Tag: Questions You Might Be Too Embarrassed to Ask About a Walking Retreat

What if you don’t want to discover your life purpose, reinvent yourself, release your limiting beliefs, become your best self or emerge from the Gascon countryside at dawn knowing exactly what you’re going to do with the next thirty years?

What if you would simply like to walk somewhere beautiful, eat something delicious, sleep properly and have nobody ask you what your five-year plan is?

Excellent. You may have just found the right kind of walking retreat.

We live in an age of relentless self-improvement. We are encouraged to optimise our sleep, our diet, our productivity, our relationships, our careers and, apparently, our entire personalities. Even holidays seem to have joined in. A retreat must now transform us, enlighten us, heal us, reconnect us with our authentic selves and preferably leave us with a colour-coded action plan for the rest of our lives.

Frankly, it can be a lot to live up to for a 5-day retreat.

And sometimes, particularly when life has already thrown a few things at you, the last thing you need is another project called You.

Perhaps you don’t need a major overhaul right now

There is a particular assumption behind much of the language surrounding retreats: that we arrive somehow incomplete and leave improved. We arrive stressed and leave serene. We arrive confused and leave with clarity. We arrive having lost our way and leave with a shiny new life purpose tucked neatly into our luggage.

It sounds wonderful. It can also feel like just another thing on your already-endless to-do list.

What if you are not looking for a transformation? What if you don’t want to become a different person at all? Perhaps you simply want to spend a few days somewhere beautiful without having to simulate wellness, achieve enlightenment or explain what you have learned about yourself over dinner.

There is nothing wrong with that.

Sometimes you don’t need to be transformed. You simply need to rest.

You need to wake up without immediately reaching for your phone. You need to drink your coffee slowly. You need to walk without rushing towards a destination. You need to notice the sound of your feet on the path, the warmth of the sun, the smell of the earth after rain. You need a proper lunch and perhaps a nap afterwards, because frankly, naps are underrated.

And you may need a little time in which nobody wants anything from you.

No-pressure Walking

One of the things I love about walking is its simplicity. You don’t have to be good at it. You don’t have to win. There is no leaderboard, no certificate at the end and certainly no PowerPoint presentation explaining what you achieved.

You put one foot in front of the other and keep going.

That simplicity can be surprisingly restorative when life has become complicated. During a period of change, we can spend enormous amounts of energy trying to work out what comes next. Should I stay? Should I go? What do I actually want? Who am I now? What happens if I make the wrong decision?

Those are worthwhile questions, but they don’t necessarily become easier because you spend twelve hours sitting at a desk staring determinedly at them.

Sometimes they become easier when you stop staring at them.

There is something about walking that gives thoughts room to move. You can think about something without having to solve it. You can allow a question to accompany you for a while rather than demanding an immediate answer. And occasionally, somewhere between one village and the next, an answer appears when you weren’t particularly looking for it.

That’s rather different from forcing a breakthrough.

You don’t have to have an epiphany a day

Perhaps this is the bit I most want people to know: nothing has to happen.

You don’t have to return from a walking retreat with a completely reconstructed identity. You don’t have to discover your purpose. You don’t have to make a major decision. You don’t have to have a meaningful conversation with every other person you meet. You don’t even have to decide that walking has changed your life.

You can simply enjoy it.

You can walk through the Gascon countryside, past vineyards and sunflowers, along a section of the Camino de Santiago, and let your mind wander wherever it wants to go. You can stop and look at something because it is beautiful. You can sit under a tree. You can write in your journal, or not write in it at all. You can have a conversation, or enjoy the luxury of not having one.

And if your biggest revelation is that you have forgotten what it feels like to be unhurried, I would consider that revelation quite sufficient.

Something interesting might happen

The irony is that when we stop trying so hard to change ourselves, change sometimes happens anyway.

You may find that a decision you’ve been wrestling with suddenly seems less complicated. You may realise that something you thought you desperately wanted no longer matters. You may notice that you’re sleeping better. You may remember something you used to enjoy. You may come home with an idea you’ve been unable to think clearly about for months.

Or you may come home feeling exactly the same person who left, only considerably more rested.

All of these are perfectly respectable outcomes.

Because the purpose of stepping away isn’t necessarily to return as somebody new, sometimes it is simply to return more fully yourself.

You don’t have to know where you’re going

This is perhaps why walking feels particularly appropriate during times of transition.

When something significant has changed — retirement, divorce, an empty nest, a move, a career change, the end of a relationship, or simply the dawning realisation that the life you built no longer quite fits — there can be enormous pressure to know what comes next.

But you don’t always need the whole map.

Sometimes you need the next step.

Walking teaches this rather beautifully. You don’t stand at the beginning of a path demanding to see exactly where you will be three hours from now. You simply follow the path in front of you. You notice where it bends. You stop when you need to. You look at the scenery. You keep going.

And eventually, you arrive somewhere.

So, what if you don’t want to be transformed?

Then don’t be.

Come as you are. Bring your tiredness, your uncertainty, your questions, your overactive mind, your completely reasonable desire for a nap and your refusal to produce a five-year plan on demand.

Walk. Eat. Sleep. Breathe. Notice things. Have a laugh. Write if you feel like writing. Think if you feel like thinking. Do absolutely nothing if that’s what you need.

And if, somewhere along the way, you find yourself seeing something differently, that’s lovely.

If you return home with a little more clarity, a little more energy or a better idea of which direction you might like to take next, that’s lovely too.

But there is no transformation quota.

You don’t have to become a new person.

You might simply need enough space to become aware of the one you already are.

And if that sounds rather more appealing than being transformed before Thursday, perhaps a Camino de Santiago walking retreat in Gascony in southwest France is exactly what you need.

From the Series: Questions You Might Be Too Embarrassed to Ask About a Walking Retreat

First published on my Substack 9 August 2026