Tag: CrossRoads Conversations

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A Camino de Santiago walking retreat host on the quiet exhaustion so many high-achievers mistake for normality

CrossRoads Conversations

When I first started hosting Camino de Santiago walking retreats in rural Gascony, the French Tuscany, I assumed I would be the one doing most of the teaching.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Over the years, dozens of people have arrived at my farmhouse carrying backpacks, walking boots, and lives that had gradually become much too heavy. Some were still working. Some had retired. Some were rebuilding after loss, illness or divorce. Others simply couldn’t explain why they felt so restless.

They thought they had come to walk a couple of sections of the Camino.

In the end, they became MY teachers. The CrossRoads Conversations blog post series explores what my guests have taught me over the last twenty-odd years.

One of the questions I ask every guest when they arrive is, “How are you?”

Almost everyone gives roughly the same answer. “Oh, I’m fine.” Or perhaps, “A bit tired,” usually accompanied by a smile that suggests they’re apologising for even mentioning it.

What I’ve learned after hosting dozens of Camino de Santiago walking retreats is that almost nobody realises quite how tired they really are. I don’t mean the kind of tiredness that a good night’s sleep sorts out. I mean the more debilitating kind — the sort that creeps up so gradually we stop noticing it’s there at all, the way you stop noticing a low hum in a room until someone switches the fan off.

Life has a habit of demanding more than we realise it’s asking. Careers become more draining. Parents grow older. Children leave home — or don’t. Relationships need nurturing. The news gets scarier, the world less predictable than it once seemed, and we adapt, because that’s what human beings do rather well. We keep going, right up until the day we find ourselves standing in front of the fridge, unable to decide what to have for dinner, and wondering when small decisions started feeling quite so difficult.

Many of my guests are remarkably capable people. They’ve built careers, raised families, started businesses, cared for ageing parents, volunteered, and quietly held up friends going through hard times. They’re used to managing a great deal, and they’ve become so good at it that they no longer recognise how much coping they’re actually doing. Competence, it turns out, is an excellent disguise.

Then they arrive here — and for the first day or so, most of them continue at exactly the same pace. They check their phones. They apologise for taking a work call. They tell me they’ll “just quickly” answer a few emails before dinner. I’ve learned not to say very much at this stage. The Camino tends to take care of it without my interference.

My retreats include two or three days walking sections of the historic Le Puy route, alone, carrying little more than lunch, water and perhaps a notebook. On the first morning, many set off with real determination — some even tell me how quickly they expect to finish, as though the Camino were a to-do list of particularly scenic bullet points. I smile, not because they’re wrong exactly, but because they haven’t yet discovered that the Camino will no doubt have other ideas. It’s been here for over a thousand years. It’s not going to be rushed by someone’s Tuesday deadline.

After walking for a while, the pace will begin to slow as you grow physically tired, as will the constant mental commentary, the endless planning, and the invisible pressure to make full use of every single minute. Somewhere between the vineyards and the sunflower fields, the shady woodland paths and the hilltop stone villages, your nervous system seems to breathe out for what may be the first time in years. You’ll start noticing birdsong instead of notifications. The scent of wild mint and thyme replaces the smell of exhaust fumes. It sounds almost ridiculously simple. I rather think it is.

One of the things that fascinates me is how extraordinarily well people sleep during the retreat. They tell me they haven’t slept like that in years, and at first they assume it’s the walking. Walking certainly helps. So does fresh air, and so does good food. But I suspect something more important is going on underneath all that. For the first time in a long while, they stop being vigilant. They stop anticipating the next outrageous demand, stop wondering who desperately needs them, stop worrying about tomorrow before today has even finished. Their bodies finally get the message that, for now, it’s safe to rest.

As a doctor, I spent many years watching what prolonged stress does to people physically. As a retreat host, I’ve become just as interested in what it does emotionally. It shrinks our world. It convinces us that rushing is normal and that rest has to be earned. It whispers that if we stop, even for a moment, everything might quietly fall apart.

Do you know what I’ve noticed, though? It rarely does. Emails wait. Meetings happen without us, somehow. The world carries on spinning with a confidence that is, frankly, a little insulting given how essential we’d assumed we were. We, meanwhile, come home remembering what it feels like not to be running on empty.

The Camino doesn’t remove our responsibilities — they’re all still there when we get back, patiently queuing for attention. What it often removes is the illusion that we have to lug them around every waking moment of every day. Perhaps that’s why so many guests tell me they feel lighter when they leave. Not because their lives have become easier, but because they’ve remembered what it feels like not to be exhausted all the time.

I sometimes think emotional tiredness is rather like living next to a railway line. At first, every passing train keeps you awake. Eventually you stop hearing them altogether — until you spend a few quiet nights in the countryside and suddenly realise just how much noise you’d been living with the whole time, without clocking it.

The Camino offers that kind of quiet. And in it, many people discover something they hadn’t expected: they weren’t lazy, they weren’t unmotivated, and they certainly weren’t “just getting older.” They were simply far more tired than they’d ever allowed themselves to admit.

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Could you be more exhausted than you realise?

If you’re longing for a few days to step away from the demands of everyday life, walk the Camino through the peaceful countryside of southwest France, and rediscover what genuine rest actually feels like, I’d love to tell you more about my small-group Camino de Santiago walking retreats.

Sometimes the greatest gift we can give ourselves isn’t another task completed. It’s permission to stop carrying the world on our shoulders for a little while.

You can email me at MargarethaMontagu@gmail.com.

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Crossroads Conversations

When I first started hosting Camino de Santiago walking retreats in rural Gascony, the French Tuscany, I assumed I would be the one doing most of the teaching.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Over the years, dozens of people have arrived at my farmhouse carrying backpacks, walking boots, and lives that had gradually become much too heavy. Some were still working. Some had retired. Some were rebuilding after loss, illness or divorce. Others simply couldn’t explain why they felt so restless.

They thought they had come to walk a couple of sections of the Camino.

In the end, they became MY teachers. The CrossRoads Conversations blog post series explores what my guests have taught me over the last twenty-odd years.

When guests book one of my Camino de Santiago retreats, I always ask why they chose this particular one.

The answers are surprisingly varied. “I’ve just retired.” “I’m thinking of changing careers.” “I’ve just been through a divorce.” “I’ve lost my raison d’être.” “I’ve been so busy looking after everyone else that I’ve forgotten what I want.” Occasionally, someone says, with admirable honesty, “I’m not entirely sure. I just know I needed to come.” That one might be my favourite. It’s the most truthful answer of the lot, even though it sounds the least like one.

After hosting dozens of guests over the years, I’ve learned that these first answers are almost never the whole story. People don’t arrive with the problem they actually need to solve. They arrive with the symptom, dressed up convincingly as the diagnosis.

The real question usually reveals itself somewhere between Eauze and Manciet. I never know exactly when it will happen. Sometimes it’s on the first day’s walk, while the morning mist is still lifting off the vineyards. Sometimes it’s over supper beneath the old oak tree, as swallows dart overhead collecting insects with more competence than most of us manage before our second coffee. Occasionally, it doesn’t arrive until the final evening, just when someone has finally stopped trying quite so hard to find it. Clarity, I’ve noticed, rarely responds well to being chased. It prefers to make an entrance when nobody’s watching the door.

Many of my guests are formidably capable people. They’ve spent decades solving problems, making decisions, and carrying responsibility for other people’s lives and livelihoods. They assume they can approach a crossroads in their own life exactly the same way: identify the problem, analyse it, make a plan, take action, tick it off. If only life came with a project plan and a Gantt chart.

The Camino has a gentle habit of disrupting this strategy. During my retreats, guests spend two or three days walking alone along sections of the historic Le Puy route, carrying little more than a picnic, some water and perhaps a notebook. I don’t walk with them — not because I’m unsociable, but because I’ve discovered that people ask themselves far better questions when there’s no one beside them poised to answer. Besides, the arrows mark the way clearly enough. They’ve been doing the job since long before either of us arrived.

On the first morning, minds are usually still busy back home. Guests replay disturbing conversations. They mentally rewrite emails written in a hurry. They wonder whether they remembered to lock the back door. Some worry about work despite being several hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away from it, which I’ve come to think is the greatest feat of modern technology: convincing us the office cannot possibly survive without us for three whole days. Remarkably, it always does.

As the kilometres pass, though, something shifts. The rhythm of walking has a curious way of untangling thoughts. The scent of warm pine replaces the smell of traffic fumes, cicadas provide the soundtrack instead of incoming notifications, and sunlight flickers through the trees while the only decision that really matters is whether to stop now for lunch or hold out for the next shaded bench. Life becomes, almost embarrassingly, uncomplicated. And that’s usually when the real questions turn up, uninvited and rather more interesting than the ones that came before.

Someone who arrived because they’ve just retired realises they were never afraid of stopping work — they’re afraid of no longer feeling useful. Someone else spends months agonising over whether to move house, only to discover by the end of the retreat that the address was never the point; what they actually longed for was a different way of living. Another guest wrestles for weeks over whether to accept a promotion, and eventually understands that the promotion isn’t the dilemma at all. The real question is why they’ve spent so many years believing their worth is measured in achievements.

The problem they thought they had was simply the loose thread. The Camino, in its unhurried way, leads them to the whole tapestry.

I’ve watched this happen so often that it no longer surprises me. What does still surprise me is how kind people become towards themselves once they see the deeper question. The urgency fades. The self-criticism softens. Instead of demanding an immediate answer, they grow curious — and curiosity, I’ve found, is a far more useful travelling companion than certainty ever was.

Perhaps that’s one of the Camino’s greatest gifts. It doesn’t hand us solutions. It helps us ask better questions — sometimes a little uncomfortable, but infinitely more useful than the ones we arrived with. Looking back, I realise my guests have taught me this lesson again and again: very few people come here because they need to make a decision. Most come because they need to understand themselves well enough to make the right one.

There’s a world of difference between the two. And somehow, somewhere along an ancient pilgrim path through the peaceful countryside of southwest France, with birdsong overhead and boots crunching gravel underfoot, a good many of them begin to do exactly that.

So — are you solving the wrong problem?

If you’re standing at your own crossroads and some part of you suspects that the thing you keep circling isn’t really the thing at all, that’s usually a sign worth listening to. Not a crisis. Not a red flag. Just a nudge that the question underneath is still waiting to be asked properly.

You don’t need to have it figured out before you come. Nobody does. That’s rather the point.

My small-group Camino de Santiago retreats in southwest France offer something surprisingly hard to come by these days: a few unhurried days, an ancient path that’s been sorting people out for a thousand years, and no one asking you to have the answer by Tuesday.

If that sounds like exactly what you didn’t know you needed, I’d love to hear from you. Email me at MargarethaMontagu@gmail.com — tell me what’s nagging at you, even if it doesn’t quite make sense yet. Especially if it doesn’t quite make sense yet.

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If you (or someone you know) are carrying more emotional baggage than you’d like to admit — and you suspect a few days on the Camino de Santiago might help you set some of it down — email me at MargarethaMontagu@gmail.com

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CrossRoads Conversations

When I first started hosting Camino de Santiago walking retreats in rural Gascony, the French Tuscany, I assumed I would be the one doing most of the teaching.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Over the years, dozens of people have arrived at my farmhouse carrying backpacks, walking boots, and lives that had gradually become much too heavy. Some were still working. Some had retired. Some were rebuilding after loss, illness or divorce. Others simply couldn’t explain why they felt so restless.

They thought they had come to walk a couple of sections of the Camino.

In the end, they became MY teachers. The CrossRoads Conversations blog post series explores what my guests have taught me over the last twenty-odd years.

After years of hosting Camino de Santiago hiking retreats in southwest France, I’ve discovered that nature doesn’t just provide a beautiful backdrop—it quietly shows us how to navigate life’s changing seasons.

One of the questions I’m asked surprisingly often is, “When is the best time to walk the Camino?“

Each season has something the others don’t.

Over the years, I’ve welcomed dozens of guests to my little farmhouse in southwest France, where my retreats include two or three days walking sections of the Camino de Santiago along the historic Le Puy route. Some arrive in spring, when the countryside seems determined to prove that miracles happen every year. Others come in the blazing heat of summer, when the cicadas perform with the confidence of an orchestra that has never needed a conductor. Autumn brings golden vineyards and crisp mornings. Winter, although quieter for retreats, has its own kind of honesty.

People often ask me which season I prefer.

I’ve stopped trying to choose.

Each one reminds me of something I’d almost forgotten.

Spring, for example, is gloriously impatient.

Wildflowers appear where only weeks before there was bare earth. The orchards burst into blossom as though someone had quietly switched nature back on. Swallows return from Africa with impeccable timing, apparently having misplaced neither their passports nor their sense of direction. The vines, which looked so lifeless throughout winter, suddenly produce tiny green shoots that promise an entirely new vintage.

If nature ever needed a slogan, spring’s would surely be: Never underestimate new beginnings.

It’s a comforting thought for anyone standing at a crossroads in life.

Many of my guests arrive feeling as though something inside them has gone quiet. Retirement has left them wondering what comes next. A difficult year has dented their confidence. A life transition has left them feeling untethered.

Spring gently suggests that beginnings rarely announce themselves with fireworks.

Most start as tiny green shoots.

Summer tells a different story.

The sunflowers that line the Camino seem almost absurdly optimistic. They spend their days following the sun with unwavering commitment, blissfully unconcerned with what the neighbouring field might be doing.

There is probably a lesson in that.

Modern life encourages endless comparison. Someone else has a better career, a larger house, a more adventurous retirement, or grandchildren who apparently produce museum-quality artwork before they can walk.

The sunflowers remain magnificently uninterested.

They simply turn towards the light.

I’ve often thought we’d all be happier if we spent a little less time looking sideways and a little more time looking upwards.

Autumn may well be my favourite season of all.

The vineyards surrounding my farmhouse begin to glow with shades of gold, amber and crimson. The harvest reminds us that growth isn’t the whole story. There comes a time when we have to gather the fruits of what we’ve spent years cultivating.

Many of my guests are at exactly that stage of life.

After decades of building careers, raising families or caring for others, they begin asking a different question.

What now?

Not because life is winding down.

Quite the opposite.

Because they finally have the opportunity to decide what they want the next chapter to look like.

The Camino seems particularly well suited to these ruminations.

Walking alone through vineyards that have witnessed countless harvests has a curious way of putting our own lives into perspective. The vines don’t produce grapes every month of the year. They don’t apologise for resting through winter, nor do they panic if they aren’t ready for harvest in September.

They simply trust the season they’re in.

Only humans seem convinced that we should be productive every day of every year.

No wonder so many of us are exhausted.

Then winter arrives.

The leaves fall.

The orchards stand bare.

The vineyards appear almost lifeless.

At first glance, it can seem as though nothing is happening.

Yet anyone who works with the land knows better.

Life has seasons too.

Some are filled with growth and excitement.

Others invite us to pause, recover and reflect.

Hosting Camino retreats has taught me that many of us resist these quieter seasons. We mistake resting for failing. We become impatient if life isn’t moving as quickly as we’d planned.

Nature never seems to make that mistake.

It knows that every season has a purpose.

Many of my guests come back again and again. Often in different seasons. And as they walk through vineyards, orchards and sunflower fields, at different times of the year, they begin to see that they, too, are allowed to have seasons. Seasons of striving and seasons of stillness. Seasons of loss and seasons of renewal. Seasons of letting go, and seasons of beginning again.

The countryside simply gets on with it.

Season after season.

Year after year.

What season of life are you in?

If you’re standing at a crossroads and feel that a few days walking the Camino through the vineyards, orchards and sunflower fields of southwest France might help you see your own season more clearly, I’d love to tell you more about my small-group walking retreats.

Sometimes the next chapter doesn’t begin with forging ahead. Sometimes it begins with recognising and appreciating the season you’re in.

You can email me at MargarethaMontagu@gmail.com.

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CrossRoads Conversations

When I first started hosting Camino de Santiago walking retreats in rural Gascony, the French Tuscany, I assumed I would be the one doing most of the teaching.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Over the years, dozens of people have arrived at my farmhouse carrying backpacks, walking boots, and lives that had gradually become much too heavy. Some were still working. Some had retired. Some were rebuilding after loss, illness or divorce. Others simply couldn’t explain why they felt so restless.

They thought they had come to walk a couple of sections of the Camino.

In the end, they became MY teachers. The CrossRoads Conversations blog post series explores what my guests have taught me over the last twenty-odd years.

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When people hear the word luxury, they often imagine infinity pools, Michelin-starred restaurants, Egyptian cotton sheets and champagne on arrival.

There’s nothing wrong with any of those things. I enjoy a comfortable hotel as much as the next person.

But after hosting dozens of Camino retreats in southwest France, I’ve come to believe that the greatest luxury of all isn’t something money can buy.

It’s uninterrupted time to think.

That may not sound particularly glamorous. In fact, in a world that celebrates productivity and busyness, it can sound almost wasteful. Surely we should be doing something.

Yet I’ve noticed something remarkable over the years.

Guests often arrive convinced they need answers. They hope that somewhere during the retreat, they’ll finally manage to decide whether to retire, change careers, move house, end a relationship, begin a new project or simply work out what comes next.

What they haven’t realised is that they just haven’t given themselves enough time to think things through.

Not reflective thinking.

The kind that isn’t squeezed between meetings, interrupted by notifications or accompanied by the constant temptation to “just check this “important” email.”

The kind that unfolds slowly, like a country lane disappearing on the horizon.

My Camino de Santiago walking retreats include two or three days of walking sections of the historic Le Puy route. Guests walk alone, carrying little more than a picnic, some water and perhaps a notebook. I don’t walk with them, because over the years I’ve learned that people benefit more from the walk when they succeed in finding their own way.

Something begins to happen after the first hour or two.

The conversation in our heads gradually quietens.

The mental to-do list loses its urgency.

The imaginary arguments, worries and rehearsed conversations begin to fade.

People start noticing things again.

The scent of wild thyme warming in the sunshine.

The neat rows of vines stretching towards the horizon.

A buzzard circling overhead.

The reassuring rhythmic footfall of boots on a 1000-year-old path.

At first glance, it looks as though nothing is happening.

In reality, something very important is.

Thoughts start to flow freely.

For many of my guests, particularly those who have spent decades in demanding careers, this can feel surprisingly unfamiliar. They have become exceptionally good at solving everyone else’s problems, meeting deadlines and making decisions under pressure.

What they have forgotten is how to sit quietly with their own thoughts.

Perhaps that is one of the hidden costs of modern life.

We have more information available to us, instantly, than any previous generation. More opinions. More entertainment. More news. More noise.

What we have less of is uninterrupted reflection.

Little wonder so many people feel mentally crowded.

One of the things my guests have taught me is that clarity rarely arrives because we force it. It appears when we stop chasing it quite so desperately.

Some of the most important decisions I’ve seen people make haven’t happened at a table with spreadsheets and pros-and-cons lists. They’ve happened somewhere between two small villages on the Camino de Santiago, while watching butterflies drift across a wildflower meadow or listening to the wind rustle through the trees.

Not because the Camino generously hands out answers.

But because it gives people something they need: Time.

Not time to be entertained.

Not time to be productive.

Simply time to think.

It’s curious, really.

We think nothing of spending a considerable sum on a luxurious holiday, yet we often struggle to justify setting aside a few days simply to reflect on our lives.

I’ve come to believe that genuine luxury has very little to do with opulence.

It’s waking without an alarm.

It’s walking without being in a hurry.

It’s hearing birds instead of traffic.

It’s eating lunch beneath a tree instead of at your desk.

It’s allowing your mind enough room to wander until, almost unnoticed, it begins to find its way home.

Perhaps that’s why so many guests tell me that walking the Camino was the highlight of their retreat. Not because it was physically demanding or particularly adventurous, but because it gave them permission to do something they hadn’t done in years.

To stop.

To breathe.

And finally, to think.

Perhaps you’re longing for that kind of luxury too.

If you think you—or someone you care about—would benefit from a few days walking the Camino, slowing down, and giving yourself the priceless gift of time to think, I’d love to tell you more about my small-group Camino de Santiago walking retreats in the peaceful countryside of southwest France.

You can email me at MargarethaMontagu@gmail.com.

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Crossroads Conversations

When I first started hosting Camino de Santiago walking retreats in rural Gascony, the French Tuscany, I assumed I would be the one doing most of the teaching.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Over the years, dozens of people have arrived at my farmhouse carrying backpacks, walking boots, and lives that had gradually become much too heavy. Some were still working. Some had retired. Some were rebuilding after loss, illness or divorce. Others simply couldn’t explain why they felt so restless.

They thought they had come to walk a couple of sections of the Camino.

In the end, they became MY teachers. The CrossRoads Conversations blog post series explores what my guests have taught me over the last twenty-odd years.

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Spend any time reading about the Camino de Santiago, and you’ll soon come across stories of life-changing experiences.

People find themselves. They discover their purpose. They return home transformed.

Having hosted Camino de Santiago walking retreats in southwest France for many years, along the historic Le Puy route, I have no doubt that the Camino can be deeply transformative.

I simply don’t think the Camino deserves all the credit.

That may sound almost heretical coming from someone whose retreats include two or three days of walking the Camino, but hear me out.

If walking alone along an ancient pilgrimage route automatically changed people, every pilgrim would return home a different person. They don’t. Some finish with aching feet and wonderful memories. Others quietly begin making decisions that alter the course of the rest of their lives.

The difference isn’t the path beneath their boots.

It’s what the path makes possible.

When guests arrive at my farmhouse, they’re often standing at a crossroads, although they don’t always realise it immediately. Some are contemplating retirement and wondering who they will be without the career that has defined them for decades. Others are recovering from illness, divorce or bereavement. Some are simply exhausted by years of trying to keep every ball in the air. Increasingly, people arrive with worries about a world that feels so much less predictable than it once did. Global uncertainty, economic pressure and a relentless news cycle all have a way of weighing heavily on us.

Their circumstances are different, but the underlying question is often the same.

What now?

It’s a difficult question to answer while rushing from meeting to meeting, replying to emails or ticking yet another task off an endless to-do list.

The Camino removes many of those distractions.

For a few hours, life becomes wonderfully uncomplicated. You follow the arrows. You notice the changing light on the vineyards, the scent of warm pine, the chatter of birds hidden in the hedgerows. You stop for lunch on a weathered bench or beneath the shade of an ancient oak. Your mind, so accustomed to being occupied every waking minute, gradually begins to settle.

I don’t walk with my guests. That is a deliberate choice.

Over the years, I’ve discovered that people rarely need another person telling them what to think. What they actually need is enough uninterrupted time to process their own thoughts.

Walking the Camino on your own provides exactly that.

Answers are rarely dramatic. Nobody reaches the top of a hill and suddenly knows precisely what to do with the rest of their life. Change usually arrives much more quietly than that.

Someone realises they are more tired than they dare admit.

Someone else recognises that they’ve been trying to live up to other people’s expectations.

A retiree begins to see the next chapter as an invitation.

A business owner acknowledges that success has come at too high a price.

Not miraculous interventions.

Moments of clarity.

The Camino doesn’t create those insights. They were already there, waiting patiently in the background.

The Camino simply creates the conditions in which they can finally surface.

One of the greatest privileges of hosting retreats has been watching this happen again and again. I never know what each guest will discover, and neither do they. That’s precisely as it should be. There is no formula, no guarantee and certainly no one-size-fits-all transformation.

What there is, however, is time.

Time to breathe.

Time to think.

Time to notice.

Time to intentionally imagine a different future.

Perhaps that is why people return home speaking so enthusiastically about the Camino. They aren’t really talking about the footpath, the churches or even the beautiful countryside, wonderful though it is.

They’re talking about what they discovered when life finally grew quiet enough to listen.

Perhaps you’re standing at a crossroads yourself.

If you think you—or someone you care about—might benefit from a few days of slowing down, walking the Camino and creating the space for life’s next chapter to emerge, I’d love to tell you more about my small, self-guided Camino de Santiago walking retreats in southwest France.

You can email me at MargarethaMontagu@gmail.com.

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CrossRoads Conversations

When I first started hosting Camino de Santiago walking retreats in rural Gascony, the French Tuscany, I assumed I would be the one doing most of the teaching.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Over the years, dozens of people have arrived at my farmhouse carrying backpacks, walking boots, and lives that had gradually become much too heavy. Some were still working. Some had retired. Some were rebuilding after loss, illness or divorce. Others simply couldn’t explain why they felt so restless.

They thought they had come to walk a couple of sections of the Camino.

In the end, they became MY teachers. The CrossRoads Conversations blog post series explores what my guests have taught me over the last twenty-odd years.

It would make wonderful marketing if I could tell you that spending two days walking the Camino de Santiago will solve all your problems.

Unfortunately, it won’t.

You may still have a difficult boss, a challenging marriage, an uncertain retirement, grown-up children who insist on making their own questionable decisions, and a tax return waiting for you when you get home. The Camino, for all its many gifts, has yet to develop a talent for dealing with bureaucracy.

What it does, however, is something rather more subtle.

It changes how we see our problems.

Over the years, I’ve hosted dozens of people at my little farmhouse in southwest France. They come from all walks of life, although many have one thing in common: they have reached a point where life feels heavier than it used to. Some are standing at a crossroads. Others have recently lost someone they love, are adjusting to retirement, recovering from illness, or simply wondering when life became so relentlessly complicated.

And then they spend two or three days walking sections of the Camino de Santiago along the historic Le Puy route.

Alone.

People are often surprised when I tell them that I don’t walk with my guests. Surely, they ask, wouldn’t it be more supportive if I accompanied them?

Perhaps.

But over the years, I’ve discovered that people don’t usually need someone beside them telling them where to put their feet.

The red-and-white arrows do a perfectly good job of that.

What people often need is the freedom to notice their thoughts.

One of the unexpected things I’ve learned is that nature has an extraordinary way of restoring perspective.

Not because it whispers the answers.

Not because trees possess secret therapeutic powers.

And certainly not because vineyards spend their evenings discussing existential philosophy.

It happens because nature gently reminds us that we are part of something much bigger than the small, noisy world we’ve built around ourselves.

On the Camino, life becomes beautifully simple.

You walk.

You breathe.

You notice.

The warm scent of pine drifts through the air. Swallows skim low over fields of ripening wheat. Cicadas provide the soundtrack on hot summer afternoons. In autumn, the vineyards glow gold and crimson beneath impossibly wide Gascon skies. Even the silence has texture.

Without really trying, your attention shifts.

Yesterday, you were replaying an awkward conversation for the seventeenth time.

Today, you’re wondering how many people have walked this same path before you.

Yesterday your inbox felt like a national emergency.

Today, you’re watching a line of ants carrying crumbs many times their own size and thinking they seem remarkably organised.

Nature has an amusing way of exposing our exaggerated sense of urgency.

It quietly reminds us that the seasons continue regardless of whether we’ve answered every email.

The vines don’t panic because it’s already Tuesday.

The oak trees don’t compare themselves to the walnut trees.

The sunflowers don’t spend their mornings worrying whether they’re blooming too early in the season.

Only we humans seem to have perfected the art of exhausting ourselves by measuring our worth according to how busy we are.

I’ve noticed something else over the years.

Guests rarely return from a day’s walking announcing that they’ve solved every problem in their lives.

What they do say is remarkably consistent.

“I can see things more clearly.”

“I think I know what I need to do.”

“It doesn’t feel quite so overwhelming anymore.”

The problems haven’t disappeared.

Their perspective has changed.

And changing your perspective is a remarkably empowering activity.

It offers enough distance from everyday life for us to see patterns that were invisible when we were caught up in them.

Perhaps that’s why I never promise my guests that the Camino will change their lives.

Instead, I tell them something much simpler.

Walk.

Pay attention.

See what happens.

Because while nature may not solve our problems for us, it has an extraordinary gift for helping us remember that we are usually stronger, wiser and more resourceful than we believed when we first laced up our walking boots.

And sometimes, that change in perspective is all we need.

Could you do with seeing life from a different perspective?

If you think you—or someone you care about—might benefit from stepping away from the noise of everyday life and spending a few days walking the Camino de Santiago through the peaceful countryside of southwest France, I’d love to tell you more about my small-group Camino de Santiago walking retreats.

Sometimes the greatest change begins not with finding new answers, but with looking at old questions from a different perspective.

You can email me at MargarethaMontagu@gmail.com.

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When I first started hosting Camino de Santiago walking retreats in rural Gascony, the French Tuscany, I assumed I would be the one doing most of the teaching.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Over the years, dozens of people have arrived at my farmhouse carrying backpacks, walking boots, and lives that had gradually become much too heavy. Some were still working. Some had retired. Some were rebuilding after loss, illness or divorce. Others simply couldn’t explain why they felt so restless.

They thought they had come to walk a couple of sections of the Camino.

In the end, they became MY teachers. The CrossRoads Conversations blog post series explores what my guests have taught me over the last twenty-odd years.

Why So Many Guests Leave With Less

One of the first things I notice when guests arrive at my little farmhouse in the Gers isn’t their smiling faces. It’s their luggage.

Some people pull up with suitcases that suggest they’re headed to the North Pole for six months, not to a five-day retreat in the sun-warmed southwest of France. A bag for clothes. A bag for shoes. A bag for “just in case.” Every year, I watch another wheel snag on the gravel, and another guest laughs and says, “I think I brought a bit too much, maybe?”

I know that feeling. Most of us do. We pack for sunshine and for rain, for elegant dinners and impromptu barbecues, for books we’ll never crack open and snacks we’ll never eat. Travelling light, it turns out, does not come naturally to the human species.

Until we decide to walk the Camino.

During my Camino de Santiago walking retreats, guests spend two or three days on foot along the historic Le Puy route. The walks are unguided — deliberately so. I’ve come to believe that people find their way through life more easily when they’re trusted to find their own way along a path, rather than being herded down it.

Before setting off, I nudge them gently: take only what you truly need. Water. A picnic. A waterproof, if the sky looks moody. Maybe a notebook. That’s more or less it.

And somewhere between those first uncertain steps and the end of the day’s walking, something quietly shifts. Carrying a lighter backpack has a funny way of reminding you that other things in life have gotten unnecessarily heavy, too.

Not everyone who arrives here is grieving or burnt out. Some are wondering what comes after retirement. Some, despite having hit a successful stride in their careers, still feel oddly restless. Some have recently lost someone dear. Others just have that nagging sense that life has become far more complicated than it needs to be.

After hundreds of crossroads conversations, I’ve noticed a pattern: the heaviest things people carry are seldom visible.

Expectations. Old disappointments. The pressure to keep achieving. Guilt. Regret. Responsibilities that quietly stopped belonging to them years ago. The belief that they need every answer before they’re allowed to take the next step.

Unlike an overstuffed suitcase, none of that gets left behind in the bedroom. It comes along for the whole walk.

The Camino has a gentle way of bringing this into focus. It doesn’t solve anything, and it certainly doesn’t perform miracles. What it does is make space — enough space for people to finally notice what they’ve been hauling around without ever questioning it.

I never set out to host retreats for people standing at life’s crossroads. And yet, somewhere along the way, I realised that’s precisely who kept showing up on my doorstep. Doctors, teachers, business owners, engineers, artists, retirees, parents, grandparents. Different stories, remarkably similar undertone: I can’t keep going on like this.

The Camino rarely answers that outright. Instead, it asks a quieter question:

What are you still lugging around that you should be leaving behind?

Not your responsibilities, obviously. Not the people you love. But perhaps the unrealistic expectations. The relentless busyness. The need to prove yourself, again and again. The habit of dragging yesterday into tomorrow.

If there’s one thing dozens of guests have taught me, it’s this: people usually arrive believing they need to add something to their lives. More confidence. More certainty. More purpose. More answers.

Far more often, they leave having let go of something instead.

A few unnecessary burdens stay behind on the Camino. Like the stone many people bring from home to leave on the path.

If you (or someone you know) are carrying more emotional baggage than you’d like to admit — and you suspect a few days on the Camino de Santiago might help you set some of it down — email me at MargarethaMontagu@gmail.com