Ciara Kelly: Walking the Camino, I’m reminded of how far I’ve come from from the day that the pain in my hips left me crying in the street

Greetings from your foreign correspondent. I’m writing to you this week from the Camino in northern Spain where I’m inching my way one step at a time towards Santiago de Compostela. I love walking, as many of you know, and this year I’ll hopefully enter the gorgeous medieval city, triumphant on day 100 of 100 days of walking — my pet campaign to get people moving to whatever extent they can.

There’s something special about a walking holiday. There’s a glorious sense of achievement at the end of the day when your legs are aching and you’re bone tired. The walking itself is very relaxing, meditative almost.



It feels good for the soul and I really love getting somewhere under my own steam. Setting out from one town in the morning and arriving footsore into another in the evening — it harks back to something very old in us, a connection to a past long gone when this was how we moved around. I always feel like I’m walking in the footsteps of pilgrims.

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