The Camino Portuguese is an approximately 245km long Christian pilgrimage trail, which starts at the cathedral in Porto, Portugal and then ends at its architectural namesake in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain, but it isn’t just for the dogmatically inclined. The Portuguese Way is undertaken by people of all backgrounds and for all kinds of reasons, though commonly as a part of one’s personal growth. However, regardless of the multitude of possible personal life or spiritual perspectives, it’s also simply a very scenic and interesting 1-2 week long walk.
Here I highlight the most special moments of my own camino, ones in which I’d become utterly absorbed in the sunlight’s exquisite play with the continuously unfolding environments, as well as the consciousness awakening primal sounds of moving waters in the multitude of rivers and streams that I crossed along the trail.
“If you feel that you can’t go on, and your will’s sinking low, just believe, and you can’t go wrong. In the light, you will find the road.”
‘In the Light’ | Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti (1975)
So, please just sit back, relax and enjoy this brief sidetrack from the hustle and bustle of regular life; and please share this post with anyone who you think would find it inspirational or helpful. Obrigado, gracias & thank you!
I’d set out north for Lapland to do a 100 mile trail running race through the Pallas-Ylläs National Park. While I have gone further in multi-stage races, this would be my first attempt at covering this distance non-stop. Even though I had been able to train consistently for this race, I’d only been able to do so for 6 months since I’d made the decision to go. So, to save you the suspense, I ended up with a DNF after 42 miles due to a series of events that sealed my fate; and while I would obviously have loved to have made it to the finish line, regardless, I am thankful for the much needed reality check and lesson in humility that this experience afforded me.
So, what happened? Well, I managed to sprain my ankle rather badly after just 16 miles, which instantly forced me to re-evaluate my race strategy. Any kind of running was now certainly out of the question. I could still manage to walk, but the rough terrain made it hard to even do that at a pace that would get me to the first checkpoint at Pallas before the cut-off time. Even though I was participating in a race, my primary goal was to experience the magic of the midnight sign over the fells, valleys and lakes of this amazing place, and so I decided to proceed and just see what would happen. As things went, I ended up spraining that very same ankle two more times over the next 10 or so miles, but luckily catching it just in time on both occasions to prevent any further serious damage.
Despite being forced to drop below my planned race pacing schedule, I calculated that I might still have a chance to make the first cut-off time at the 42 mile mark, and I could then make a decision as to whether I could, or even should, proceed. However, fate had another plan for me, which had already been sealed an hour before the race start. The race had been due to kick off at 1pm, but as our bus had broken down on the way to the start, this ended up forcing a one hour delay. The combined butterfly effect from this and my ankle injury created a situation where I ended up spending two extra hours walking over the exposed elevated landscape after midnight with the ambient temperature falling fast, particularly as the wind blowing across the tops had picked up quite a bit. As a consequence, I felt my body rapidly starting to shut down.
By the time I’d reached the Pallas aid station, I was on the verge of hypothermia, despite the small miracle of actually making it there before the cut-off. However, with only just 25 minutes remaining, I had no hope of warming myself up fast enough to make it safe for me to proceed. I basically had no choice at this point, other than to accept the reality of the situation, and so my journey simply fizzled out right then and there. Once I’d warmed up again over the next hour or so, I was ready to jump on the bus back to the race base in Äkäslompolo … and, unfortunately, with still relatively fresh legs. That certainly gave me a strong dose of ‘what could have been’, but there was no point entertaining those thoughts any further, as it would have changed absolutely nothing.
In retrospect, now that I’m back home, it can be very easy for me to make excuses for my ‘failure’, but I’ve simply chosen not to see it that way. In the end, with this being my first race in over 12 years, and with only 6 months of specific race preparation, it was always going to be a tall order to make it to the finish, even if everything had gone according to plan. So, I will just take this experience as a valuable status check of both my physical and mental fortitude, and be grateful that I still had the privilege to experience the magic of the midnight sun in Lapland while roaming over new terrains.
In a strange way, I’ve actually now become even hungrier to test and go beyond my limits. However, perhaps the best way for me to do that is not via contrived and arbitrary time-limited events, no matter how interesting and amazing they otherwise might be. Maybe the race I need to run is the one within, where I proceed at exactly the right pace that my soul will have set for me at any given moment, while being fully in tune with the landscape that I’m navigating over. The quote by Steven Wright, “Everywhere is within walking distance, if you have the time.”, could well now become my mantra going forward. What then remains for me to do, is to simply free up more time for moving forward along my chosen path, and for however long that may take. In that regard, please allow me to already introduce to you my new travel companion Matilda a Segunda or Matilda the Second.
Back in 2017, upon awakening on a cold and rainy morning, with the autumn season in Finland already in full swing, I was smacked with an undeniably powerful urge to ride a bicycle from my home in Turku to my second home in Portugal, a journey of over 4000km; but why?
About 2 years earlier, I’d reached the end of the most significant phase of my life, my 18 year long marriage. Now I’d woken up to the fact that I pretty much had no clue as to what I was supposed to do with the rest of my life. In hindsight, all the signs that this major fork in the road was fast approaching had already been there for several years. Perhaps they’d just been hiding in plain sight, but I’d just not noticed them. However, it was most likely that I’d simply not wanted, or been prepared, to see and accept the truth and reality of my situation. I guess that it had just been much easier to go through life as a functional depressive, giving the people around me the impression that I was doing ok; but I wasn’t. All I had succeeded in doing was to put all the associated painful, unaddressed issues on ice for a while. Well, no matter. The universe had eventually lost patience with me, and decided that it was high time for me to face the music.
To clarify a bit more, the initial catalyst for my recovery, back into the world of the living, had been the Camino Portuguese pilgrim trek from Porto, Portugal to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain, which I undertook during the Easter break earlier that year. In retrospect, that had been my opening cry for help, which had ripped open the doors of the freezer that my heart had become, and directed the divine heat at all that had been lifelessly stored within. It was literally an act of resurrection!
From that time on, until this present day, I have completed many more adventures of exploration and discovery, which have included 4 separate bicycle tours around Portugal, as well as two long distance hiking treks, the Camino Finisterre and the Via Algarviana. Now, once again, I found myself at a new crossroads, as I reach 7 years of nomadic monkhood. While there are certainly many adventures ahead, and which I will tell you about later; here first is a video where my long-time friend and Ghostrider, Mr. Pepe, interviews me about the last ride with my trusted travel companion Matilda, on our two week tour of the Northern Portugal Coastline and Peneda-Geres National Park, as well about some thoughts for the future.
So, what’s next? In many ways, I feel that I’ve finally re-entered society, but now much more on my own terms. With that in mind, my focus going forward is on learning how to better serve others, both individuals through my coaching practice, and communities through the concepts of spiritual construction. The initial plans include a return to Portugal, but this time to the Castelo Branco region of Central Portugal close to the border with Spain. More specifically, I plan to create my own personal camino adventures, which will traverse through amazing places, such as castles, ruins and historic small villages, all connected by trails through the wonderful nature of Portugal. Ultimately, my desire is to offer previously untapped avenues of inspiration and personal development for my coaching clients, as well as fellow explorers; in fact, for anyone who is willing to make the necessary physical, emotional and spiritual effort to discover new and better ways of living and being.
Valleys of sorrow, the tears of the lost do keep. Their paths out, I seek.
‘The Path Out’ by Jyri Manninen
The more the world continues to move ever faster into an existence based around digital networks and the influence of artificial intelligence, my intuition, that feeling deep down within my belly, is to go in the opposite direction, back towards a more analog way of life, which is focused around the development and enhancement of real, organic relationships between family, friends, neighbours, communities, as well as strangers, and where the awakening of human consciousness is placed right at the forefront. Do you care to join me?
run for your life 