Tag: CrossRoads Conversations

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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.

I used to believe the most meaningful conversations happened at dinner. Good food, candlelight, everyone finally relaxed after a day’s walking — surely that was where people opened up.

Sometimes, it is. But not always. Sometimes, the real conversations, the ones guests still mention to me months later, don’t happen at the table. They happen on the trail, mid-morning, somewhere unremarkable between two villages no one could point to on a map afterwards.

Why Facing Forward is less Challenging

There’s something about walking side by side that dinner simply can’t replicate, and it took me longer than I’d like to admit to work out what it was. At the table, you’re facing someone. Every spoken word involves eye contact. You watch their face receive what you’ve said in real time, and some instinctive, entirely sensible part of you edits accordingly.

On the trail, none of that applies. You’re both facing the same direction, toward the same stretch of path, and whatever you say simply goes out into the air rather than landing on someone’s face for immediate review. I’ve had guests tell me things walking that I’m quite certain they wouldn’t have said across a table — not because the trail is magic, but because it removes the one ingredient every confession has always needed a way around: being observed while you say it.

The Conversation I Still Think About

Years ago, walking a quiet stretch of the Voie du Puy with a guest — a retired headteacher, composed, the sort of person you’d never guess was carrying anything heavy — I asked an ordinary question about her plans after the retreat. She answered it, and then, several minutes later, apropos of nothing I’d asked, mentioned her husband had died the previous winter and she hadn’t told anyone on the trip.

I’ve thought about that exchange more than almost any other in years of hosting. Not because it was dramatic — it wasn’t, delivered quite plainly, eyes on the path ahead — but because I’m fairly certain it would never have surfaced at dinner. Something about the walking made the saying of it possible. Not easier, exactly. Just possible.

What This Means for How I Host

Although I no longer walk with my guests, and although I encourage them to walk as much of the Camino on their own, firmly believing that this is where most of the benefit lies, I stopped trying to engineer meaningful conversation around the table and trust that there will be moments of meaningful conversation on the way.

It also changed how I think about pacing the day; I now allow much longer for each day’s walk. A retreat with too much sitting — too many long lunches, too much scheduled reflection time on benches — is, I’ve come to believe, quietly working against itself. The walking isn’t just a means of transport between the beginning and the end point. Increasingly, I think walking is the most meaningful part, and the meals are simply where we recover from the effort.

Something Worth Trying, Even Off the Camino

You don’t need Gascony or a fortnight of walking to test this. Next time you need to have a conversation you’ve been avoiding, try having it while walking rather than seated across a table. Somewhere with no eye contact required, no chairs to fidget in, nothing to do but keep moving forward. I suspect you’ll find the words arrive more easily than you expected.

It’s a small thing to notice, but it’s changed how I think about hosting my Camino de Santiago walking retreats almost entirely. The retreat, in the end, isn’t really built around meals or lodging or even the route itself. It’s built around creating enough forward motion that people can finally confront the thing they came here — without quite admitting it to themselves — hoping to resolve.

If any of this sounds like the kind of break you’re after, I’d love to hear from you. Write to me at MargarethaMontagu@gmail.com, and tell me what you’re hoping to resolve, and I’ll tell you whether you’ll benefit from a walking retreat or not.

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What years of hosting Camino de Santiago walking retreats in France taught me about connection on the trail

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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I’ve watched a lot of icebreakers fail in my time. Name games, “two truths and a lie,” the earnest go-round where everyone shares what they’re hoping to get from the retreat — I’ve tried most of them, back when I still believed conversation was the fastest route to connection. It isn’t. Not even close.

The fastest route, I’ve learned, is a hill. Preferably a slightly steep one, ideally somewhere between Eauze and Manciet, with the wind doing something unhelpful and everyone’s calves quietly registering complaints.

What Actually Happens on the Climb

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about shared physical effort: it strips away performance almost instantly. On day one, over dinner, guests are still curating themselves a little — the polished version of their job, their reason for coming, their opinions delivered with the faint carefulness of people who’ve just met. Entirely normal. Entirely human.

Then they hit a hill, and within about twenty minutes, all of that curation becomes logistically impossible. Nobody can maintain witty small talk while their lungs are working that hard. What replaces it is much better: short sentences, spontaneous laughter at nothing in particular, someone offering their water bottle to a stranger without a second thought. By the top, four people who were polite acquaintances at brunch have somehow become a small, slightly breathless unit.

I’ve come to think of it as the difference between telling someone who you are and being seen while you’re coping with a challenge. A dinner conversation is the former. An uphill stretch, taken together, is the latter — and it turns out the latter builds trust roughly ten times faster.

The Guest Who Surprised Me

I remember one retreat where a guest — a barrister, sharp, quite guarded on arrival — said almost nothing personal for the first day and a half. Then she hit a long, exposed stretch, not even particularly steep, and about halfway up she started laughing, apparently at her own expense, about how she’d trained for this “by walking briskly to meetings.” By the top, she was telling the group about her father, unprompted, the way you’d mention something to an old friend rather than three people you’d met the day before.

Nothing about that stretch was designed to produce that. It just made pretence too expensive to keep up.

Why I Stopped Over-Engineering the “Bonding”

In the early years, I tried to schedule connection — a reflective circle here, a shared journaling prompt there. Useful, some of it. But I’ve quietly learned to trust the terrain more than my own planning. The gentlest of hills do the work that my carefully worded prompts were only ever approximating. Struggle shared in silence, side by side, seems to build something that struggle discussed rarely manages on its own.

This is partly why I resist the urge to over-schedule our days. If guests spend an hour climbing together without a single planned “activity,” they usually leave that hour closer than they’d have gotten from an evening of structured conversation. The Camino, in this sense, does a fair bit of my job for me — which I’ve made peace with, mostly.

What I’d Tell Anyone Hosting a Retreat

If you’re building any kind of group experience, physical or otherwise, my honest advice is this: stop trying to talk people into closeness. Give them something moderately hard to do together instead, ideally something that makes conversation briefly impossible, and step back.

It won’t feel like it’s working, in the moment. It’ll just look like four people trudging up a hill, a little out of breath, not saying much.

If you’d like to know more about how walking sections of the Camino de Santiago together tends to unfold — hills included — I’d love to hear from you. Write to me directly at MargarethaMontagu@gmail.com and I’ll tell you honestly what to expect.

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I used to think I was in the walking business.

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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After enough Camino de Santiago walking retreats along the Voie du Puy, I’ve had to quietly revise that. I’m not in the walking business. I’m in the business of letting people be someone slightly different for a week — and the walking, as it turns out, is just how we get there.

I noticed this properly years ago when a former guest, Sandrine, wrote to ask about coming back. Not for a different route, mind you — the exact same stretch she’d already walked. When I gently pointed this out, half expecting her to have muddled the details, she said something I’ve never quite stopped thinking about: “I don’t want to see something new. I want to be her again.”

She meant the version of herself who existed for those five days. More intentional. Less apologetic. The one who ate brunch without checking her phone first.

What I Thought I Was Selling

For years, if you’d asked me what guests were paying for, I’d have said: a well-planned route, decent food, farmhouse comfort, good company, maybe a touch of gentle challenge on the hills outside Eauze. All true. All, it turns out, beside the point.

What I’ve come to understand — slowly, and mostly by watching who rebooks and who doesn’t — is that the itinerary is just the scaffolding. It’s necessary, but nobody’s paying for the scaffolding. They’re paying for what the scaffolding lets them become, briefly, without an audience watching them.

I think this is why so few of my guests can tell me, six months later, exactly which villages they passed through. They remember a conversation over taboulé al fresco. They remember Loki, our rather opinionated Falabella, wandering over during brunch as if he had somewhere better to be and had decided brunch looked more interesting. They remember one sentence someone said, unprompted, on a grey Tuesday somewhere between Manciet and Nogaro. They almost never remember the schedule.

The Person Who Shows Up on Day One

Here’s what I’ve learned to watch for now, and it’s changed how I host entirely: the guest who arrives on day one is rarely the guest who leaves on day five, and the gap between those two people is the actual product.

I don’t say that to sound mystical about it — I was a doctor for a long time before any of this, and I’m allergic to that kind of talk. I mean it quite literally. Something about the rhythm of walking, eating, resting, and repeating — with no decisions more complicated than which trail marker to follow — seems to loosen a grip that people have been holding for years without noticing. By the time they leave, they’re not transformed exactly. They’re just… less braced.

And that’s the thing they come back for. Not Manciet. Not Nogaro. Themselves, the unbraced version, briefly available again.

Why I Keep Doing This

I’ll admit there are easier businesses than one built on four farmhouse beds and a handful of dates a year. But I’ve stopped apologising for staying small, because I think this particular thing — the letting-people-be-someone-else-for-a-week thing — simply doesn’t survive in bigger groups.

So if you’ve read this far and something in it landed a little too accurately — if you recognised yourself in Sandrine, or in the version of you that exists mostly in memory now — I’d genuinely like to hear from you. No booking form, not a sales funnel. Just write to me directly at MargarethaMontagu@gmail.com and tell me what brought you here. I read every email myself, and I’ll write back myself too.

Sometimes the most useful thing I can offer before you even decide whether to come is simply to ask: who is it you’re hoping to be again?

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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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There’s a number I’ve become slightly obsessive about, and it isn’t a step count.

It’s four.

After years of hosting small group Camino retreats from my farmhouse in Gascony, I’ve come to believe that somewhere between three guests and four, something magical happens. And somewhere between four and five, that same magical something quietly leaves the room.

I didn’t plan it this way, not really. When I started, “small group” was mostly a polite way of saying “I don’t have the budget for a minibus.” But over enough retreats along the Voie du Puy, I noticed a pattern too consistent to be accidental. With three or four people, the group is the experience. With five or more, the group starts managing the experience — schedules, seating, who walks with whom, who feels left out at dinner. You’ve gone from a shared journey to something closer to light committee work, and nobody signed up for that.

The Maths of Connection

Here’s the part that surprised me most: it’s not really about logistics. I could, if I were feeling ambitious, absolutely organise brunch for five. The farmhouse table is long enough, the coffee pot is large enough, and most mornings I have enough enthusiasm, too.

It’s about attention. Every guest I add divides the attention available to each person who’s already there. With four guests, I can notice who’s gone quiet at brunch, who’s favouring their left ankle, who mentioned their mother in passing on day one and might want to circle back to that on day four. With five, I’m noticing the group. I’m managing a shape rather than meeting three or four individual people exactly where they are.

And the guests notice this too, even if they couldn’t tell you why. They arrive expecting a walking holiday and leave, more often than not, surprised by how seen they felt. That doesn’t happen by accident, and it definitely doesn’t happen at scale.

What Five Actually Costs You

I want to be honest about what “five is a committee” really means in practice, because it sounds a bit unreal written down.

It means someone becomes the unofficial pace-setter, and someone else quietly resents them for it. It means the conversations — which are, frankly, where all the good stuff happens — start splitting into two smaller conversations instead of one shared one, and somebody’s always left slightly outside. It means dinner becomes a performance rather than a debrief, because five or more adults around a table naturally reorganise into an audience and a stage, whether they mean to or not.

None of this is dramatic. It’s subtle — a retreat that’s merely nice instead of one that quietly rearranges something in you.

Small By Design, Not By Accident

So when people ask why I cap my groups at three or four guests, the honest answer is: because five changes the chemistry, and I’m not willing to trade what happens at four for what fits in a minibus.

It also means, if I’m honest, that I’ve turned away bookings I could have taken. There’s a particular kind of ache in saying no to a lovely-sounding group of six because I know, deep down, they’d have a fine time — just not the time they’re actually hoping for.

If you’re the kind of person who reads “small group retreat” in a brochure and immediately wonders what “small” actually means — now you know, at least for me. It’s not marketing shorthand. It’s the whole design brief.

I keep the Camino de Santiago walking retreats at Maison Meraki small on purpose, walking sections of the Voie du Puy, with never more than three or four guests at a time. If that sounds like the kind of attention you’d like turned your way for a week, e-mail me at MargarethaMontagu@gmail.com.

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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.