Some people go on yoga retreats to India and others get their spiritual kicks from a two week bender in Sitges. Me? I like to walk a little pilgrimage route in northern Spain. I’m not religious, I’m just married to a historian obsessed with the Camino de Santiago since he was a young dude. Also known as the Way of Saint James, the walk was one of the most important Christian pilgrimages during the Middle Ages and for the historian’s 30th – ten years ago now – I got him a surprise week walking it with his friends and me. Apparently I had more time then – I even laid on a treasure hunt for the unveiling of the gift.

It takes a month to do the whole thing, but we did seven days back to back beginning in Saint Jean Pied de Port – one of the main starting points, although technically a pilgrimage starts from your own home. Day one was 24 k up, up and more up over the Pyrénées and every day after that started with the announcement of a new casualty – migraine, pulled muscle, flaring knee or whatever. We had ‘Tim more blister than man’ who stoically did what he could. Still, it was uplifting and we got to see parts of Spain you wouldn’t delve into on a package holiday or a city break.

So this summer for the man’s 40th, as many from the original crew as possible made plans to pick up the trail in Logroño in La Rioja, where we left off. This time there were only two days of walking – we’re older, we had to get babysitters – but it was brilliant and left me wanting more. Here’s what it looked like ten years ago…

Those yellow arrows are on posts, boulders and signs all along the trail interspersed with a scallop shell symbol to guide you.

That’s me ten years ago!

Here’s how things looked just a few hot weeks ago – I’m still inexplicably drawn to a hay bail.

Someone has written Buon Camino here, which a lot of the locals yell to you as you walk past – does feel so much nicer than a road rage heckle back in London.

You pass sights like this guy along the way. We also saw a Mum walking with a donkey, a dog and her three boys of around 8,6 and 5. Can you imagine? In awe I was.

My brother has done the whole thing in one go since I started this – talk about stealing one’s thunder – and it seemed to have the spiritual effect on him that he was looking for. Walking in a group you walked with ten years ago involves a degree of therapy too – we had plenty of conversations along the lines of ‘what’s been your biggest challenge in the last ten years and what did you learn from it’. We also played in the region of 30 games of ‘Would you Rather...’

My Pilgrims passport which you stamp along the way – mostly in cathedrals. Junk mailers, that’s my old address.

Back home I miss being out in nature and actually moving all day  – though I’d forgotten that by hour six of walking you do start feeling like Robocop.

We’ve all talked about trying to finish before we’re sixty but it’s undeniably harder now that we have bigger commitments and if you’re thinking of doing this I’d say do it in one go if you can. The sense of achievement after seven days was amazing, after two it was a tiny bit underwhelming, but on both trips there was something special – call it spiritual if you like – about being able to silently dream while staring at the sky all day and feeling that those worries of day to day life are basically mostly unimportant.Ooooommmmmmmmmm