Emma McNamee

Day 3 | Zarautz to Deba | 23km 🥾

What a day 😍! Today was my favourite day so far, and it made me think about how differently we all respond to difficulty.

When I reached the point where I could choose between the easier Camino route or the tougher hiking trail up and around the coastline, I already knew which way I was going. There was never really a decision to make 😂

We are often taught to see difficulty as something to overcome or avoid, as though the easier option must automatically be the better one. But what if that isn’t true for everyone?

There are certain challenges that bring something out of us. They make us more focused, more alive and more determined. We discover strength we didn’t know we had because the situation asks us to find it.

I have noticed this about myself for years. Give me something physically demanding, a steep hill, a long day or something that requires me to dig a little deeper, and somehow I find another gear. I don’t necessarily have more energy. I just seem to access something different when I have to work for it.

And perhaps that is worth thinking about in your own life.

Maybe we spend too much time asking how we can make things easier without asking whether the challenge itself might be giving us something we need. What feels like an unnecessary struggle to one person can be the very thing that makes another feel strong, capable and completely alive.

Not every difficult road is the right road, of course. Some things are hard because they are wrong for us, and knowing when to walk away matters too. But sometimes the harder option is exactly where we meet a part of ourselves that the easier option would never have required us to find.

So perhaps the question isn’t whether you should always choose the easy road or the hard one. Perhaps it is whether you know which one brings you alive.

If you keep finding yourself drawn towards the harder road, perhaps there is a reason. Maybe you don’t need to keep talking yourself out of it simply because it looks more difficult from the outside.

Maybe the challenge you keep avoiding isn’t standing in your way. Maybe it is the very thing waiting to show you what you are capable of ❤️

There is a theory about the Camino that the journey unfolds in three stages. The first part, up until Burgos, is for the body. Then comes the Meseta, the long, relatively flat stretch from Burgos to León, around 180km, which is said to be where the work of the mind begins. And then, as you continue towards Santiago, the journey becomes more about the soul.

I have always liked that idea, although I have never felt the need to consciously follow it. I tend to just walk and see what happens.

But this time, after 282km, I realised something quite clearly. My mind does not need any more work right now. There is nothing sitting beneath the surface that needs digging up, no great revelation waiting for me if I just keep walking the same road. I have done a lot of that work over the years, and I feel very at peace with where I am.

My body, however, was telling me something completely different.

It was craving the challenge. The hills, the longer days, the feeling of being physically pushed and having to dig a little deeper. I was reminded of how much I actually love that side of the Camino, and how much I had missed it.

So I listened.

I only have a few more days of walking before I need to head back to the UK for a few days, and I knew I wanted to make the most of them. I wanted to work hard, challenge myself physically and feel that sense of really pushing my body again.

So I am changing direction and heading onto the Camino del Norte.

Not because there was anything wrong with the Francés. I have absolutely loved being back here. I simply realised that what I need from the Camino now is different from what I needed when I started.

And I think that is something worth paying attention to in life too. We can become so committed to the path we chose that we forget we are allowed to respond to what we know now.

Sometimes your body tells you. Sometimes your mind tells you. Sometimes it is simply a feeling you cannot quite explain.

I think the important thing is that we listen ❤️

Day 12 | San Juan de Ortega to Burgos | 26km 🥾

282km so far

There was a little moment today that has stayed with me, and you’ll hear the story in the Reel.

A Spanish man on a bike stopped to make sure I was taking the right route into Burgos. We could barely speak the same language, yet somehow we managed to understand each other, and before he carried on with his Sunday he gave me a cuddle, kissed me on both cheeks and disappeared down the road.

It was such a small thing, but I’ve been thinking about it all day.

There is something quite extraordinary about the kindness of a stranger, when someone can step briefly into your life, show you warmth without knowing anything about you and then disappear again. There is no history, no reason to impress each other and nothing to gain. Just one human being noticing another and deciding, for a few minutes, to help.

I wonder how often we miss opportunities for that kind of connection because we are too wrapped up in our own lives. We are busy, distracted, rushing somewhere, thinking about what we need to do next, and the person standing in front of us becomes part of the background rather than somebody we might actually connect with.

And I wonder how different our everyday lives might feel if we paid a little more attention.

Not because we have to save anyone or make some enormous difference, but because we never really know what is happening on the other side of someone’s smile, their silence or the way they are moving through their day.

We also have no idea what we leave behind when we walk away.

That man will probably never know that I thought about his kindness for the rest of my day. He probably won’t remember the woman he stopped on his bike, and there is something rather lovely about that too. He wasn’t doing it for recognition. It was simply what he chose to do in that moment.

We rarely know what someone is carrying when they cross our path, so perhaps we could be a little more generous with how we meet each other.

Sometimes the smallest moments of kindness are the ones that stay with us ❤️