could retreat at the end of the day and I could just process all these things. And on the second day I went and actually saw some people I’d known while I was there and just felt at peace in this place and showed the boys where we used to live and showed them where my brother went to school. So I’m really pleased I did go back. Me and my sister are talking about going back together at some point, but it’s a very long way from Cornwall. Jo: It is. Yeah. Cornwall itself is very big compared to Lindisfarne! It is interesting, isn’t it? Revisiting these places that mean so much. I also feel like the situation I was in, which was I was recovering – it was the end of the pandemic. I was still sick. I was in a lot of pain and it was a real struggle. And so I did feel like, and so often the end of a pilgrimage is, there’s a real letdown because the journey is kind of the point. And yet when I crossed over, it just felt so magic. But let’s give some people some real practical tips because hopefully now everyone’s like, oh my goodness, I really wanna go to Lindisfarne. Let’s talk about the crossing and the practicalities. If people want to drive or they want to walk, what do they need to be aware of? Laura: You have to check the tide times. There are lots of places online that you can check when it’s safe to cross and absolutely do not risk it. As teenagers, one of our sports – word would spread that a car was stuck on the causeway, and we’d go down on our bikes and laugh. You don’t want that happening to you if you go, so be really careful to only cross when the internet or the sign by the side of the road tells you it’s safe to cross. Walker on the sands crossing away from Lindisfarne Photo by JFPenn There is a rescue tower. You can go up halfway if you do get stuck, but that is not for cars. Fun to go up and have a look, but you don’t want your car to be submerged and you’re waiting for the RNLI to come and get you. So make sure to check the tide times. And it’s worth being there, I think over a tide. Because it’s such a different experience. So if the tides work out that you can spend a few hours there with the tide in, that’s definitely worth doing. But be very careful crossing whether on foot or in a car. Jo: Yeah. I didn’t know whether I would be able to walk across, because the other thing is the weather, right? I mean, I was there and it was beautiful. I just had the most perfect crossing with the sun. Talk a bit about the mist and the rain and the weather up there. Laura: Oh, I have a memory. There was a year where I think it was May, and we knew that it was beautiful May weather everywhere else, but it was just misty, and it was misty every single day in May. My birthday’s in May, which is probably why I also remember it so clearly, and it gets really depressing when you go out of your house and everywhere else the sun is shining, but it’s cold. You can only see a couple of meters in front of you. It’s mentally very challenging, I think. Because you feel so cut off from the rest of the world. Jo: And you can’t see the coast. That’s the thing, I think that’s the mist is not just a light mist that disappears. It’s like you can’t actually see the land and that’s when you can get lost. And there are stories obviously, of people trying to walk across and then just ending up missing the poles, that kind of thing. And in fact a lot of people, when I said I was walking across, they said, oh no, don’t do that. It’s too dangerous. Laura: It’s quite – there’s some quick sand isn’t there? Or sinking sand. You have to be careful to stick to the right route. You have to stick to the route, and if it’s nice weather, you can see the route all the way across and you’re like, why is everyone going on about this? But of course, the mist, I think, so what I would say to people is, as you said as well, the tide moves every day. The tide times move every day. If people don’t know that it’s not the same time every single day, and so you really do have to be ready to cross and then come back. Also we should say it’s very small. You have to, if you want to stay, you have to book accommodation way in advance, right? Laura: Yeah. And another thing about crossing actually just to not alarm people, but if you are there and it looks safe to cross. But the tide time says it’s not, just don’t risk it because it comes so quickly. It looks like the road is clear and then it’ll just wash right across. Laura: But for staying there, you really have to book in advance. But for us it worked well staying – we stayed in Spittal, which is just outside Berwick-upon-Tweed. It’s about 10 miles away, the last time I went and actually that worked well. But I think if you can, if you’ve never been before. I think staying on the island is quite a unique experience and well worth doing if you can. Jo: Yeah, definitely. I would say it’s well worth it. And also if you just go across when everyone else does – when I walked off the sand, I only saw a couple of other people walking and I sat down to put my shoes on and then I walked along the road and around the corner and there’s like a coach park with hundreds of people streaming off the coaches, and I’m like there with my backpack and I’m like, whoa. Okay. So it can be quite a very touristy experience or a spiritual experience, I suppose. Laura: So much of that is how you time it, I think. Jo: Yes. When you’re there. Yeah, so I definitely think you have to do research. So what I did with the research was, because I wanted to walk across, I looked at the dates when I could walk across on the tide and book accommodation. And then I worked backwards from there to when I needed to start the pilgrimage. Dawn on Lindisfarne Holy Island Oct 2021 Photo by JFPenn Laura: That is very organized. Jo: But I mean, I think it’s really important. We should also just say something about the food, because I seriously had the best fish soup I’ve ever had in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Seriously. I’ve never had better, I guess some would call it chowder, but tell us about – you’ve mentioned the fishing, I suppose, but the fish is really good, isn’t it? Laura: Yeah. And there’s – well, I’m not sure, it probably depends on the time of year, but there always used to be plenty of places to get a fresh crab sandwich. Jo: Oh yes. I had one of those too. Laura: So that’s definitely worth trying. And there are hotels on the island where you can eat with plenty of fish on offer. And I’m assuming that they use – well, I worked in a hotel when I was there many years ago and they served a lot of lobster. Because lobster and crab are caught off the island. So, yeah, it’s definitely worth trying some of the local cuisine. And of course there’s the mead, the Lindisfarne mead. Jo: Oh. Tell us more about the mead. Laura: I think that comes from – that was a drink the monks had, I think, and it’s made from honey, but it’s very strong. So be careful. But you can sample it in the mead shop. It’s very strong alcohol and very sweet. So it’s not something I’d probably go for now because I don’t really like sweet things, but something I wouldn’t give to my teenage boys because they’d probably knock it back. Jo: Yeah. Tourist mead. Absolutely. But definitely visit the ruins of the priory there and the church. It’s a wonderful time. Well, I think we could talk about this forever, but this is the Books and Travel podcast. What are a few books about Lindisfarne or Northumberland that you recommend? Guest: Well, the first, I know not everyone will be seeing this on video, but I thought I would show, my husband bought this for me, which is the Lindisfarne Gospels. It’s a British Library guide and this is just gorgeous. It’s got beautiful images of the Lindisfarne Gospel, so that’s a really good one. Jo: And just on that, people can see, sometimes they can see the Lindisfarne Gospels at the British Library in London. But it’s all online as well. So if you’re like, oh, I’d like to see more detail, it is online. But that looks like a lovely book. Laura: They are exceptional. It’s definitely worth having a look. And then fiction wise, I’m absolutely obsessed with Ann Cleeves, who does the Vera and Shetland books, but her Vera series is all set in Northumberland. There is one on the island, I think it’s called The Rising Tide , but she manages to capture that open sky beauty of the county whilst also shining a light on what it’s like to live in one of the communities there and because often the seaside towns are quite poor. So I’d recommend any of her Vera series. And then these aren’t strictly books, but if you go on the Islandshire Archives, there’s information there about the fishing history of the island, which is so interesting. And there’s articles by, I think she’s called Katrina Porteous, who’s done this study of fishing and how the whole community was involved. And then my last recommendation would be the British Newspaper Archive where you can search a place going back hundreds of years and get a glimpse into what life was like there. And if you search Holy Island, there are reports of things like weddings where they have unique customs like jumping over a petting stone and they still do these today. Or the fishermen stand with their guns and the bride and groom walk through, and they shoot the guns in the air and that’s all reported. I think if you’re going to visit anywhere probably in the UK and you want a slice of what real life is like, it’s worth going on the British newspaper archive. Just select a random year, like 1953 or something and see what’s happening and have a look. [Note from Jo: I also have two books that feature Lindisfarne: Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways. One of my pilgrimages was the St Cuthbert’s Way which finishes on Lindisfarne Day of the Vikings, an ARKANE Thriller. When a Viking relic at the British Museum becomes the target of a neo-pagan cult, ARKANE agent Morgan Sierra finds herself trapped inside the museum with a group of ruthless extremists. The cult’s leader, a fierce Valkyrie, believes the artifact holds the power of the Viking gods—and she will stop at nothing to claim it. The modern day thriller includes flashbacks to the Viking raid on Lindisfarne, and the Lindisfarne Gospels. It is book 5 of my ARKANE series, but can also be read as a stand-alone book. You can read the ebook for free at JFPenn.com/free. Jo: Tell us a bit about Silver Darlings, if people would like to read that. Laura: Silver Darlings is really about two young people who grow up on the island in the early 1900s, and for separate reasons, they’re both forced to leave the island and they follow the herring trade down the east coast of England to Lowestoft. And they reach the time of the First World War and it’s about whether they can find each other and whether they can find their way back to the island. And it’s really about what does it mean to be home? What does home mean to you? And they both have very different ideas about whether the island is or isn’t home and why. It’s a historical romance, but I love social history and ordinary lives and the herring girls and how women had a bit of independence when it was quite hard to do that. Jo: I was going to finish, but I get obsessed with the idea of home because I also struggle with it. And you’ve talked about how much you love Lindisfarne, but you are now in Cornwall. Where is home for you? Laura: That’s a question I think about all the time, and I think I try and find the answer through my books. So my books are either set on Holy Island, in Norwich, where I was born, or in Cornwall or something. And I think through writing them, I’m trying to figure out where do I actually belong. I don’t really know. I mean, Cornwall’s where I’ve lived the longest now, but I know I’ll never be Cornish because you have to be about five generations in to be Cornish. Norfolk’s where I was born, where a lot of my family are from, but I haven’t lived there for over 20 years. And Holy Island is such a special place to me, but I don’t sound like I’m from there. I wasn’t born there. I almost don’t feel I have the right to call it home. So I suppose, I don’t know. I still haven’t figured out the answer to that. Jo: Nor me, although I’ve decided I am English. So perhaps you’re English too. Laura: Well, except my brother recently did a DNA test and it turns out we’re also quite Welsh, so just in case. Jo: To be fair, I’m also Scottish and Irish, but yeah, there we go. Where can people find you and your books online? Laura: So LKWilde.com. You can find out all about me and then I’m on social media. The usual Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. Just search LK Wilde and I will pop up everywhere. Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Laura. That was great. Laura: Thank you for having me. The post Thin Places and Tidal Shores: Lindisfarne, Holy Island, With LK Wilde appeared first on Books And Travel.

What are the fascinating — and also dangerous — aspects of Death Valley National Park? How does visiting a stark desert landscape give us perspective about our place in the world? Steve Hall is a multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker and a seasoned adventure hiker renowned for his extensive explorations of Death Valley National Park. What’s special about Death Valley National Park? What are some of the iconic places to visit? The dangers of Death Valley Solo adventures and challenges Dark skies and star gazing Legends and history Conservation and visitor etiquette You can find Steve’s hiking videos of Death Valley and other places at YouTube.com/stevehallDV. The Death Valley National Park website has lots more info. You can find pictures and notes, as well as book recommendations on Death Valley here. You can find Death Valley, A Thriller, by J.F. Penn, here. Transcript of the interview Jo: Hello travelers. I’m thriller author, J.F. Penn, and today I’m here with Steve Hall. Hi Steve. Steve: Hi Jo. It’s great to be talking to you today. Jo: Yes, just a little introduction. Steve is a multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker and a seasoned adventure hiker renowned for his extensive explorations of Death Valley National Park, which we’re talking about today. Let’s start with the basics. Where is Death Valley in the world and what drew you to it initially? Steve: Great questions. You know, it’s great to be talking with you about Death Valley National Park—of course, my favorite national park to visit. Death Valley is part of the Northern Mojave Desert, and it’s located right along the California–Nevada border. It’s kind of situated in between Las Vegas to the east and the Sierra Nevada mountains off to the west. It is the largest national park in the lower 48 states. It actually has the great size of 3.4 million million acres, and it’s 140 miles in length, going from the bottom of the park all the way up to the top in the north. So it’s quite expansive. Death Valley National Park, Photo by J.F. Penn Well, it kind of started for me back in 1997 when I was with a group of friends on the way to the Grand Canyon. As we finished up our trip there, we had a couple of extra days on our way home. So I noticed on a map all these kind of scary-sounding names within Death Valley—locations such as the Devil’s Golf Course, the Devil’s Cornfield, the Funeral Mountains, Badwater—kind of all scary, foreboding-sounding places. I told my friends, “Why don’t we stop there? We have a little extra time and see what Death Valley is all about.” And that’s what we did. We drove through the park and actually had a kind of scary experience right when we first crossed the park boundaries. My very first memory of crossing into the park was seeing an injured motorcyclist on the dirt just off the road. I guess he had taken a turn too fast or something, but he flew off his bike and was injured, and paramedics were attending to him. So that was my introduction to the park—seeing somebody badly injured. But on that first trip, I visited some of the famous tourist destinations such as Badwater, Artist Palette, Zabriskie Point, and Devil’s Golf Course. So that kind of gave me a little taster or teaser of the park. Those are the same kinds of destinations that first-time park visitors are sent to. Let’s just get a bit into what it looks like because you mentioned a few things there, like the Devil’s Golf Course. I went to Badwater. I went to the Artist Palette in my day trip when I visited. You also mentioned the Grand Canyon. So I feel like even Americans or anyone in the world who knows a little bit about America has heard of the Grand Canyon, has seen pictures of the Grand Canyon. In their minds, when they say “National Park in America,” that’s kind of what people have in their mind, I think, because that’s the most famous one. What is different about Death Valley and those places that we mentioned? Why are they so evocative? Steve: Well, anytime somebody thinks about American national parks—like what you mentioned—they might think about the big famous ones such as Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone. Those have sights that are just so famous. When you walk out to the Grand Canyon for the first time and look at that sweeping vista, it’s so overwhelming and it’s captured well in photographs. The same thing with Yosemite, with the majestic waterfalls and Half Dome. When it comes to Death Valley, people might think of a bleak, lifeless desert, so it might not be the first destination that comes to their mind when they’re thinking about visiting a US national park. Well, tell us what it looks like. Like the Artist’s Palette, for example. Why is it called the Artist’s Palette, and what makes it special? Steve: Well, that is a very interesting and neat place to check out and explore. Artists’ Palette, Death Valley. Photo by JFPenn It’s along a place that’s known as Artist Drive, which is a one-way loop road that comes off of Badwater Road. Artist Palette itself has some very colorful hills. It is basically what the name implies. You drive up to it, you get out and take a look, and you’re surrounded by these colorful badlands. Some of the minerals and different forces have created a variety of colors on display. It really does have just about every color you can imagine. You look out and there are all these little canyons going in different directions, and there are hills that you can scramble up. Of course, it’s a photographer’s dream. Artist Palette has been featured in, for instance, a music video by the group Oasis—their video “Who Feels Love?” was filmed partly in Death Valley, and Artist Palette was one of the locations that they chose. It’s a very famous spot. Jo: Yeah, and really beautiful in different lights. I imagine you’ve obviously visited at different times of day. I feel like I was only there for about 10 minutes, but even then you can get all kinds of different shades in the rocks, as you said. Let’s talk about Badwater Basin and, I guess, the salty areas. Talk about those salt flats down there, and I guess why it’s also called Death Valley, because the day I was there, it was winter—it was November—and it was still damn hot. Steve: Yeah, so Badwater itself is probably Death Valley’s most famous destination. Around the Badwater Basin, there are some 200 square miles of salt flats. What makes it very special is that it’s the lowest spot in North America at minus 282 feet—282 feet below sea level. Badwater actually got its name because there was a surveyor in past times who brought his mule out and was in the area and led his mule up to the Badwater pool, which is a spring-fed little pool of water on the ground. The mule rejected it and refused to drink the salty water. So that’s why it got the name Badwater. Badwater Basin Death Valley Photo by JFPenn Visiting it is a unique experience, especially for first-timers, because you can go out there and stand at that special spot, get your picture next to the sign, and you can also look up at the hillside nearby and see a sea level sign. You can visualize in your mind just how far underneath the ocean you would be if you were at sea level right there. There’s also an endemic snail that lives only at that location at Badwater, so that’s really special too. And if you look across the salt flats, across the valley, you can see the Panamint Range. The highest summit there in the Panamints, as well as all of Death Valley, is Telescope Peak at 11,049 feet. That’s quite a contrast—standing at minus 282 and looking up at 11,049 feet. Another aspect to Badwater is that sometimes during flooding, that salt basin fills with water. This happened just a year ago and forms Lake Manly, and then you’ll find, as it goes viral, people out there kayaking and floating on the lake. And isn’t that after the floods when it flowers? Steve: Yes. In thinking about wildflowers in Death Valley, you need several distinct rain events. If you just get one light period of rain—and keep in mind Death Valley is the hottest, driest, and lowest, meaning it gets less than two inches of annual rainfall—you’re not going to get a good wildflower season. But if you get several periods of rain spread out among several months, then you’re going to get a good bloom. In fact, you could get a “super bloom.” I remember being there for the last big super bloom in 2016, and I think before that it was 2005. We just had vast fields of desert gold covering the landscape—an overwhelming amount of flowers, beauty beyond what you could imagine. Jo: Yes. I mean, I only went for a day trip, so you only get a certain glimpse in a day. Of course, you’ve been hiking there for years. But let’s get into why also, I guess, it’s so dangerous. There are tourist trips—it doesn’t have to be a dangerous place to visit—but — What are some of the dangers of the valley? Steve: There’s really a lot of dangers in Death Valley. In fact, I received an email from a hiker one time, and he mentioned that Death Valley is one of the most dangerous places on Earth to hike. I would definitely agree with that. It’s so important to be prepared and to know what you’re getting into out there. The first thing that people often think about when it comes to dangers is the heat. Sure enough, in the springtime, especially in the summer but also lingering into the fall, you have the extreme hot days. You have days when you shouldn’t even be out there hiking, but if the heat seems to be at a manageable level, it’s all about bringing enough water with you, enough sunscreen, knowing your body’s limitations, hiking early in the morning before it gets too hot—things like that. Other dangers include flash floods. There are occasional flash floods that will sweep down canyons and wipe out park roads, which creates a whole different hazard. And then the wind can even be a hazard. There can be severe windstorms that come up. In fact, the wind can sometimes kick up really bad dust storms and sandstorms into the air. That’s caused by strong winds picking up the dust and sand off the ground and pushing it forward like a wall toward people. I had a couple of experiences not too long ago where I was coming out of a hike to a place called The Crack. I looked off to my right, to the northwest, and saw what looked like a wall of dust coming toward me. It was scary. Fortunately, we were just getting back to my truck, so I said, “We better get there quickly and get in.” Right as we got to the truck, it swept over us. The wind came first, then all the dust, and we lost our visibility. I was glad we were inside, so our clothes and my eyes weren’t filled with dust. Another experience: My parents own an RV or trailer, and they were parked at the Stovepipe Wells campground one day. My dad looked out the window of the trailer and could see a giant wall of dust and sand heading toward Stovepipe Wells. My parents got out and went to hide near the general store, and sure enough, the dust storm came through, rattled the trailer, and wreaked havoc on that whole area. He said afterward it took him a whole year to get all of the dust and sand out of the trailer and for it to work normally again—for the windows to be able to pop out and slide like they’re supposed to. It was quite a crazy situation. Jo: Wow. You are reading my novel Death Valley, and I put in this big dust storm. When I wrote it, I read about these storms and I thought, “Is this really—could this really happen?” I know it’s terrible, but I’m grateful that you’ve said this is actually possible. And these storms, like you say, can just take everything out in their path, right? Steve: Yeah, and in fact—obviously we can’t get into spoilers—but I love how you brought the storm into your novel. It reminded me that with climate change, scary things like that could actually happen. Climate change has already had a bad impact upon the park. Again, hopefully nothing like what I’ve been reading in your novel actually happens, but there certainly is the potential for that. We’ve seen an increase in flash flooding that has caused road closure for many months at a time, with sections of the park closed off. We’ve also seen trees dying off, such as bristlecone pines, because they’re not getting the moisture and they’re getting too much heat. We’ve seen an increase in long, hot summers and higher temperatures going through the park, which makes it hard on wildlife that are already on the edge of survival, pushing them even further. Well then, with all this danger, how come you have this film Last Chance Solo, where you went off on your own and solo? What draws you to this kind of solo adventure? We are definitely not recommending anyone do this, but you obviously love it. So talk a bit about solo adventure. What are the rewards and the risks of solo adventure? Steve: Yeah, so solo hiking and backpacking is not really my favorite thing to do. I have a core group of friends who I enjoy backpacking and hiking with out in Death Valley—such as Michelle, who’s one of my best friends—but not everyone is always available. A majority of my friends here at home, outside of the park, are not interested in the great challenges that are presented. So that’s what can lead me to go solo. But going solo does create some difficult challenges. For one thing, you’re out there all alone, so if you get injured or hurt, it’s going to be more difficult to get out of there, to get help, and to make it through. Also, it can just be lonely out there, going for days on end hiking. It’s definitely not as fun. You referenced my film Last Chance Solo, which was the very first feature film I ever attempted to do in Death Valley. It documents me doing six days of solo backpacking and hiking in the Last Chance Range. I believe when I started that out, I had to carry five and a half gallons of water because water sources are not always available in Death Valley. You’re not always going to find a spring or a source of water, so to do some of these routes, you’re going to need to do heavy water carries and bring them with you. As far as why it can be difficult to get others to hike with you in Death Valley—well, it’s hard. There are very few trails in the park. You’re mostly creating your own routes as you go through peaks and canyons. There’s not a lot of established trails or routes. And of course, not a lot of people want to carry a lot of water. Then there’s terrain obstacles that you have to deal with—like rock climbs. I had one friend named Curtis who, every five years, comes with me to the park to do hiking. But he tells me then, after he goes, “Well, you fooled me again. Maybe I’ll come back with you in another five years when I forget how difficult this is.” Jo: Yes, I mean, I’ve done multi-day solo backpacking, but where I’ve stayed somewhere reasonable at night with shelter, and there’ve been shops on the way. That is not what happens in Death Valley. I mean, there is a little—it’s not a town, is it? Like you said, there’s a campground, there’s the visitor center, but it’s not like you can stop off and find water anywhere. You do have to go a ways. So another thing about the visitor center when I got there was I noticed there’s a plaque saying this is a Dark Skies area. Tell us about that. What is a Dark Sky park and why is that so special, and how cool is it at night? Steve: It’s quite amazing. Dark Sky International certified Death Valley National Park as the third official Dark Sky National Park in the United States. A lot of work went into helping that happen. Actually, they were given the Gold Tier, which is the highest standard, the highest rating you can get for a national park. So it truly is a Dark Sky Park. How that comes about and what it’s all about is negating as much light pollution as possible. You think about light pollution coming in from nearby cities, such as Las Vegas—it’s the closest one to Death Valley. You can’t really do anything about that, but Death Valley is far enough away that city light doesn’t have much of an impact, especially the farther north you go. That’s just where you start—how far away the park is from cities. Then you have to think about the artificial lighting that is on buildings, on signs, shining around the villages you referenced, which are Furnace Creek and Stovepipe Wells. A lot of work had to go into changing out all those lights that were just shining indiscriminately—brightening up the area. Instead, new lights were installed that used less electricity and were angled downward to light up a path so people could walk safely, or to light up signs or buildings but without blinding people’s eyes. That’s what made it a successful Dark Sky Park—putting all the effort into that and getting certified. You mentioned the Dark Sky Festival, which actually took place last week. I was there in Death Valley for the Dark Sky Festival, actually working at the Farm Creek Visitor Center, and then I hosted a telescope in the evening at what was known as the Star Party, where we had 25 to 30 telescopes out. We took in—I think it was 2,300 visitors—over the course of two days, who could look through our telescopes and hear a ranger-guided program. The Dark Sky Festival is a very special event. There’s so much going on. There were auditorium programs, there was an exploration fair with booths for learning about things related to the sky and the stars, with scientists sharing information and things you could learn from. There were astrophotography meetups. There’s an incredibly talented photographer named Stephanie Lamar that lives and works in Death Valley and actually does wedding, engagement, and family photos, but she volunteered her time to lead groups out to the Mesquite flats—or to the Mesquite sand dunes and Harmony Borax—to help them learn astrophotography. Then there were talks going on by scientists out at park locations such as Ubehebe Crater, Badwater, Golden Canyon, various spots to teach people things. And then, of course, the grand finale was the Star Party, which I mentioned, where we had all the telescopes out. On Friday night, I shared the Andromeda Galaxy with everybody, and on Saturday night, the Orion Nebula. It was just a fantastic event, organized and put together by my friend Matt, who works there in the park. Jo: Mm, amazing. If people haven’t been to any of these dark-sky locations—they are around the world—but as you said, how much you can see the stars compared to what you see if you’re in the city is just totally different, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve been in a place in Western Australia, and I’ll never forget it. It was like, this is a completely different experience to living in a city and looking up at the sky. Steve: Yeah, it’s totally different. There’s just no comparison. Just seeing the awe and wonder on some of the visitors’ faces as they look up at the sky—at one point there was a ranger looking at some of the constellations with a laser pointer and even reading poetry out there under the stars. It is just a totally different experience compared to going out where I live here in Sonoma, in California, and trying to look up. When I go out to Death Valley, I feel like I can see ten to a hundred times more stars. Jo: In my thriller Death Valley, I have ruins under the luxury eco-hotel, and you said there might be a legend that echoes this theme. Tell us about the Lost City. Steve: Yeah, you know, there’s this interesting story I came across. I do a lot of hiking and backpacking into undocumented areas of Death Valley to try to make discoveries. Of course, when I say “make discoveries,” I don’t mean I’m the first person to ever find these things, because we have Native Americans, miners, and who knows who else hiking off the grid, but I just try to go out into areas that people haven’t seen or heard of before and share things. I went into this place called Trellis Canyon, which was just mentioned in passing in a guidebook, but there was only one sentence—no other information about it—just to see what was there. I hiked in there, went home, and published a report about my hike and shared photos, because I did have the largest website on Death Valley hiking in the world, which is now only available to park staff. That’s where I was sharing my hiking adventures at that time. I started getting emails from people who identified themselves as a group of lawyers, doctors, adventure and thrill seekers who wanted more information about Trellis Canyon. As I gathered more details, I found out that this group believes there is a lost city of gold underneath the Panamint Mountains, and that the access point to get into the lost city of gold—where there’s supposedly tons of treasure, gold artifacts, as well as giant mummies preserved in underground caverns—they believe the entrance is through a cave in Trellis Canyon. The interesting thing was they had spotted some “scorpions” on Google Earth above Trellis Canyon. Sure enough, I went on Google Earth, and I could see these two matching scorpions that were covering the landscape. As you’re following along on Google Earth, you see these two scorpions, and they do look out of place, admittedly. Anyway, the scorpions later disappeared from Google Earth, and this group felt that was a conspiracy to hide the entrance to the lost city of gold. Sure enough, I pushed the date back and it basically showed the satellite imagery had updated, and that’s why the scorpions were still visible but only at an earlier version of Google Earth. So anyway, these people went out, backpacked, and some of them had never done it before. They tried to get into the lost city, but they never did find it. I do hear of them going back from time to time to continue searching for it. Jo: I love it. I think that’s brilliant. Now, that might be a myth, but there is evidence, as you said, of mining, and also you mentioned the Native American people. Talk a bit more about the Native American people and also the mining in Death Valley Steve: Well, yeah, that’s a good thing to talk about because when we look at human history, we can say it starts with the Timbisha Shoshone. They’ve inhabited the Death Valley region for some 1,000-plus years, so they’ve been there a long time. Then, of course, in modern times, miners came in and tourists came in, and the Timbisha Shoshone found themselves displaced. They seemed to have endured quite a bit of mistreatment and loss of the areas they wanted to live in for about 65 years. But then, in the year 2000, there was the Timbisha Homeland Act that was signed into law, and that gave them back a portion of their ancestral homeland and some of their rights. Hopefully things continue to move positively for them. Then, of course, we might think about mining in Death Valley. That got started in the late 1850s, as far as records can show, and picked up in the successive decades. There was gold, there was silver, there was borax, talc, salt—those were some of the things that were mined in Death Valley. Some good examples of that: Keane Wonder Mine is a really neat place to visit—that’s where you might find that gold was mined. There’s Panamint City, which was famous for the silver that was mined there. There’s Harmony Borax, which is where what’s called “white gold” was mined, and white gold is borax. That proved to be a very successful mining operation and brought a lot of Death Valley history with 20-mule-team wagons hauling out refined borax from 1883 to 1889 on a journey that went over 165 miles to get that borax hauled out of Death Valley. Modern tourism, of course, got started as people began taking an interest in the valley. It was established as a national monument in 1933, and then a national park in 1994. Jo: Mm, yeah. I guess with the indigenous people there, there’s climate change, but you also want people to visit, you want people to appreciate the beauty, and also bring their tourist dollars. So where’s the balance? How can the average tourist visit and have a good time in the park but also respect the people and the land? Steve: Yeah, that’s a great question. I’m glad you brought that up, because it’s so important for visitors to be aware as they come into Death Valley National Park. I think it kind of starts just as you come in, to make sure to pay your entrance fees to provide that financial support to the park and not try to dodge it. Also, just becoming familiar with basic park regulations—which I like to call common-sense things—such as not driving off park roads. For instance, if somebody drives off a park road onto a playa or lake bed or the salt flats, that leaves tire tracks that won’t be worn away for decades, and it also damages the habitat, the life in that soil. So there’s that. It’s just basic things like camping only where you’re supposed to, in designated sites, not leaving graffiti, not picking wildflowers, not collecting rocks or artifacts and taking them home, but leaving them in place for future visitors. Leaving no trace when you’re hiking or backpacking—so not leaving any garbage or anything behind. Also not feeding the wild animals or birds. We haven’t touched on those very much, but protecting them by leaving them to care for themselves naturally. There’s something kind of important going on right now nationally where park employees in Death Valley, as well as other national parks, are being fired for no reason. There’s a downsizing effort underway, and this isn’t coming from within Death Valley but from higher sources. That’s something we really can’t have. In my opinion, we’re underfunded and understaffed in Death Valley, and it hurts the park now and in the long term to not have enough people to properly take care of it. That’s something people can hopefully counteract by writing letters and making phone calls. But yeah, we definitely need our park employees. Jo: Hmm, absolutely. Tell people where they can find your films and what else they can find on your YouTube channel. Steve: Starting in about the year 2020, I shifted gears from doing written hiking reports on my website to actually filming my adventures because I found it more interesting. I have a couple of Death Valley series on my YouTube channel, which is youtube.com/steveHallDV. I have my Death Valley Adventure films, which I’ve currently filmed six of. Those are basically three-plus-day backpacking adventures into locations that very few people have ever been to or seen—really super special places that park visitors don’t usually go to. Those often involve heavy water carries for those three days, because there’s often not water available. Those are quite exciting. It’s quite a privilege to be able to showcase some of these amazing spots that people don’t get to see. Then I have my Death Valley Discovery series, which currently stands at 20 episodes, where I’m going out to places that I, park staff, other hikers, or friends discovered. Again, using the term “discovery” a little lightly, because we don’t claim to be the first people to ever walk through these areas, but we’re the first to publish reports and document them. So that’s what those two series of videos cover. I also hike in places such as the South Pacific and the Arctic on my channel. Jo: Yeah, and it’s a fantastic resource, so go and check that out everyone. Well, thanks so much for your time, Steve. That was great. Steve: Yeah, it was really nice talking with you. I really enjoyed talking with you about Death Valley, and I’ve enjoyed reading your novel, and I’m sure so many people are going to love that. The post Desert Storms and Superblooms: Death Valley With Steve Hall appeared first on Books And Travel.

Why is resilience such an important part of pilgrimage? How can embracing the challenge of the way help in daily life? Why do we need to heed the call to pilgrimage before it’s too late? I’m Jo Frances Penn and in this episode, I share some clips from podcast interviews I’ve done around my new book, Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways. Thanks to Travel Writing World with Jeremy Bassetti, Into the Woods with Holly Worton, and Sacred Steps with Kevin Donahue, podcasts you will enjoy as listeners to this show. As this goes out, Pilgrimage is available now in a special limited edition signed hardback, as well as a paperback, ebook, audiobook narrated by me, large print edition, and a workbook. In this episode, I talk about: Which were the three ancient ways I walked and why they’re interesting even if you’re not religious What I learned along the way The three types of energy you need at the different stages How pilgrimage reminds us we are animals, and how it gives a much-needed perspective on life. In this first clip from the Travel Writing World podcast with Jeremy Bassetti, I talk about the specific pilgrimages I walked and why they’re interesting, even if you’re not religious. Jeremy Bassetti: The book is called Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways. What were the three pilgrimage routes that you took during your walking adventures? Jo Frances Penn: So, I did the Pilgrims’ Way first, which is from Southwark Cathedral in London to Canterbury Cathedral in the southeast of England. And that’s the route of The Canterbury Tales, which I’m sure people have heard of, medieval tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and it was about visiting the shrine of Thomas Becket who was martyred under Henry II. And it was the pandemic and it was also the 850-year anniversary of the Becket martyrdom. So that kind of helped me decide to do that one. I couldn’t go and do the Camino during the pandemic because of course we couldn’t travel. And also, I’d highly recommend it as an easy route for a first multi-day solo. JFPenn on the sand crossing to Lindisfarne Then the second one was the St Cuthbert’s Way from Melrose in Scotland to Lindisfarne, Holy Island on the northeast coast of England. And St. Cuthbert was a medieval monk and a bishop. And, I wrote about Lindisfarne in my thriller Day of the Vikings, so I really wanted to do that and that was a spectacular route. I highly recommend the Cuthbert’s. Then finally there was the Camino, a goal I’ve had for several decades, and I did the Camino de Santiago Portuguese Coastal route from Porto in Portugal, up to Santiago De Compostela. I feel like the Camino is quite mythical for many people and certainly for me. And when I had COVID the year before, in 2021, and I was really sick and I realized that maybe one day I would not be able to walk — obviously at some point none of us will be able to walk, right, we will be dead! — and I thought, well, if I don’t do this now, maybe I’ll never do it. And I have said I wanted to do it for many years and now I’ve got to do it. So I committed and I’m so glad I did that route finally, and it really enabled me to finish the book, but yes, those were the three. Jeremy Bassetti: So I mean, these three pilgrimage routes that you mentioned here, that you went on, all have religious connotations, but you mentioned in the book that you are more secular-minded. How have you come to understand the act of pilgrimage from this secular position or perspective? Jo Frances Penn: Well, I am not a Christian, although I have a chapter in the book about my faith history. Many of us have this faith history by midlife, you know, an experience of finding God and losing him again or whatever that means to the individual. But I’m certainly spiritual. I consider myself spiritual and I mean, you talk about genius loci, the spirit of the place. And I absolutely have had moments of connection with whatever we want to call it, the universe or God if you want, in different places. And certainly did on these routes too. So while I am secular — as in I don’t adhere to a particular religion — I absolutely respect people of faith. I have a master’s degree in Theology, and pretty much all my fiction is based on religion and I love religious places. What is wonderful about these pilgrimage routes, these ancient ways, is that people have walked these particular routes in Europe for a thousand years, and that’s what gives them a lot of resonance. It also means they’re packed full of amazing churches and cathedrals and beautiful architecture. And I love architecture. I’m a super fan of architecture. So I guess the pilgrimage aspect is both the walking from here to here, the historical side of it, and the beautiful places along the way. Canterbury Cathedral Ceiling Photo by JFPenn My discussion with Jeremy continues into why walking is healing and why pilgrimage in particular can heal deeper wounds of the soul, how the gifts of pilgrimage come with hindsight, why we travel, and how to figure out what kind of travel book to write. You can listen to the rest of the episode on Travel Writing World on your favorite podcast app. Jeremy also has interviews with travel writers like Pico Iyer, Colin Thubron, and many more on his show, or check out his website TravelWritingWorld.com In this next section, I’m interviewed by Holly Worton on her Into The Woods Podcast, which is fantastic for solo adventures, pushing your comfort zone in the outdoors and in life, and generally has lots of interviews with people about all kinds of travel. In this clip, we talk about what I learned from pilgrimage including the aspect of memento mori, and then the three types of energy involved in a pilgrimage. *** Holly Worton: What did you learn from your pilgrimages? What did you get out of them? Because I know you’d said that you walked them during very challenging times, which of course the entire world was going through Jo Frances Penn: Yes, well, I think the biggest thing was resilience. And again, I mean, you talk about this with the solo adventures and or anything that pushes your comfort zone. So, for example, I’ve done a lot of walking holidays with tour companies like Exodus, and I’m reasonably fit. So the walking aspect is one thing, but doing it alone is difficult. And in fact, you recommended the NNAS navigation course. Holly: Yes, of course. Jo: I went on one of those. Because I was like, ‘I don’t know how to read a map.’ Well, I did in Girl Guides, but you know, it’s been a long time. So I re-skilled. And then it was facing up to the fears around being alone or getting lost, which I did — and getting sick. I didn’t get sick on the walks but of course, the fear of sickness while walking during the beginning of the pandemic, particularly when none of us had got it yet. We were very afraid, even though now we know there was hardly any round at that time, but it kind of emerged. Walking in pain was a challenge. So on the Camino, I had pretty bad blisters the second week and you have to get up every morning and you’re like, ‘I really don’t want to walk on these feet,’ but I’m going to do it anyway. So yes, I think this gift of structure, the boundaries, the resilience of learning new things. Just the escape from daily life is also really important and that perspective that we talked about. And then the other thing that I always think about a lot is the memento mori idea of, “remember, you will die,” but in a positive way, as in life is short, so make the most of it. I think it’s much more obvious on pilgrimage routes because for example, if you go to Southwark Cathedral in London, at the start of the Pilgrim’s Way, that has been a church for a thousand years, and then you get to Canterbury and again, it’s been there since medieval times. You walk through these places and you realize how many other people have been here or the people who built those sculptures. And what’s interesting at Southwark and Canterbury, and you rarely see such things, but there are these two cadaver tombs. That’s what they’re called. The tombs have a cadaver on. Normally if you see a medieval tomb or any kind of tomb, there’s maybe a knight lying on the top in full armor or a noble person with all their robes, and they look like a living human lying down on a bed or something. Cadaver monument of Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury (died 1443), Canterbury Cathedral. Photo by JFPenn But both Southwark and Canterbury have these cadaver tombs where the figure on the top is a dead body. And this is very rare. In Canterbury it’s even more unusual because it’s like bunk beds. The Archbishop built this while he was alive, so he could look at it every time he preached. On the bottom level is him as a cadaver naked except for a little shroud. Then on the bunk bed above is him dressed in his full archbishop’s finery. Obviously, it’s meant to teach you that it doesn’t matter what you are in life. One day you will just be this dead body and you will turn to dust. And I find this invigorating and it helps me live every day better because I know I’m going to die. And it was weird on the Camino because it was the second or third day of my Camino when Queen Elizabeth II died. And so I walked the route, and that whole week the TVs were full of her life. So often we look at ourselves in the mirror and we might see a picture of us as younger people and be like, oh, you know, I’m getting old, or whatever. But there are pictures of the Queen her entire life, and they were all on TV, so you could actually see this woman’s life from child to middle age to death. And it was that memento mori idea again that we remember as we walk and to make the most of these things while we’re alive. Because one day I will not be able to walk the Camino or another pilgrimage. So do the things you want to do while you still can — but in a positive way! Graves in Boxley churchyard, Kent, England Photo by JFPenn Holly Worton: So in your book, you talk about the three stages of a pilgrimage, and I really like this perspective. So what are they? Jo Frances Penn: The first one is starting energy, which is turning it from a dream into a goal. So it took me like 20 years to actually book the Camino, 25 years or whatever. So it’s the organization, it’s booking time off, it’s training, it’s getting past those fears and obstacles. It’s figuring out all the practical stuff because you think, oh yes, I’ll just be walking and I’ll have my spiritual moments, but there’s a hell of a lot of practical stuff to actually get it going. So starting energy is everything up to the night before and then pushing through energy is once you are actually on the route. It’s ‘I really want to give up because I’m in pain’ or I’m actually injured, or I’m really, really bored with wearing the same clothes and washing them every day and the same food, the same bread, you know, whatever. Holly: It’s the other challenges along the way, like the Camino you mentioned being busy — Jo: Yes, those last few days are busy and I was annoyed at other pilgrims, I was like, I am so annoyed that this pilgrim is playing music. Or I’m annoyed that there are literally a hundred pilgrims ahead of me. I can see them all on the path, and I do not like this. And that was a challenge in itself because whereas the Cuthbert’s, for example, I was alone on a hill in a storm. And that’s a completely different challenge. But that pushing through energy is, “I am going to finish. I can do this, I will get through this. I just need to put one foot in front of the other and keep going.” JFPenn in rain on the final full day of the St Cuthbert’s Way So that’s the pushing through energy that gets you to the end. And then the finishing energy is that return, and the reflection and learning the lessons. Maybe it’s printing the pictures that you did or taking your journal and turning it into something else, facing the questions that you thought of while you were on the walk. Because when you get home, what happens is you put your clothes in the wash. That’s like one of the first things that you do. You get all the crap out of your backpack and you give your partner a cuddle and you cuddle your pets and then you log onto your email and you start all the backlog of stuff you need to catch up on and paying bills, and it’s very easy to just get back and get on with life. But you need that finishing energy to review what happened because the gifts of pilgrimage take some time. It’s so weird because I thought I would write three guidebooks like you have your guidebooks, your reflective books, and yet this book, it just wouldn’t come. I couldn’t figure it out. And then when I finished my Camino, I finally understood what the pattern was and what I learned from all three routes. So the subtitle is Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways. And I almost feel like I couldn’t have learned those lessons without all three of them. And I say in the book, if you don’t feel that there are any gifts from your pilgrimage, then perhaps you haven’t walked enough. Maybe you need to go on another pilgrimage. I thought I could change my life with a weekend walk but no, it took longer than I expected. *** You can listen to the rest of the episode on the Into The Woods Podcast on your favorite podcast app — and Holly and I talk about why pilgrimage is different to other long-distance walks, some of the interesting historical and spiritual aspects, how we both remember reading Paulo Coelho’s Pilgrimage book back in the 90s, how we both enjoy the feeling of insignificance, why we have to revisit the memories of our trips or they fade away, and much more. Holly’s show is one I personally listen to and I think you’ll enjoy the range of her interviews. She also has guidebooks to solo walking routes like The Ridgeway and more, and she has been on this podcast before in episode 42 about solo walking — In fact, my discussions with Holly about her adventures and her books helped inspire my own, so definitely check out her show. J.F. Penn with Kevin Donahue on Sacred Steps Podcast talking about pilgrimage In this final clip, I talk to Kevin Donahue on the Sacred Steps Podcast which is all about pilgrimage, and Kevin has had some fantastic guests on to talk about lots of different routes, and he’s also been on this show in episode 86 talking about his pilgrimages. We almost met in person as we crossed the sands to Lindisfarne just days apart, but we never quite made it, so it was lovely to talk again. You can listen as a podcast or watch the interview on YouTube. In this segment, we talk about how pilgrimage reminds us we are animals, and how it gives a much-needed perspective on life. *** Kevin: How has this series of walks and these journeys influenced or impacted your sense of spirituality? Jo Frances Penn: There’s a book in the Bible that I really like, Ecclesiastes. It’s one of my favorite books in the Bible. And I have a Master’s in Theology even though I’m not a Christian anymore. But there’s a quote that I actually put into the book, “As for humans, God tests them so they might know they are animals.” And I just love that quote because that to me is something I need to remember. My animal body is what walks a pilgrimage. And my spiritual mind and my intellectual mind are part of my physical body. And I feel like so much sometimes, like you and I, we are not physically in the same space. We can see each other, but we’re connecting with our minds across this virtual space. And yet, pilgrimage is such a physical journey. JFPenn on the Camino out of Arcade And also I was going through the female experience of midlife, hormonal changes, which have a very animal effect. You are just completely out of control. You are like, what the hell is happening to me? And I have no control over this. And then like we mentioned, the tides and all these transient things and the idea of memento mori. So when I walked the Camino Portuguese, Queen Elizabeth II died in the UK and as I walked every day that week, her pictures were on all the TVs that you walked past in the cafes and stuff. So they showed her whole life, the beautiful young woman who ascended the throne across the challenges of midlife to her old age, her husband dying, and her dying. And it was like, I’m not a queen, but I’m another woman. And I see this woman’s life and it will all end, and to me that is so important to remember for my spiritual side. It’s a sense of being part of this wonderful world and this amazing universe, whether you believe God created it or not. The sense of being an animal walking across the face of the world and nothing else matters. Like that’s the thing. Nothing else matters. Now, of course, everything matters. Your family matters. My husband matters. My cats matter, my work matters. But when you are walking a pilgrimage and you have that simple life — and the gratitude. I am so grateful for this cold beer or this shade of this tree or the hot shower when I’m really sweaty and it’s gross and I just want a shower or the painkillers. I’m so grateful for the pharmaceutical industry, for my blister plasters and my painkillers, and my Albarino wine and like all those things. It’s that perspective. That’s what it comes down to. Being able to hold onto that perspective when everything feels overwhelming and you’re just like, what is the point? And then you realize this is the point. The point is being an animal in the world. *** I hope you found those clips interesting, and you can listen to the complete episodes on the podcast feeds for Travel Writing World with Jeremy Bassetti, Into the Woods with Holly Worton, and Sacred Steps with Kevin Donahue. Pilgrimage is available now in a special limited edition signed hardback, as well as a paperback, ebook, audiobook narrated by me, large print edition, and a workbook. Happy travels until next time. 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In this wide-ranging interview, Emily Thomas talks about the importance of perspective and time in travel writing, how sublime moments of pleasurable terror make travel so interesting, how to overcome fears both real and imaginary, as well as the ethics of doom tourism, and how VR (virtual reality) might change how we travel in future. Dr. Emily Thomas is an associate professor in philosophy at Durham University in England. She’s also the author of several books, including The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad. Traveling is about experiencing otherness, going to places that are new and unfamiliar and trying to figure out how to make sense of them Sublime moments in travel as a kind of pleasurable terror Tackling fears, both real and imagined Research before a trip, and arriving in Malawi, Africa How do travel books blur the line between fiction and nonfiction, and why is this so important to address stereotypes “There is no view from nowhere.” Perspective in travel writing Maps as processes, and how they change over time. The importance of knowing ‘when’ a book was written and the perspective of the writer. Doom tourism How VR (virtual reality) might improve aspects of travel, and what we want to keep as in-person experiences Recommended travel books You can find Emily at www.EmilyThomasWrites.co.uk and on Twitter @emilytwrites Shareable and header image generated by Jo Frances Penn on Midjourney. Transcript of interview (lightly edited) Jo Frances Penn Dr. Emily Thomas is an associate professor in philosophy at Durham University in England. She’s also the author of several books, including The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad, which we’re talking about today. So welcome, Emily. Emily Thomas Hello. It’s a pleasure to be here. Jo Frances Penn I’m excited to talk about this topic. What drew you to write a book about travel and philosophy, since one seems quite internal, and the other one quite external? Emily Thomas That’s right. So I have been a professional philosopher for more than 10 years, but far longer than that I have been a backpacker. So I did buckets of traveling when I was younger. And at some point, when I was writing about philosophy, I began wondering, does philosophy have anything to say about travel? Is there some way that I can bring these two parts of my life together, and I started doing some research. And to my delight, I found that philosophy has lots to say about travel. And that was how the book was born. Jo Frances Penn What does travel mean to you? Emily Thomas For me, traveling is all about experiencing otherness. It’s all about going to places that are new and unfamiliar. And trying to figure out how to make sense of them, how to map them on to the world that you do know. My best travel experiences have actually been ones where I have gone to some place where I haven’t understood anything around me. Not not the language, not what’s going on in the street, not the social cues and I have very slowly, by reading and talking to people, come to put the pieces together and come to understand the place. Jo Frances Penn That’s interesting. So you have otherness and the new and the unfamiliar. Does that mean that for you, traveling say within England, doesn’t count as travel? Emily Thomas There are definitely places within England that I don’t know at all and might give me that travel unfamiliarity experience. But you’re right, I think that to be really immersed in the unknown for me, I’m going to have to go farther afield than that. Jo Frances Penn Absolutely. So you have this chapter on sublime tourism, which is so often the special moments we remember, rather than all the difficulties around it. Tell us a bit more about some of your own sublime moments in travel. Emily Thomas So I should explain that I use the word sublime in a technical way, to mean a very specific kind of feeling that was picked out by 18th-century Irish philosopher Edmund Burke. When you have a sublime feeling, it’s a kind of pleasurable terror. So it’s the kind of enjoyable fear that you get from standing close to a waterfall, but not too close. You can feel the spray on your face, but you’re not actually afraid of falling over. And I had definitely had a lot of those kinds of moments whilst traveling that often because I’ve done almost all my traveling by myself, just rocking up in a new place that I find really terrifying. And also really exciting on the other. I think the first time I really powerfully experienced that. I was 18. And I spent a couple of months wandering around China, the very first time I arrived in a big new city, and I stepped out of the hotel room, just not understanding anything that was going on around me it was really scary, but also exhilarating. Forbidden City, Beijing. Photo licensed from BigStockPhoto Jo Frances Penn That’s really interesting that you call it that ‘pleasurable terror.’ And in the book, you also quote Camus, “what gives the value to travel is fear.” And it’s interesting. You talk there about terror, you’re using the word fear in the book. What are some of the fears that you’ve had to face? When have they been real? When have they been imagined? Emily Thomas Some of the fears, I think, are very reasonable to have and they are not pleasurable. So for example, walking through a city by yourself where you’re conscious that it’s not very safe, that the crime rates are very high, and you’re afraid of being attacked or mugged. That’s not fun. They are not imagined fears either. But I think there are other fears are more exciting. And in a pleasurable way. I might have a fear that if I walk into a city I don’t know very well. I’m going to get lost. Well, actually, really, what’s the worst that’s going to happen? You know, I get lost it and I ended up asking for directions in a coffee shop or something. The feeling of oh, maybe I could be lost. That’s quite nice. Have I personally been in some scrapes? I have. What especially springs to mind when people ask me that question. I was once in a taxi in Zimbabwe that caught fire, and the driver refused to pull over. It was just there was smoke, I mean, we could see flames on the bonnet. And he was like, no, it’ll be fine, like we don’t have to stop the car. Jo Frances Penn Oh, wow. Okay. So you’ve talked about solo travel, and fear of being attacked, specifically as a solo woman. I mean, that can happen if one is just in London late at night or in Newcastle late at night or something. I mean, that doesn’t have to be a foreign fear. But if it’s in a foreign country, it feels like things will just be more difficult, even like asking someone where the bathroom is, like when I traveled in India, that can be a moment of fear. How can we overcome some of these fears in order to travel to new places? Emily Thomas I’ve recently been reading about stoicism, which is a particular kind of philosophy dating back to Roman times. And one of the suggestions they have is that when you’re afraid of something, you should actually sit down in your mind and work through what could possibly happen. Like what is the worst case scenario? And how would you deal with that, if that comes up. And I personally get scared by the unknown. So the idea of landing in a new place that I find quite scary, I find it scary, because I have no idea what to expect when I’m there. But if I actually really go back and start thinking, Okay, this is where I want to go. And okay, and this is how taxis or whatever it might work here. The more knowledge that I have about the place that I find that the fear goes away. It’s like horror movies, right? You know, the unseen monster or ghost is always much scarier than when you actually see the ridiculous special effects that the producer has drummed up for your movie entertainment delight, Jo Frances Penn Which is why you don’t often see the monster — then the actual fear is like, Oh, right. It’s just another vampire. Emily Thomas Yeah, exactly. Right. Jo Frances Penn That’s really interesting that you say that in terms of a guidebook, for example. So let’s put that under the category of research. You can research a place and for me, it’s like I often I will research lots of places, but then I just concentrate on getting off the plane to the first night’s accommodation. And even if I’m doing more free-range travel, I will have a first night’s accommodation booked. And also as a solo woman traveler, I will make sure the plane arrives at a time of day that is appropriate. I had a terrible experience arriving at 2 am in Tel Aviv, Israel, back in the early 90s. And the war with Iraq was going on. And it was honestly one of the scariest times. I was in a new city. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I was before the internet, etc. So you’ve just arrived in Malawi in Africa, which I have talked about on the show in episode 1 because I went to school there. Jo Frances Penn in Malawi in the early 1980s How has this research and discovery process worked with Malawi? Emily Thomas One thing that makes this trip a bit different for me is that I’m actually living here for a few months. So rather than traveling around moving on every night or two, that I’m actually settling in. It was quite similar in some ways, I had the first couple of nights’ accommodation booked, but then I had to go out and look at apartments to set myself up. And now it’s a case of really trying to understand how basic things work. So things I was not expecting include there are many power cuts every day. And so it is not a good idea, for example, if you are working as I am to let your laptop go very low on battery, because otherwise when the next power cut comes you might run out of battery quite quickly. So really, really basic things about how to live here is what I’m now trying to get to grips with. Jo Frances Penn I think money is something really interesting because before the pandemic, one would turn up in various countries and you might have been able to get some local currency or you just take US dollars or another currency that people accept. But what I’ve discovered is post-pandemic, even really out-of-the-way places take mobile payments or digital payments. And of course, Africa has a lot of mobile payments. So how’s the money working? I know it’s very practical, but money is a big deal, right? Emily Thomas It is a really big deal. And you’re absolutely right. I’m making payments via mobile phone payments, which is not something I have ever done before in the UK. I’ve had to download the correct apps and figure out how it works. And part of the issue is that people want to avoid the government taking a slice out of certain payment apps. So they always want you to use their particular payment app, but the government takes less money. It has been a learning curve. And I definitely find post-COVID people want to handle objects less, including notes and coins. That is a big deal. And so electronic payments are hugely on the rise. Jo Frances Penn Another thing you talk about in the book — obviously, you’re a professional philosopher, which sounds just amazing — is about truth with a little t. And then truth with a capital T. You say in the book that “travel books often blur the line between fiction and nonfiction.” What are your thoughts on the truth of travel books/guides/memoir, especially if we’re using them to research places before we go? Emily Thomas Which we are doing all the time. Okay, so what I mean by this is, so with nonfiction writing, we tend to think of it as being very factual, you know, the temperature was 32 degrees today, and this place lives at a certain longitude and latitude. But travel books, even though they are within the nonfiction genre, actually, they are using many, many devices from fiction. They are using metaphor or hyperbole, that kind of thing. Travel books often have a plot, where they will start you off at one point in time and then the author backtracks a little bit to kind of give a bit more context. And then we move forwards in time again. And all these devices borrow from fiction, they obviously serve to make the travel book much more readable, but they also begin blurring the line. And I think one of the important consequences of that is that we get more and more of the author’s own perspective, as they are experiencing the place and writing the book. If we were to have this list of facts, temperature and longitude, that there’s very little of the author in that, that when we begin to have the author saying, ‘Oh, I saw a hippopotamus in person for the first time and its skin was like this, and its teeth were like this,’ that we’re really starting to get the author’s window on to the world. And then that becomes quite non-factual. And that’s part of writing a good story. But it’s also part of what makes travel writing a bit unusual as a nonfiction genre. Jo Frances Penn So often, books can be written from a romantic point of view, or a way to try and perhaps make the author seem a certain way. And of course, we understand that writing is also editing. So you don’t put in a lot of the stuff that happened because it doesn’t fit whatever overarching narrative you have. I have a particular place in mind, which is Venice. [Note from Jo: Check out my solo episode: Myth and Reality: Beauty and Decay in Venice.] St Marks Basilica, Venice. Photo by J.F.Penn I’ve been to Venice three times. And the third time was by far the best. But when I went the first time, I feel like all the writing I’ve ever read on Venice, it was just completely wrong. In my experience, I got there, it was flooded. I’ve never read a book about the flooding, and how much it stank of the sewers, and how overcrowded it was, and those huge tourist ships, and it really impacted my experience. How should we approach reading travel fiction or just travel books in general? Do we just have to take them with a pinch of salt? Emily Thomas Yes, we absolutely have to take them with a pinch of salt. I think travel books are always written with the author’s particular vision in mind. When you arrive, you may well have a very different outlook on that. And you’re certainly right. Venice is one of those places that has been so heavily romanticized that in a way, it’s difficult to see how the reality can live up to those romantic images of it. And I mean it historically, if we go back before the 17th century into medieval travel, travel writing was absolutely chock full of lies, you know, people describe going to the Middle East and encountering dragons or great whales that come off out of the sea, and they’re sort of wandering around on the local coasts. And the Mandeville Travels describes meeting people with the heads of dogs. A lot of this is coming from the idea that whatever is unknown, we can somehow fill in the gaps. And there’s less of that today, partly because the world is more known, but it’s not entirely gone, and our brains are still filling in gaps. Jo Frances Penn Absolutely. And I wonder, I mean again, Malawi — if people don’t know it’s in southeast Africa, but landlocked — and Africa is one of these continents that I feel travel writing has impacted, I would say negatively, because so many popular-cited travel books are old. And they see Africa — which of course, is not monolithic, it’s very diverse — but many show Africa in a way that perhaps it was 40 years ago, but so much has changed in the last decade in terms of what’s happening in Africa. How can we write responsibly about places to change stereotypes, or when we read, question those stereotypes? Emily Thomas That’s a really great question. I would start by saying travel books are about places, but they are also always about time. So it is always about the author’s experience of traveling to Malawi in 1970, or 2020, or wherever it might be. When we are all reading travel books, we must bear in mind the date that they were published, that’s going to have a big impact on how we approach them. Of course, I’m a historian of philosophy, so I’m going to stress the importance of dates. With regards to changing stereotypes or leaving us to question them, I think that good writers should be conscious of stereotypes as they are writing and flag them up. That seems like something that the best travel writers do, actually, they approach people as individuals, and if there are stereotypes, they are mentioning them in order to deconstruct them. Jo Frances Penn Well, then I have another challenge for you because you said that travel is about otherness. And when we are ‘Other,’ I feel like we almost see things that people who live in a country don’t see. Like when I go to America and I walk into a grocery store, I’m just ‘how are there 10 fridges full of different sodas?’ It’s a tiny thing, but I notice that and an American would not notice that. And so when we are commenting on other places as we travel, I also worry in this time when we need more diverse voices, can you and I as white English women write about Malawi? And how does that compare to a Malawian author writing about Malawi? Emily Thomas If I were to read two books, one written by a white English woman and one written by a Malawian author that I would 100% be looking to the Malawi author as the authoritative tome, but I don’t think that means that we shouldn’t do it. You can only ever write from your perspective. All writing is written from a perspective, and that’s the same whether it’s me writing about Malawi, or someone from Blantyre going to the UK and writing about England. There is no view from nowhere. The trick is to write from your perspective, being conscious that you are writing from a perspective. So if I were to go to the US and write about how staggered I am by the sheer number of soda fridges, I should be overt about that, of course, be honest, I find this astonishing, because I’m from the UK, if I was from somewhere else, maybe I wouldn’t. Jo Frances Penn It’s funny, isn’t it? And I mean, I feel the same way. I think we have to write from whatever perspective we have. Let’s talk about maps, because I love that you start actually start the book with chapters on that. I love maps, I’ve got a map of the world here in front of me on my wall. It is something that I find really important, and I’ve even written a fantasy trilogy about walking through maps. Detail of the Mappa Mundi Hereford cathedral Photo by JFPenn You question in the book, “Are maps things or processes?” What do you mean by that? Emily Thomas In philosophy, we draw a distinction between things that are static, so chairs, teacups, trees, versus things that are dynamic and continually changing processes, like thunderstorms, or running rivers. And what I find fascinating about maps, or one of the many things I find fascinating about them, is that I always assumed that a map was a static thing. You know, it’s something that you hold in your hand and you look at it much like a teapot, and that’s the end of it. But there are some philosophers who’ve argued that actually maps are much closer to processes. And in defense of this view, they asked us to consider things like Google Maps. So Google Maps are being continually updated, as are all these online mapping software. And then the question is, does that mean that there’s a new map that’s coming into existence? Like once every second or so? Or is it rather, it’s the same map that’s continually changing? And when you begin to think of maps, like that, I can then begin to think of other maps, perhaps written on paper, but also continually being updated. So famously during the Second World War in London, there are some maps in the British Museum that were updated as buildings were bombed. So as buildings were removed, people would change the map to reflect the new reality. Jo Frances Penn I was just looking at the wall on my wall. It’s an older Mercator projection. And Malawi’s still labeled as Nyasaland, which was its previous name. And of course, that’s what’s so weird, isn’t it? You can look at a map, even like Europe’s changed a lot. I mean, Europe’s changing right? Now we have a war on, who knows where that will end up — but it’s like these countries appear and disappear, and borders move. I’ve got this map on my wall. It looks static, and yet borders move all the time. You say in the book, “maps are objects of power.” So what do we need to keep in mind in terms of who drew the map, and in terms of power shifts over time? Emily Thomas So maps are always trying to tell us things. And they can tell us things in quite subtle ways. So, for example, whatever is placed at the center of the map is given a feeling of geopolitical force. In historical maps, perhaps that was Jerusalem, or Athens, and today, if you look at world maps produced in Europe, Europe is usually at the center of the map. If you look at world maps produced by China, or the US, those countries will be at the center of the map. And that’s telling you a lot about how the map maker sees the world. And what maps do and don’t represent, and also tells you a lot about the social power that the map maker is outlining. So whether they are including castles or churches or huts belonging to peasants or not, that tells you about what they’re trying to do. There are some really striking examples of maps being used to persuade people about where the lines of power lie in the world. So for example, historically, you can see lots of maps of the same place with borders drawn differently, and that’s because the map maker is trying to convince you that here is where the border is, my country is really at this is an even today, depending on where you are in the world. If you access Google Maps, the borders will shift depending on your local country’s attitude towards disputed territories — Jo Frances Penn — which is just crazy. I don’t think I knew that before I read that in your book. I was like, okay, that’s weird. But I mean, why would it be any different because, for example, we travel to New Zealand a lot, because my husband’s a New Zealander, so we have family there. And when we look at prices for flights here in the UK, we get a completely different price than if we’re in New Zealand, even if we’re booking London to Auckland, for example. Loads of things change when your physical location is known to advertisers. But it’s kind of disturbing, in a way, isn’t it? The way that borders shift? I mean, again, on the map I’m looking at there is absolutely no way it reflects the actual size of the countries. The African continent has often made much smaller, hasn’t it? Emily Thomas Absolutely. Which is this famous problem with Mercator projection, that it makes the southern countries smaller in the northern ones, the ones closer to the center of the map, and Europe is subtly pushed towards the center of the map. It makes them bigger. And there are various projections that seek to address these concerns. And when you see the size of Africa represented, as it really is proportionate to Europe, and North America, it’s quite a shock because it is in fact, a gigantic continent. And it’s not this smaller, sort of squeezed thing that you get on the Mercator projection. Jo Frances Penn Absolutely. So there’s so many things I want to talk to you about, but I want to come to Doom Tourism. You have a chapter on Doom tourism and which incorporates things like dark tourism to outfits for example, or but also places like the Maldives that might disappear or will disappear with climate change. Tell us about Doom Tourism? Should we travel at all? Or should we all just stay home? Emily Thomas In principle, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing tourism or dark tourism. So the idea of going to see a place before it’s destroyed because it’s doomed in some way. I think why not? That sounds fine to me. You know, you can imagine there’s a rainbow outside your door, someone’s calling to you, come and look at it before it’s gone. That just seems absolutely fine. Where it gets ethically tricky is when we are traveling to places and the very act of traveling is contributing to the doom of the place in question. That’s a really classic example is glaciers or underwater coral reefs. So when we visit a glacier, in addition to the CO2 that we may spend getting there, trampling all over the glacier can be harmful to it in various ways. If the ice is degrading anyway, then people walking all over it can hasten that. The same with visiting coral reefs, you know, there are many articles on the internet ’10 places you should visit before they die off due to climate change.’ And lots of coral reefs are on the list. But again, the very act of visiting the reefs can damage them, and then it starts to feel unethical to visit these doomed places. Union Glacier in Antarctica. Photo Licensed from BigStockPhoto Jo Frances Penn Yeah, and that’s why this idea of virtual reality or augmented reality could be great for travel. So I have scuba dived on the Barrier Reef and in Western Australia as well on Ningaloo Reef. And I learned later about how suncream on your skin can contribute to things. And yet, I remember those scuba diving in those places very vividly. They are highlights in my memory. But I absolutely think that VR scuba diving is what I want to do. I haven’t dived for about a decade, like I’m really not that interested anymore in all the gear and all the boat sickness and all of that. So, to me, a brilliant thing would be virtual reality scuba diving to go see the coral reefs. But taking that further, what do you think of the future of travel in terms of virtual reality? Emily Thomas I think there’s going to be a lot more VR travel, if for exactly these kinds of reasons. Travel can often be difficult and scary and really inconvenient — and expensive. And I think VR offers us a really safe, cheap alternative. I think lots and lots of people are going to turn to VR for travel, I really do, and I think as VR improves, the more that that will happen. And I find that quite exciting, in part because we can travel to real world places that have been reproduced in VR, but also because we can travel to imaginary worlds that are going to be created for our enjoyment. And I’m looking forward to that as well. I think that will be that will be great. Honestly, that said, for me, part of the value of travel lies in the difficulty and the fear and the inconvenience. And I don’t see myself wanting to give that up. I think rather I want to do both. Jo Frances Penn I agree with you. And I almost split it into two. For example, I went to the Egyptian pyramids back in the early 2000s. And when I see pictures now, it seems a hell of a lot more touristy. And if you go and see the pyramids, it’s the sound and light show, there’s 1000s of people and coaches, and it’s not like the movies, you know. But with a VR tour, I could see the pyramids up close, I could potentially go inside the pyramids, which you cannot do in real life. And that to me is a very touristy experience that would be better off in VR. But walking around the souk in Cairo, for example, or Alexandria, that is not the same. So there’s the experiential thing versus the famous monument thing. Emily Thomas Oh, I like that. I think you’re absolutely right. I think the two can complement each other in that way. I also think there will be a lot of people who would opt for the VR Cairo souk. In addition, it partly because it’s hot, it’s expensive and people are bumping into you. And I think COVID is going to have a big impact on how a lot of people continue to travel. Moving forward, it’s all just going to feel safer. I have also been to the pyramids a little bit later than you, before the light show but post the tourism era. And what I was astonished by was the way that if you stood in precisely the right spot, you could take a photograph just with the pyramids against the background of sand. But if you turned in any other direction, the tourist carnival, the shops. It’s a strange experience. Jo Frances Penn Petra is another place or Angkor Wat, there are so many places where we want to see, not because they’re on ‘lists,’ but because they really are special places. And yet, sometimes you get there and they’re not special, like Venice, a lot of Venice would be better in VR. If you’re listening in Venice, sorry about that! But I mean, it’s so full of tourists. But then we come back to truth with a little t as in, if I make a VR experience of the Cairo souk, for example, I could walk through and record it with a special camera. And that is my experience. But again, we’ve just captured it at one moment in time, or we could then edit it to make it seem more romantic or to fit some stereotype. Will VR again recreate this incorrect version of reality? Emily Thomas Or at the very least it will be a bastion of reality told from someone else’s perspective. I think that that’s absolutely right. Because even if it it’s based on real camera footage, it’s what the camera person chooses to focus on. Are they looking at the vegetables or the jewelry? What they’re panning over? Are they focusing more on the older people or the younger people? All of this is going to be told from a person’s perspective? And if you visited yourself, you would absolutely have a different one. So yeah, it will always be indirect in that sense that there are some VR experiences you can have now where I understand you literally pay a guide to wear a VR helmet or transmit things back to you. And then by telephone, you tell them, could you turn left here, I want to look more at this. So that seems like more that you’d have more control over what you’re seeing, at least in that way. Jo Frances Penn So many interesting things and lots we could talk about, but we’re almost out of time. What are a few books that you recommend either just travel books or philosophy? Emily Thomas My favorite travel book is quite old now, but if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. It’s Eric Newby’s 1958, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. He’s wandering around the mountains of Afghanistan, getting himself into various scrapes. It’s really, really funny. And it’s also very thoughtful. I think that’s great. From a philosophy and travel perspective, my book is in fact, the only book on the philosophy of travel. But if you want to take a related but different angle, that Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel. He explores the way that various artists and novelists have thought about travel. And that’s also a great read, Jo Frances Penn While there are similarities with De Botton, I definitely like yours better. We’ve talked about the themes, I guess, that you bring out in the book. I’m definitely someone who is romantic about travel, and clearly you are too. Travel means a lot to us, and so we naturally come at this with a positive and romantic view of everything. But it’s funny, I’ve also just come back from that walking the Camino de Santiago, the Portuguese route. I’ve been reading Camino books for over two decades — and I’m just writing my own, obviously — but I feel this responsibility to say some things that I don’t feel enough people say about how like busy the route is, and all of this kind of thing. So I’m pretty obsessed with the ‘truth’ of travel writing at the moment, so I think your book really helped. Emily Thomas Thank you. I’m glad. Jo Frances Penn Brilliant. Where can people find you and your book online? Emily Thomas Thank you. So I am on Twitter @emilytwrites. If you want to check out some of my other popular writings, you can look at my website, which is www.EmilyThomasWrites.co.uk. Jo Frances Penn Fantastic. Thanks so much for your time, Emily, that was great. Emily Thomas This has been brilliant. Thank you very much. The post The Meaning of Travel With Emily Thomas appeared first on Books And Travel.

In September 2022, I walked the Camino de Santiago along the Portuguese Coastal route. It was around 300 kilometers from Porto in Portugal north along the coast and then inland to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, which took 14 days of back-to-back walking. I walked alone and carried my pack with everything in it, and I organized my accommodation through Macs Adventure so I knew where I was sleeping every night. I’ve posted a day by day breakdown of the route and my gear list separately, and in this episode, I go through some of my lessons and thoughts from the Way. JFPenn at Farolim de Felgueiras lighthouse, Porto Show notes How walking in the path of history puts life in perspective If you’ve lost direction in life, pilgrimage can help Pilgrimage proves you can do hard things, and that knowledge helps back in your daily life A fusion of sacred and secular The Camino is an industry — and it always has been Your Camino, your way. Practical considerations and tips. Why I needed these last years of walking alone across a seasonal change in my life You’ll find additional reflections and tips in Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways, out now at jfpenn.com/pilgrimage. (1) Walking in the path of history puts life in perspective The cathedral at Santiago de Compostela is almost a thousand years old, and pilgrims have been walking there since medieval times from all over Europe. I started in Porto, Portugal, with its historic center and cathedral on the banks of the river Douro. The route heads north along the coastline past Roman fish-salting vats, and at Matasinhos, there is a sculpture of women wailing as they look out to wrecked boats on the horizon where their fishermen husbands lie beneath the waves. Life retains a familiar rhythm through the ages and some aspects of being human never change. Matasinhos Camino office with statue of grieving fisherwives, Photo by JFPenn Walking every day shrinks life down to its basic elements. Eat, sleep, walk. You appreciate the simple things — shelter from the rain and wind, a hot shower after a long day, painkillers and blister plasters, coffee in the first few hours of the day, or a cold beer when the sun is high, local bread and olive oil when you’re hungry, an encouraging smile from another pilgrim. Once you step away and see how other people live, and experience being uncomfortable, or in pain, somewhere you can’t control your environment, it’s easier to be grateful for what you have and what you will return to. It’s easy to take these comforts for granted until we lose them, even temporarily. I travel partly because it helps me see how insignificant I am on the face of the world, and walking intensifies this feeling as it is so slow. When I look at a map at the end of the day, I see I have only crossed a tiny part of a tiny area in a little corner of the world. I can only move at my pace, which for me is what English walkers call ‘bimbling,’ a relaxed gait, stopping regularly for photos, notes, or coffee when available. When at home, the daily grind of life makes everything feel important and urgent. It’s easy to get stressed about a deadline or the emails that pile up, or the jobs that always need doing. Perspective narrows, even as we worry about the bigger things we can’t control — the economy, war, disease. When on pilgrimage, I am just another human walking on the face of the world, a tiny speck in the grand scheme of things, a flash of light, gone so quickly. The waves of the Atlantic will continue to crash on the shores after my footsteps are washed away. The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela will welcome more pilgrims after I have gone, the same words of the Mass will be spoken by the next generation. I am comforted by my insignificance, and I can return with a perspective on what is truly important. While walking an ancient route like the Camino helps you reflect on mortality, it is almost impossible to comprehend a thousand years of pilgrims walking ahead and many more coming behind. But while I walked, I had a more vivid reminder of memento mori — remember, you will die — as Queen Elizabeth II died. Each day of my Camino was punctuated by snippets of her life on TV in coffee bars and glimpses of newspapers, and I couldn’t help but read the UK papers online when resting at the end of the day. Bom Caminho sign Walking out of Vila Praia de Ancora Photo by JFPenn It was strange to walk outside of my country during such a historically significant week. I remember seeing newly carved statues of the Queen and Prince Philip mounted outside the cathedral in Canterbury on my first pilgrimage in October 2020. The stone was paler than the other sculptures of historic monarchs. The features weren’t weathered — and of course, both were still alive. There was a sense of standing next to living history, as another generation passed, and now they are both gone. I am not an ardent royalist by any means, but the Queen was a constant across my life as she was for many Brits. As I walked, the news was full of pictures of her as a young woman, then middle-aged going through the trials of life, then an old woman at her husband’s funeral, and in her final days, standing bent over and smiling as she welcomed the new Prime Minister, Liz Truss. The span of an extraordinary life against the backdrop of history, much of which I remember over the last 35 years at least. Her life passed by, as will mine and yours. Even a Queen cannot hold back the end. I walked into Santiago de Compostela on the day of the funeral and I watched her coffin lowered into the vault at Windsor Castle as I rested in my hotel that afternoon. It was a fitting end to my pilgrimage and underscored the sense that something must die for change to happen, and new life can emerge from the ashes of the old. (2) If you’ve lost direction in life, pilgrimage can help A pilgrimage is a clear task with a clear direction. You have a starting point and a destination and if you follow the way-markers and the guide book, you have a route to get there. You might get lost for a short time, but if you keep going, you will reach the end. Once you are on the trail, whatever that might be, the pilgrim’s day is much the same. Wake up, wash and get dressed. Check feet, tape and plaster blisters as best you can before putting on socks and walking shoes/boots. Take painkillers if you need to. Pack your bag. Eat breakfast, or pick up some food to take for the day. Walk, maybe alone, maybe with others. Stop for coffee/food/beer depending on the time of day and facilities en route. Walk. Rest. Walk. Arrive at accommodation. Shower while washing sweaty, smelly clothes. Hang clothes to dry. Check feet and dress blisters. Take painkillers if you need to. Eat dinner, maybe alone, maybe with others. Rest and sleep. JFPenn near Labruges Portugal This daily repetition is a blessing of pilgrimage, as it simplifies life to its basics. You have no purpose but to get up and walk, and if you make it to your destination for the night, you have achieved your goal. The daily difficulties of normal life fade as you deal with the immediate issues of pain and hunger and exhaustion. You sleep satisfied, and tomorrow you get up and do it again. Pilgrimage creates clear boundaries, and that can be a great comfort in difficult times. (3) Pilgrimage proves you can do hard things, and that knowledge helps back in your daily life You need ‘starting energy’ to plan and organize your trip, to turn it from a dream or a goal into reality. Many people fall at this first hurdle and you need to overcome obstacles and fears to get even as far as the starting point. You need to book time away from normal life and since most of the Camino routes are a physical challenge, you also need to train in preparation. I’ve been wanting to walk a Camino for more than twenty years, and I only found my ‘starting energy’ since the pandemic put the brevity of life into perspective. I know how it feels to say ‘some day,’ but that day will never come unless you make a decision, book a route or a flight, and commit. Once you begin, you need ‘pushing through’ energy, especially on the days when you’re tired and in pain and emotionally broken and you just want to give up. I woke up on the eighth day of my Camino in the village of Oia, Spain. A hurricane had blown in the night before, cutting the power to the village as I lay in bed listening to the violence of the wind and rain. When I woke, it was still dark and rain pounded down outside. As I taped my feet and plastered my blisters, I wondered what the hell I was doing. I did not want to walk out into the storm, especially when every step was painful. I still had seven more days of walking to get to Santiago de Compostela, and given the state of my feet, it would only get harder. But pilgrimage is not a holiday. It is meant to be a challenge — and part of the challenge is not giving up. A long-distance walk is a test of stamina. Each day might be a manageable distance in itself, and nothing too challenging for a single day’s walking, but day after day — especially on the stones of the Portuguese route — the fatigue and pain compound. Stony back streets at Carreco Photo by JFPenn It’s easy to give up on the Camino, as you can call a taxi at most accommodation and other places along the route each day. Many people choose to skip a stage and take transport to their next hotel, so the temptation is always there — and if you truly need help, then, of course, you must take it. But I know the difference between the ‘normal’ pain of long-distance walking and acute ‘something is definitely wrong’ pain. At times like these, when the struggle is more mental than physical, I write in my journal. Some might pray, but I find solace and answers in writing. I moan a lot and list all the things that hurt and why I want to stop and give up and go home. Then I write about why I am walking and why I should continue. I know this pain is temporary and it will fade, but the pride in finishing will be mine for the rest of my life. I write my affirmations over and over again: I am strong. I can do hard things. I will finish. That morning in Oia, I took some painkillers, put on my rain gear, and headed out into the storm. JFPenn walking out of Oia in the rain This ‘pushing through’ energy will get you to your destination and help you overcome obstacles along the way. Then you need ‘finishing energy’ to return home and reflect on the experience, to bring the lessons of the Camino to the rest of your life. It’s too easy to arrive home, put your pack away and your clothes in the wash, then catch up on the inevitable life admin and everything you’ve missed. By the time your blisters have healed, you may have already forgotten the lessons of the Way, and finishing energy is needed to find the gold and incorporate it into your life. It might be re-reading your journal, or going through your photos and printing those that still resonate. It might be taking action on a decision you made on your walk. Don’t just slip back into life as if nothing has changed. The gifts of pilgrimage take time to emerge so allow space for them. This episode is part of my finishing energy and I’m also writing a book on pilgrimage, which includes lessons from the Pilgrims’ Way and the St Cuthbert’s Way in addition to the Camino. It will be out in 2023, so depending on when you’re listening, check out www.JFPenn.com/pilgrimage for links. (4) A fusion of sacred and secular A pilgrimage is a journey to a place of meaning. The Camino was originally for Christians who walked to the relics of St James to atone for their sin, or to ask for healing or intercession with God, but it is more of a secular experience these days. It certainly was for me, although, of course, if you are a person of faith, you will experience it differently. I talked to many pilgrims on the Way and not a single one said they were walking for reasons of faith. Many had thought about the Camino for years and saw it more as a physical challenge, or a chance to get away and make a change in their lives. A surprising number had walked parts of it before and returned to try alternative routes and experience the camaraderie of the Camino once again. Burning sinners in Colexiata de Santa María de Baiona Photo by JFPenn There were elements of the sacred along the route if you looked for them. Roadside shrines to the Virgin Mary saving sinners from burning boats, and later, shrines to St James, sometimes just a carving on a rock, and other times, full-size sculptures and chapels. There were plenty of churches along the Way, but the convoy of pilgrims stopping to get their Credentials stamped made them crowded and noisy. I found more moments of peace in graveyards along the Way than sitting in the nave of any of the churches. Santiago de Compostela itself is a busy city with a thriving tourist center and pilgrims are just one type of visitor. The cathedral is packed full at every Mass, of which there are several each day, and there is nowhere to find silence if you crave it as I do. The cathedral’s imposing Baroque architecture and the relics of St James in the crypt are a necessary part of the end of the Camino, but I felt more of a spiritual insight in the nearby Monasterio de San Martin Pinario, which was completely empty when I visited. The church was also a cemetery for the Benedictine community, their bodies laid under the stones of the nave, so the living could remember them and reflect on the inevitability of their own fate. Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela Altar Photo by JFPenn I found the Camino more of a physical journey than a spiritual one, partly because it was busy, so there was little time to walk alone and think as I did on the St Cuthbert’s Way. At the end of a day’s walk, it was about washing off the sweat and changing smelly clothes, attending to seeping blisters and spraying antiseptic on open wounds, resting swollen aching feet, finding food, and sleeping. The needs of the physical self overwhelmed the spiritual, but then we are embodied souls. The physical is how we experience life, even an occasional glimpse of the divine. (5) The Camino is an industry — and it always has been The Camino de Santiago has waxed and waned in popularity and now several hundred thousand walk the different routes every year. It is not a wilderness walk unless you choose the early stages of the Via de la Plata, which are far less developed. There will be people, sometimes lots of them, and there were moments on the Way where I was literally part of a long line of pilgrims. Many only walk the last 100km, which you need to complete to get the Compostela, so those last few days in particular are really busy. The pilgrim industry starts with getting the Credential, which you can buy at many of the starting points and also online before you go. You have to get stamps along the Way from churches and hostels, hotels and restaurants, and inevitably, this results in queues even in out-of-the-way places. There are pilgrim menus at cafes, often very good value, and if you stay at albergues, there are even organized opportunities for socializing with other pilgrims. Pilgrim Credential with stamps, Photo by JFPenn There are two possible attitudes to this industry. You can resent the intrusion of so many people and the overt commercialism, and pine for a solo, spiritual pilgrimage — or you can embrace it and join in wholeheartedly. I did the latter and considered it part of supporting the local businesses that play an important part in the Camino experience. I appreciated comfortable accommodation, pharmacies, and supermarkets, as well as coffee shops, restaurants, and bars along the Way. However, I did stop in some sections to let waves of chattering pilgrims pass, and I relished moments of quiet walking when I didn’t see another person for a while, mainly when I left before sunrise a few mornings. My favorite day’s walk was Baiona to Vigo, or at least the first 20km of it. The main Camino route went through the hills, but there was a slightly longer alternate route following the coast north. I chose the coastal route, which was barely way-marked, but by keeping the sea on my left, it was easy enough to navigate along paths and boardwalks. I left Baiona in the dark and walked north as the dawn broke over the coastal wetlands. Wading birds picked their way through the shallows and finches darted between bushes on the shore. The path followed alongside almost deserted beaches. It was a cool autumnal weekday morning, so there were just a few dog walkers on the sand. There were heavy clouds overhead, and the wind blew rain in later that day. I saw a few pilgrims but mostly I walked alone, happy to have taken the alternative route, to step out of the stream of pilgrims even just for a day. Clouds gathering over the beaches heading north to Vigo Photo by JFPenn (6) Your Camino, your way When people say they have “walked the Camino,” it can mean many things, and if you want to walk (or cycle), it’s important to consider what you want your Camino experience to be. We all have different definitions of challenge, and also different capabilities at different times in our lives. There are various Camino routes you can choose depending on how much time you have and how far you want to walk. You have to walk 100 kilometers to be eligible for the Compostela, but the longest route, the Via de la Plata, is nearly 1000 kilometers. The Frances is nearly 800 kilometers and is the most popular and busy route, but there are also short routes like the Ingles if you have limited time, or you can do the final stage of the longer routes. There are many companies who can organize and book accommodation for you, or you can walk independently and stay in hostels/albergues along the way. You can carry your own pack or get luggage transfer and carry a day pack. The time of year will also affect your experience, so you can see how the challenge can vary depending on these practical elements. JFPenn with backpack for the Camino Portuguese Coastal route. While I originally wanted to walk the Frances route, made famous by countless books and the film The Way, I couldn’t be away from my business for the time needed to complete it. I decided on the Portuguese Coastal route, still a challenge at 14 days of back-to-back walking, and considered much quieter than the Frances. I carried my own pack and walked the whole route. I booked through Macs Adventure and had a private room each night in hotels or B&Bs. I like to know where I’m sleeping every night, and I didn’t want to deal with shared bathrooms and snoring. Those were my choices, and they shaped my Camino. Many people, including pilgrims in their 70s, overtook me during the day carrying day packs, and certainly, getting luggage transferred is a good way to make walking easier. Every pilgrim is different, and it is easy to end up comparing situations. You might pass a tired and limping pilgrim one day, only to end up like that yourself another day. You might wish your pack was lighter, or you might judge others for ‘only’ walking five days instead of a longer route, or you might judge yourself for not being fit enough, or for not looking after your feet and getting blisters, or for carrying too much stuff. But no pilgrim is ‘better’ than another. We all have different reasons to walk, and different challenges along the Way. Keep your eyes on your own path. Practical considerations and tips In terms of training, I regularly walk 20km with a day pack and I also do weight training, so I have strong legs and no issues with my knees or back. This was my third multi-day solo pilgrimage walk, but it was also much longer than anything I have done before. I knew I could do six days back-to-back walking in bad weather, but on reflection, 14 days was difficult, even though there were some shorter days in the middle. I should have scheduled a rest day and certainly recommend one if you are carrying your own gear for weeks at a time. I’ve done plenty of long walks without getting blisters in the same walking shoes, but after one long, hot and sweaty day walking on rocky uneven ground, I started getting sore spots and they compounded into blisters over subsequent days. I ended up taping my feet and hobbling the last few days, but the many pharmacies along the way are used to pilgrims, and you’ll find painkillers and blister plasters front and center in them all. Camino arrow in eucalyptus forest on a hot day’s walking, Photo by JFPenn I’ve listed my gear in a separate article, and I was pleased with my Osprey Sirrus 36-litre backpack. I didn’t get any bruising on my hips and no back pain, so it wasn’t too heavy at around 8kg (plus water during the day). I made the mistake of a heavy pack on the St Cuthbert’s Way and paid the price! I was also grateful for my walking poles (LEKI Womens Micro Vario Carbon Trekking Poles), as the Portuguese route is rocky and uneven in places, plus they helped this tired and wobbly pilgrim keep going in difficult times! During the day, I took pictures and wrote little notes in my phone, and then every morning, I woke early and wrote up the notes from the day before. If you want to reflect on your experience later, definitely keep notes and take photos as you walk. On a multi-day trip, the days blend together as the routine of pilgrimage shifts the passing of time in some strange way. Schedule time before you leave to prepare, both practically and also to shift out of your busy normal life into ‘pilgrim time,’ which is a slower, more reflective pacer. You’ll also need to schedule time when you return to ease back into things. Have at least a day in Santiago de Compostela to look around and attend mass, but also keep your schedule clear back home. I was exhausted and needed to rest the first few days, but also I found I couldn’t just jump back into busy work and meetings and noise. I needed some reflection time before ramping up to full speed. I’m writing this a month after returning, which has given me some space to reflect, and my blisters are all healed too. Eating well in Santiago de Compostela Photo by JFPenn (7) I needed these last years of walking alone across a seasonal change in my life I did my first solo multi-day pilgrimage, the Pilgrims’ Way in October 2020 between pandemic lockdowns, which I talked about in episode 50: This too shall pass. I walked the St Cuthbert’s Way alone in October 2021 when I was still recovering from Covid, and I have walked alone for many days in training. I love my husband, Jonathan. He is my best friend and we walk together a lot — but I needed those times to walk alone. The pandemic lockdowns made me feel like a bird bashing its wings against the bars of a cage as I talked about in my lessons from the Pilgrims’ Way. I walked myself into submission over that time and the pilgrimage helped calm my anger and frustration and grief at everything going on in the world and my inability to change it. These last two years have also been a time of change physically and emotionally. I’m 47 as I record this and I’m still in the hormonal rollercoaster of midlife which has impacted my sleep and mental health and, compounded by the pandemic, has made the last few years pretty tough. I had terrible insomnia for most of it but am grateful that has now been fixed by HRT patches, which have been truly life-changing for me. HRT is not for everyone, but I recommend reading Menopausing by Davina McCall if you or anyone you love is struggling through this phase. These long walks have given me so much during difficult times. I am goal-orientated and completing a pilgrimage route is a clear physical goal that you can tick off and feel a sense of accomplishment in finishing. I walked alone and proved to myself that I can do hard things, that I can walk through pain, that I can walk in all weathers, that I can deal with things going wrong and I can cope with my fears along the way. I have proved to myself that I am resilient and that has felt like an important thing to prove at this time of my life. JFPenn arriving at cathedral of Santiago de Compostela 19 Sept 2022 Many people walk pilgrimage at a time of change — out of a need to reset, or change jobs, or recover from grief, or find an answer to a question. The Camino alone was not about changing my life and in fact, it made me realise how grateful I am for what I have in my creative business and happy marriage. But the three pilgrimage routes together over the last two years have certainly been a path of change through a rocky period in my life, and in the world in general. It feels like the end of one season and the beginning of another. Perhaps that’s just one of the gifts of middle age, but regardless, walking the Camino was the completion of a life goal and it closed one chapter so I can begin another. You can find more reflections in my book, Pilgrimage, which combines aspects of the emotional and spiritual journey with practical tips which will hopefully help you if you are considering such a trip. You can find more details at jfpenn.com/pilgrimage. I’d love to know what you think about this episode, or hear about your experiences from your own pilgrimage, or if you’d like to ask any questions, please leave a comment, or tweet me @thecreativepenn. Buen Camino! Compostela Joanna Penn, Sept 2022 The post A Pilgrim In The Path Of History. Solo Walking The Camino De Santiago Portuguese Coastal Route With J.F. Penn appeared first on Books And Travel.

How is pilgrimage different from just a long walk? Why do we feel a calling to pilgrimage even when not religious? How does pilgrimage connect us to our physicality, and simplify life so we find some perspective? Kevin Donahue talks about some of his ‘sacred steps’ on various pilgrimage routes across Europe. Kevin Donahue began walking pilgrimage routes in 2019 and hosts the ‘Sacred Steps Podcast,’ where he discusses pilgrimage with fellow pilgrims. He’s currently writing a book, Sacred Steps: A Pilgrim’s Journal, out in 2023. Show notes How is pilgrimage different from a long walk? Why pilgrimage resonates even to those who are not religious Highlights of Kevin’s pilgrimage, including the crossing to Holy Island, Lindisfarne The challenges of pilgrimage — and the gifts that only emerge later Tips for the Camino Portuguese route — wear shoes with thicker soles for the cobblestones! Recommended books on pilgrimage You can find Kevin Donahue at SacredStepsPodcast.com and on Instagram @kevincdonahue You can listen to my interview on Kevin’s podcast about my pilgrimage to Canterbury here. My book, Pilgrimage, Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways, is out now Transcript of the interview Jo: Kevin Donahue began walking pilgrimage routes in 2019, and hosts the Sacred Steps Podcast, where he discusses pilgrimage with fellow pilgrims. He’s currently writing a book, Sacred Steps: A Pilgrim’s Journal, out in 2023. Welcome, Kevin. Kevin: Thanks, Jo. It’s great to be on. I appreciate getting a chance to talk with you today. Jo: I’ve been on your show discussing my pilgrimage and you talk about pilgrimage a lot. And so, this is fascinating, but let’s start with a definition. What is pilgrimage? How is it different from a long walk? Kevin: That’s a great question, Jo, and I think this is something that’s really a bit intimidating for people when they hear the word ‘pilgrimage.’ I didn’t really know what that meant to me as a walker at first. I went to the Webster’s children’s dictionary, because, for me, if Webster could explain it to a child, surely that could be something I would understand. And the dictionary said, look at pilgrimage and then look at pilgrim, a person who travels to a holy place as an act of religious devotion. That made a lot of sense to me. Because when you think about devotion, that gets into intention and purpose. And if you’re walking with this intent, versus a long walk, which you and I have both actually done a lot of, Jo, but pilgrimage is as much about the journey as it is the destination. I think it’s those moments of greater awareness, either about ourselves or, to some degree, maybe our faith or our world, or how we interact and engage with the world around us, that really makes pilgrimage so rewarding. And it’s that spirit of each step of the journey having significance, rather than just the beginning or the end. It’s the full process, I think, that makes pilgrimage much different than just a long walk. Jo: That’s really interesting. We’ll come back to some of those aspects, but I noticed that you call yourself a ‘reluctant pilgrim’ on your website. Where does this reluctance come from, and what happened in your life to get you over that? Kevin: I’ve had the opportunity in the United States to do some of our national scenic trails, and we have some great ones. I’ve walked along the Appalachian Trail, haven’t finished the whole thing just yet, the Florida National Scenic Trail. I’ve walked out in the western United States. And like you said, those are long walks. I had always wanted to do the Camino de Santiago in Spain. And I made the decision, but as it grew closer, I really didn’t understand the concept of pilgrimage and how it related to me. So, I jokingly said I was a very reluctant pilgrim, because I didn’t set out to be a pilgrim or to go on pilgrimage. I wanted to have this bucket list experience, this life-affirming socialization, walking in the footsteps of history, where people had trod for a thousand-plus years. And that seemed really like a great, great walk for me. It’s those other elements that intervened throughout the process that really reconnected me in some ways to my faith, because I was, I think what we would call ‘lapsed but listening,’ where you can be someone who maybe follows Christ as a Christian, but not necessarily follows the orthodoxy and teachings maybe of a Christian church or denomination. Being on that walk and going through some of the places that I got to experience, which, I think that’s the great part about pilgrimage, you come and engage with these different places and people, that really, I think you said, what was it that sparked? I think for me, that’s what maybe pushed me over the edge a little bit and changed my long walk into a pilgrimage. And I think it’s something that happens for each person very individually, and perhaps quite a bit differently. Jo: It’s interesting because as we talked about before, I’m not a Christian, but I would say I’m a seeker and I find moments of connection with the divine, I suppose, or the universe. But I definitely do not follow a Christian religion, or any particular religion. It’s interesting because you started off by defining a sort of traveling to a holy place as an act of religious devotion, and that pilgrimage is going to these holy places. And I always feel like even if we don’t adhere to a particular religion, there’s something about pilgrimage that touches a part of every person’s soul, if they have any form of kind of spiritual seeking. And so, it’s not just that it has to be a Christian faith or any kind of, because the pilgrimage is obviously in every religion. What do you think about pilgrimage transcending religion in a way? Kevin: Oh, you are spot on, Jo. There’s a great organization in the UK, the British Pilgrimage Trust, and their mantra is that they want to enliven pilgrimage for people of all faiths and none. I think that’s such a powerful mission statement. Because it speaks to so much of what these special places have meant in our lives collectively, for centuries and millennia. We look across the UK and there are these sacred places that we know had such great value to our ancestors. One of the obvious ones that stands out for U.S. tourists is Stonehenge. Or up the road in Avebury, Woodhenge. And you say to yourself, ‘I’m standing in a place where people have journeyed here for centuries.’ And, to your point, that’s obviously not a Christian church. There’s no cross and steeple. But clearly, people have held that space in high regard. And it might have been something where people had journeyed from a great distance to come to be in this space. I think we can all recognize that there are these places where we feel a greater sense of purpose or a greater sense of connectivity, whether that’s with something spiritual, or whether it’s with our own self-identity and feeling of self-worth. I think pilgrimage does mean something different to everyone, but I think it has meaning to everyone. And, again, I think that’s a bit about what separates pilgrimage from a long journey is that it’s the process of making that trip that has significance to the person that’s undertaking it. Jo: Absolutely. And that resonance with faith in whatever over the generations, and a resonance with that emotional connection and people of faith in a particular place, I almost feel leave an imprint that, and that’s almost what we feel. You can feel that it’s God touching you, and it may be that, but you can also feel that it’s connection to people across millennia. I remember being at Stonehenge once, and there weren’t many people there. It was winter. It was freezing cold, and there was a murmuration of swallows or swifts or the murmuration when the birds flock in shapes above Stonehenge. And I was standing there going, ‘This has to be some kind of divine experience.’ It was a crazy kind of experience, and feeling like I was connecting to this sort of deep Earth power, whatever it was. Like you say, there are places where we feel that connection with people across time, I suppose. Kevin: We’ve talked about that a little bit on my podcast, the ‘Sacred Steps Podcast.’ My guests are not formally Christians. I’ve had the opportunity to talk to people of no faith, and people who are Buddhist and people who are Muslim. These journeys have great weight and significance for people. You can go into a space, and it might be a church. We’ve talked about, Jo, you love the architecture and the devotion that people have made into creating these spaces, and the beauty that resonates with them. And you can be in a space that man has made, a church or what have you, and you can feel a significance that is not necessarily tied to a particular orthodoxy. Pilgrim Kevin Donahue at St Peters Basilica Rome Photo by Kevin Donahue I think whether you’re going to these ancient sites, whether you’re journeying to…and there are a lot of places where our different faith practices hold in high regard. Their wells and their caves and their springs, but natural places that you find out in the landscape. Also, these sometimes grand shrines that man has made in practice of faith. Being in these spaces, to your point, you sometimes feel like that’s a very special space, and you’ve arrived at just the right moment. Jo: Absolutely. Let’s talk about some of the various pilgrim routes that you’ve done, because you’ve done some bits of quite a lot of different ones. You and I almost met in person on the Cuthbert’s Way, but you were ahead of me going over to Lindisfarne. Why did you decide to approach pilgrimage in a patchwork, as opposed to walking the whole length of one? Kevin: Great question, Jo. It’s more a product of necessity than intent. Let’s circle back to that definition of what makes pilgrimage unique. The importance of the journey itself, step by step. Surely, then, one of the elements of pilgrimage is that it is not defined by just a singular starting point or a singular endpoint, although most frequently, we’re all walking to one spot. 1,000 years ago, a pilgrim would have begun their journey at their door, and walked towards this particular holy place or this particular significant location. And now, we kind of leave our homes and we jump on the train or we get on the airplane and we journey off to this starting point. We’re a bit constrained, at least I know I am, by how much time we can devote to that journey. So, it’s time away from family. I have a teenage son, and there’s an investment of time factor. And then also, how much time you can take away from work or what have you. As a career person in the United States, we get a certain amount of vacation time. I’ve always been trying to balance, I think, the purpose of my journey. Why do I want to do this walk? Versus what can I commit fully to the pilgrimage? For me, sometimes it’s only been a week or a couple of weeks that I can be away. And some of these walks are intimidatingly long. You and I have talked about the Camino de Santiago, from St. James, a walk like that’s five or six weeks, and you say, ‘Well, wow, I can’t devote that.’ Kevin Donahue’s pilgrim backpack in Canterbury. Photo by Kevin Donahue But I’ve come to learn, and a good friend of mine, English author, Andy Bull, wrote a book called Pilgrim Pathways where he looks at weekend walks, getting into these special spaces, where you’re only devoting a small amount of time because that’s what you have available. For me, and I want to talk to you a little bit about where I’ve been, but in some instances, it’s been more of a product of what time can I devote to this pilgrimage has defined in some ways the length that I’ve been able to walk. I’ve had to start in some places that had significance for me, that maybe weren’t at the ‘starting gate.’ So, that’s been an interesting part of it. Jo: I think this is so important, because humanity just makes up rules for things. And it’s like, there’s a measurement of everything that we do. Clearly, the pilgrimage where someone walks for six months from Canterbury to Jerusalem is far more holy than you (!), who only walked for a week or… Kevin: I would think it would be. Jo: As you said, it’s about the intention, it’s about the purpose. If it’s an act of religious devotion, and you walk to your local church on a Sunday. They say on the Camino, don’t they? ‘Walk your own Camino.’ There shouldn’t be judgment or self-judgment around what we did. It’s funny, isn’t it? We always just impose these rules on things. Kevin: My self-judgment was on full display the day after I arrived in Santiago de Compostela on the Camino de Santiago. You make these walks, and I had done not a long distance. I had done about 100 miles. I walked the Camino Portuguese section, up through Spain. I was feeling quite proud of myself. I had done this long walk and I had walked along further than some. I was pretty proud of that. There was some ego there. And there was this lady in the cathedral, and she must have been, I don’t know, 80 years old, 80-plus years old, and she had her walking stick. She was going from the pew straight up to the front of the church. And it was, from my perspective, it looked to be everything she could do to make that walk. And here I was feeling so proud of myself, in my younger condition, that I had walked 100 miles or whatever. And here she was making a walk that was every bit as meaningful to her, and probably every bit as challenging as mine had been to me. I had to check my ego a little bit, because how we define a pilgrim and how we define that distance of pilgrimage, to your point, we put a lot of rules and a lot of vanity around it. It’s more about what someone gets out of it than what I judge they’ve put into it. Jo: Absolutely. And I feel like I certainly found my ego broken down by some of the walking I’ve done. Kevin: Oh my goodness. Jo, you’re an ultra walker. You would lap me a hundred times over. Jo: Tell us what are some of the highlights, some of the places that are memorable to you that you visited on your various pilgrimages? Kevin: I’ve had the opportunity over the course of the last few years, COVID willing and health willing, to make a few of these walks. I mentioned I did the Camino Portuguese. I started in Vila Nova de Cerveira, and walked to Santiago de Compostela. Cathedral at Santiago de Compostela Photo by Kevin Donahue That was my first time doing a pilgrimage walk. Everything was a new experience, and it’s like you go to a museum for the first time, and everything you see is the most fascinating thing. And then you move over four feet and you’re like, ‘Oh, now this is now the most fascinating thing.’ Everything I saw and experienced was so fresh and new. I came up to the UK, and I walked a route that you did as well, from London to Canterbury, and the English Pilgrims’ Way. And I did a bit of a different route than you did, because I wanted to be in Rochester. I walked along the Thames Way and then walked over to Rochester, to be in Rochester Cathedral. Being in the cathedral in Rochester was very important to me, because the patron saint of adopted children is celebrated there. Having an adopted son, I wanted to pay homage and pay respects in Rochester Cathedral. So that was very special to me. Arriving in Canterbury was wonderful because, and you saw this too, Jo. You get into this grand cathedral, and you suggested to me not to miss Evensong. That was a really special experience for me, with the choir in the background. I was going on to Dover, to begin the Via Francigena. And that night, another pilgrim was arriving. She had walked the old way from Southampton. Caroline is her name. The two of us were there and we were receiving a blessing. That night, Caroline’s walk was ending, and mine was going on. I had intended, but for those darn ferries in Dover, I had intended to go on into France and such. And so, my walk was continuing. She gave me a coin, a clay coin, that she had been given, and it had a shell sculpted into the coin and she had carried it with her. It had been given first by a vicar and then to a pilgrim, and the pilgrim had given it to Caroline. And Caroline had given it to me, and now I was carrying it on. I ended up this year, I was in Italy, and I walked a section of the Via Francigena in Italy and I carried that same pilgrim coin with me to St. Peter’s in Rome. I was able to give it to a pilgrim who was walking on from Rome to Jerusalem. It was so special to see that this sort of connectivity between people and purposes was continuing on with his journey to Jerusalem. As you said, you and I both had the opportunity to go to Lindisfarne, the Holy Island, and walk across the sands to Holy Island. To me, that was probably one of the most special moments. I will never forget the storm that happened the night before, because, whew, Northumbria, there’s some storms, and that was a big one. Between the wind, the gusts, and the rain, I was really nervous about getting to walk the next morning. But walking across the receding tides, the north sea, and you see these poles that mark the high route of the sands. And since the time of St. Aidan and St. Cuthbert, people have made their way to Lindisfarne. Following in their footsteps was really incredibly powerful for me. I’ll never forget walking to Holy Island. Pilgrim Kevin Donahue about to cross the sands to Lindisfarne Holy Island Photo by Kevin Donahue Jo: I’m so glad you mentioned that one. It’s funny, isn’t it, because there are these incredibly grand cathedrals, obviously you mentioned Santiago de Compostela and Canterbury, and I felt it too. And as you were speaking there, I was remembering my own crossing, and yet it is just your feet in the sand and the water. When I was there, it was a really sunny morning, and the seals were singing, which was just the oddest sound. I couldn’t really see many people, and there’s nobody waiting there, the same as finishing any pilgrimage. There’s no one waiting, going, ‘Wow, you’re amazing. You’ve reached the pinnacle of your journey.’ It’s these, you mentioned earlier, these moments of greater awareness, where we’re so aware of our place on the Earth, physically and spiritually, and part of this great tradition, as you say, and almost just much more in touch with our physical bodies than I feel we are in normal life. Kevin: Oh, my goodness. Jo: You know what I mean? Especially with that crossing. Did you do it barefoot? Kevin: I did it barefoot. It was a visceral experience. You take your shoes off and you pull up your pants legs and you make your way out. Your feet first touch the seawater. And even the receding sea was covering…it hits your toes and it stings them. The water temperature is in the high 50s, and mid-50s. And it’s just, it’s like daggers. Then it covers your feet. And then all of a sudden, your body adapts to it a little bit, and you’re walking out through the sands, and you kind of feel the sands and you touch these wooden beams, these wooden poles, that are ragged from rising tides and sea air, and the storms that roll in off the coast. You make your way from one to the next to the next. Walker on the sands crossing away from Lindisfarne Photo by JFPenn It’s the bottom of the sea floor. So it’s not uniform. You go through these areas where all of a sudden now that stinging water is making its way up my leg and towards my knee. And then you get to a point where it’s a little higher. All of a sudden there’s grasses and such, sea grasses that may be growing there. And there’s a part that even protrudes above the tide most times. And it’s this sucking mud. Jo: There’s a lot of mud! Kevin: And you disappear. I disappeared past my knee, whew, right down into the mud. I’m walking and I’ve got my sticks and I’m trying to sort of maneuver my leg out of the mud, back up to make the next step. And it’s, fup, fup, fup, through the mud, and I look over and there’s this wellie that’s sitting there, stuck in the mud, where clearly somebody had just literally walked out of their boot, trying to make their way across. But it’s not a very long section of the walk. It’s maybe, what, Jo? A mile and a half maybe. It’s a short distance. Jo: Yes. You can do it in an hour, really. An hour and a half, maybe. Kevin: Yeah. Maybe 90 minutes at the most, and given the conditions. But, like you, I was alone out there. I like how you said the seals were singing and the birds are flying over, and you have to do it at low tide, which means, in many instances, you’re doing it in the very early morning. For me, this was October, and it was maybe 7:00 in the morning, and the sun was just rising out over the sea to the east. I’ve been to the Vatican and St. Peters. I’ve been to the crypts and the Scavi. I’ve been to the tomb of St. James the Apostle. And as you said, standing in Canterbury and the beautiful cathedrals at Westminster and throughout England. I don’t know what tops walking to Holy Island across the sea. That was a really special walk, and I’ll never forget the connectivity, like you said, that I felt in those moments. Jo: I agree. We should also mention if people are going to do it, that it’s quite a shock to then walk into the little town on the island. Kevin: Oh, absolutely. Jo: Because you’ll come off the beach, and there’s cars coming on because the tide is down. And then you walk around the corner, and I was in shock at a coachload of literally American tourists, just arrived. Kevin: Everyone’s on holiday, right? And here you are with your rucksack. Jo: Suddenly, it’s mad. It’s bonkers. I stayed overnight. You have to book it, obviously. It’s a very small island. But the mass of tourists, they all leave again when the tide comes in, because it is a tidal island. By staying overnight, the atmosphere got a lot more holy again. But while all the people are there in their coaches, it can be a little bonkers. A really interesting place, right? Dawn on Lindisfarne Holy Island Oct 2021 Photo by JFPenn Kevin: Absolutely. From low tide to low tide, it’s a holiday market kind of atmosphere. Everyone’s there, they’re doing their tourist shops, and they’re eating and dropping in the pubs and going to the Lindisfarne Abbey, which is beautifully maintained. And there’s a bit of a fake castle there on the island, which is a bit of a tourist attraction. There’s sort of an artist element, where people are coming to paint or take photographs, and just walk and explore. But then, once you get to that midway point of the tide, maybe 3:00 in the afternoon or 4:00 in the afternoon, the whole island vacates, and it’s just the local residents and those people who are staying overnight. I agree with you 100%. I stayed overnight, in a wonderful inn, and the storytelling with the locals, and the opportunity to be with people. A few are on holiday, but a few who were also there to see the Abbey, and were treating it as more of a spiritual destination. You have the island to yourself. I know there’s always this conflict with over-tourism, but to have it to yourself was really special. Definitely stay the night if you can at Lindisfarne. It was wonderful. It’s easy to catch the train up to Berwick, and then you can get a cab over if you’re just going for a bit, if you aren’t walking the way of St. Cuthbert. I definitely recommend a spot if you haven’t been before. Jo: For sure. I think pilgrimage has to have its challenges, right? It’s not easy, and the challenges can be physical. They can be spiritual, personal. What were some of your greatest challenges that you’ve experienced during your pilgrimages? Kevin: Oh, my goodness. On my very first one, I had spent two years reading, and really trying to understand what the pilgrimage experience was like. Because, to your point, I was a backpacker, and I had done walks, and so I understood how to be a backpacker. I invested a lot of my preparation into understanding the culture and the camaraderie of pilgrims on the Camino. What I didn’t know to prepare for, or maybe I overlooked, or maybe no one warned me at all, was walking the Portuguese, a lot of the roads, a lot of the paths that you walk on are cobblestones. As I was walking through these portions of Portugal, you’d go on a cobblestone road for a long stretch, a couple of miles, and then you would go off onto a hard rock stretch and then back onto the cobblestones. It really did a number on my feet. I ended up with what’s called stone bruises on the bottom sole of your feet. Normally, if you have stone bruises, you would want to rest. Jo: Yeah, stop! Kevin: Because it’s a bruise on the underside, the sole of your foot. If you’re trying to walk, maybe you can wobble back on your heels, but you certainly can’t go very far very fast. So, I had these stone bruises, and I battled with the stone bruises and just trying to find enough padding, batting that I could put under my foot, between my foot and my shoe, that I could continue my Camino. Because after so many years of preparing, I didn’t want it to be cut short. I really didn’t want to sacrifice anything that I was looking forward to. So, I had a three or four-day pretty intense battle with the bottom of my feet. What I learned was that you have to understand exactly where you’re going to be walking, and I didn’t have the right shoes for it. I had my regular walking shoes that I would walk through dirt paths or sand paths and very light underfoot, and a very lightweight type of shoe. I didn’t have a very rugged undersole. That was a great learning for me. And now ever since, I don’t want to promote any brands, but I’ll tell you that I wear a shoe with a little more rugged undersole, which has been great for me. Jo: Can you tell us the brand? Because I’m walking that route. Kevin: Yes. I now wear, pretty much everywhere I go, a max cushioning shoe from Altra, called the ‘Altra Olympus.’ They make that in a men’s and women’s model. And there are a lot of max cushioning shoes, and they’re not for everyone because it’s like having two insoles in your shoe. If you’re a runner or a distance walker, you might feel like you’ve got a little less connectivity to the terrain. [Imogen Clark mentioned the same issue on the Camino Portuguese, and she recommended HOKA SpeedGoat which also have the thicker sole.] But if you’re walking with a backpack, on what I came to term as ‘hobblestones,’ that was exactly what you needed and what you wanted. As far as the physicality, this past year, when I was walking through Italy, it’s so darn hot in Europe right now. I was just there, and I walked in May and in June, and the closer you get, it was just so hot, and many places in walking the Via Francigena, especially as you get closer to Rome, the path is an old one. Poppies on the Via Francigena Photo by Kevin Donahue You follow the route of Archbishop Sigeric, who was receiving his papers, if you will, from the Pope in Rome, and then recorded his route back to Canterbury. So, that is the official route from Canterbury to Rome. But as you walk, the towns have moved. Over time, where there used to be maybe less distance from place to place, because of the wars and Punic Wars and things that have all taken place over this time, you end up with cities that used to be there that aren’t there. And so, you’ve got some longer distances just out in the heat. That was very tough. But the one thing I had no idea of, and you probably know this, Jo, it seems like, because of these battles and the different Papal States that have taken place throughout Italy, almost every little town and city in Italy is on top of a hill. As a walker, you walk 12, 15, 18, 20 miles throughout the day in this heat. Then at the end of the day, your reward is that you get to go up this just crazy hill to reach the top of the city where you’re going to be sleeping that night, or where you have the opportunity to get dinner. That was very, very challenging mentally for me because you’re so tired, and it was hot, and you were exhausted from the day. And then you’ve got this big hill push at the end, which sometimes was 400, 600 big, big meters up at the end, over short runs, that really were super challenging. And if there’s one thing I could change, I would flatten that part of Italy. Jo: It’s interesting because these physical challenges, it is hard. We do put ourselves through this. And, I mean, either it’s really hot, or I remember my last day walking into Canterbury, it rained so hard for so long. I’d put in a really big day, and everything was so, so wet. And it feels like the gifts of pilgrimage don’t show up at the time. Kevin: No. There are no trumpets that are sounding as you’re walking. Jo: As you’re doing it. But I find that the gifts of pilgrimage come later. When you have time to reflect on the journey and you’re not just thinking about how much pain you’re in or how hungry you are, or how hot you are. What are some of the gifts of pilgrimage that have emerged for you later in the process? Kevin: I do think, in some ways, the physicality of it is an important part of the process. Because pilgrimage in and of itself is such a simple life. You eat, you walk, you pray, if you’re so inclined, and then you sleep. Walk, sleep. A very simple life. And you just have with you what’s on your backpack, what you’re carrying. So, you have very few possessions. But as you go, the physicality, what I found, and you and I talked about this on our podcast together, it quiets the mind, but you become in this state where your body becomes a little numb physically, and you’re no longer aware of you stepped on a rock or whatnot, or you did this or that. It’s just sort of you get into this process of walking. It opens the mind, I think, a bit to everything else around, and what you can see in these natural places. And the engagement that you have with the things around you. To answer your question, the things that show up beyond the journey often do come later. For me, I think, well, I’ve had the opportunity to have a deeper connection to understand a bit better what’s important to me, and what I consider to be important faith practices that don’t necessarily involve a physical church. I’ve become, I think, a little more compassionate for other people. My own awareness of my own sufferings and my own shortcomings, especially when you’re walking, and you’re just physically, you say to yourself, ‘I don’t know if I can take one more step,’ it gives me great empathy for people who are going through something in their lives, physically, emotionally, spiritually. I can definitely put myself in their shoes, and have a greater understanding of their challenges than I ever could before. I think it’s made me a better father in some ways, because I’m more accepting of my own shortcomings. We tend to build ourselves up a bit. At least I do. I had a very large ego, and I think pilgrimage has been a very humbling experience for me to recognize that you think to yourself, ‘Oh, well, tomorrow’s an easy day.’ And turns out that easy day that you thought was going to be so easy, it rained. Jo: I don’t think it’s ever an easy day, is there? Kevin: No, there’s really not, but every day is unique and every day is special. I don’t know that I’ve always had an appreciation for that. Lastly, I think I’m more aware of the intent that people have had in their own creations. You would go to a museum and you see something that has been painted, and obviously, it’s a masterpiece, and we all recognize the talent and the dedication it would take to do that. But just walking through a small town, a small village, and seeing the very ordinary church that had been constructed, and the less ornate paintings on its walls, that, when that was finished, the whole town must have gathered. The whole church must have gathered and celebrated this more plain, less ornate, less celebrated fresco if you will, and what it meant to them. I think it’s given me a greater sense of understanding of the intent that people have behind what they do, not judging so much the, what I’m looking at, but what must have gone into it and what it must have meant to the people who were there in those moments. Jo: That’s fantastic. Of course, this is the ‘Books and Travel Podcast.’ What are some of your favorite books about pilgrimage or particular walking things? Kevin: I have a few that I’ve finished recently, finished in the last year, that I think are just great. Carolyn Gillespie. Just finished a book called Pilgrim that is a great story of the Camino Frances. Carolyn was a headmaster in a boarding school in England. Scottish lady. And as her children grew and went to university, she ended her professional career. As an empty nester, now is finding herself without children, where children have been such a huge part of her life, both with the school and her own children. And walk the Camino Frances to give herself the headspace to kind of understand who she might be now. It’s a great book. It’s called Pilgrim by Cary Gillespie. And another one that I just love, it’s so empowering, is a book by an Australian author Claude Tranchant and Claude…her name is a giveaway, is a French lady, and she walked, at age 64, by herself, alone, from Vezelay to Santiago de Compostela. Claude was not a walker, and had no sense of navigation, and she got lost. Literally, she got lost, and spent some nights in the middle of France, just in nowhere on the side of the road, sleeping on the road. This little older lady made this journey, and it’s so empowering to me, because there’s a lot of backstory of the things that Claude had put first, ahead of her own self in her life. The Camino showed her what she was truly capable of and what strength she had within. I just love Claude Tranchant’s book. Boots to Bliss is the name of it. And then for people who are thinking about walking, I mentioned it before, but especially in the UK, Andy’s book, Andy Bull’s book, Pilgrim Pathways, is a great pickup, because it’s written in a way that anybody could walk. It’s in England, Scotland and Wales. There are 20 short walks, anywhere from a single day to two to three days. A lot of these are sections of longer walks. For example, we talked about the St. Cuthbert’s Way. Andy outlines a section of that, Northern Saints Walk, that you can make, and he shows you how to extend it. But it’s got all the routes, it’s got all the photos, and you can download the GPS routes if you want, and just put it into your OS Maps, and then all of a sudden, you’re a walker. You’re on these pilgrimages. I just love it. I think it makes what is special to me, walking to these sacred places, so accessible for everyone. So, those are three good ones. Now, there are a lot of Camino books. And I hope to write one myself. I’m almost finished. So, hopefully, I’ll have that for you soon too, Jo. Jo: Fantastic. You’re writing Sacred Steps: A Pilgrimage Journal. Is that right? Kevin: Yes. My first book, Sacred Steps: A Pilgrimage Journal really looks at this intersection of history and faith. The book takes these places that you and I know have been the footpaths of pilgrims for hundreds and now thousands of years, and looks at the historical context as I find myself in some of these places. It’s really a look at the historical and the modern aspect of pilgrimage along five of these routes that I’ve walked. I don’t think I’ve told anybody this, but I got a little Jo Frances Penn envy when you and I were talking, and you told me, ‘Be careful, because one book could lead to two.’ Jo: Indeed. Kevin: I’ve also started working on a fiction, a book, The Pilgrims’ Table, which is actually based loosely upon the stories that I’ve experienced and the stories that have been shared on the podcast, where people have encountered really unique and touching experiences throughout their journeys. I’m looking forward to getting that book. It’s a lot of fun to write fiction, because I’ve never done it before. There’s a lot less fact-checking happening in fiction books, which is great. But it captures that essence of travel as well, and being in these spaces that we all love, and finding something new in discovery, and the things that, unless you go, and you’re in these places, you really just don’t have an appreciation for. The way they smell, the way this flower dances in the morning light, and the way that the road looks when it’s wet from the rain. I think that’s one of the things we love about travel. Especially for me, slow travel, these walks, when you get to experience places and people and cultures in a way that you never would have on the train or on the plane, or even just motoring by on the highway. That’s become something I’m really so grateful for with these long walks, with these pilgrimage journeys. Jo: Fantastic. Where can people find you, and your podcast, and your blog online? Kevin: Thanks, Jo. The ‘Sacred Steps Podcast’ is available on all of your podcast apps. So, join us. Jo Frances Penn’s episode is on there as well, from season two, so you can grab that one. We’re almost finished recording season three, and getting ready to look to recording season four. So, very excited about that. The companion websites, sacredstepspodcast.com, sacredstepsbook.com, and then, slowly but surely, thepilgrimstable.com. Jo: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Kevin. That was great. Kevin: Jo, it’s delightful to talk to you. I can’t wait to hear more about your upcoming journeys and where you’re going, because the way you have made these spaces come alive, both in your books and on these podcast, is really, truly special. So, thanks for doing it, Jo. The post Sacred Steps. Pilgrimage With Kevin Donahue appeared first on Books And Travel.