TrailTracers 6

10 Powerful Life Lessons My Retreat Guests Learned While Walking the Camino de Santiago

Your Camino de Santiago Retreat Begins With a Pen

Your 10 Transformational Camino de Santiago Journal Prompts (A Gift From My Heart to Yours)

There’s a moment I treasure during every retreat. It usually happens around day three or four. Someone who initially approached their journal with hesitation or even dread suddenly looks up with wonder and says, “I had no idea I had all this inside me.”

As an 8-time published author with visual challenges, I’ve discovered that sometimes our most important path isn’t the one beneath our feet—it’s the one we trace with our pens across an empty page.

Today, I’d like to offer you a gift: 10 journal prompts I’ve crafted over years of guiding people during Camino de Santiago retreats. These aren’t just questions—they’re doorways to the insights that might be waiting for you, whether you ever set foot in my little French farmhouse retreat or not.

Why Journal BEFORE your Camino retreat?

Before we ever lace up our walking boots or step onto the ancient paths between Eauze and Aire-sur-Adour, the journey begins within. Writing creates a special kind of clarity—what I call “seeing beyond sight.”

Even if you’ve never kept a journal or don’t consider yourself a writer, these prompts are designed to gently guide you into conversation with parts of yourself that often go unheard in the busy rhythm of everyday life.

As someone who navigates the world with visual limitations, I’ve learned that the clearest vision often comes through the pen, not the eye. Your answers don’t need to be eloquent or profound—they simply need to be true.

Your 10 Transformational Camino Journal Prompts

Find a quiet moment, a comfortable space, and perhaps a cup of something warm. Approach these prompts not as tasks to complete but as invitations to explore. There are no right or wrong responses—only your authentic voice.

1. Embracing Discomfort

Recall a time when physical discomfort led to growth or insight. How did you move through it? What tools or mindsets helped you? How might you apply these lessons when facing challenges on the Camino?

2. Meaningful Motion
What unresolved question or area of exploration are you bringing to this journey? It might be related to your life direction, a relationship, a creative pursuit, or your spiritual path. How might the rhythms of walking, the landscape, and the pilgrim tradition help you explore this question?

3. Carried Weight
Beyond your backpack, what emotional or mental “weight” might you be bringing to the Camino? Are there worries, regrets, questions, or hopes that feel heavy? What might it feel like to set down some of this weight along the path?

4. Unexpected Guides
Consider how landscapes shape our inner experience. What natural settings have been most meaningful in your life? What elements of nature (water, mountains, forests, deserts) speak most deeply to you? What wisdom might the varied landscapes of the Camino have to offer you specifically?

5. Crossroads Wisdom
Recall a time when you stood at a significant crossroads in your life. Looking back now with the benefit of hindsight, what guidance would you offer to your past self at that juncture?

6. The Question Beneath the Question
What question have you been asking about your life that might actually be concealing a deeper, more meaningful question? Try to articulate both.

7. Nature’s Mirror
Describe an element of the natural world—a tree, river, mountain, or creature—that resonates with you personally. What quality in this natural element reflects something essential about who you are or aspire to be?

8. Timely Disruption
When has an apparent obstacle or disruption to your plans ultimately led you somewhere more meaningful than your original destination?

9. The Art of Noticing
Practice mindful observation today. Spend 10 minutes noticing details of your surroundings that you typically overlook. How might developing this “noticing muscle” enhance your Camino experience?

10. Arrival Vision
Imagine yourself having completed the retreat. What qualities, insights, or practices do you hope to bring back into your everyday life? How might this pilgrimage continue to influence you long after you’ve returned home?

Download as a PDF.

From Prompts to Practice

There’s no need to answer all these questions at once. In fact, I encourage you to sit with just one prompt per day, allowing its question to accompany you through your daily activities before you respond.

Some pilgrims find it helpful to write in the morning, when dreams still linger close to consciousness. Others prefer the evening, when the day’s experiences can be gathered and examined. There is no perfect time—only your time.

And remember: the purpose isn’t to produce beautiful writing (though you might). The purpose is to create a conversation with yourself that might otherwise never happen.

A Personal Invitation

When retreat participants arrive at my French farmhouse, I notice a distinct difference between those who have engaged in this kind of inner preparation and those who haven’t. The journal-keepers often experience deeper transformation more quickly—not because they’re more insightful, but because they’ve already begun the conversation their hearts have been waiting to have.

Whether or not we ever walk together among the sunflower fields and vineyards of southwest France, my hope is that these prompts create a small clearing in your busy life—a space where wisdom can find you, where questions can breathe, and where your own voice can be heard with new clarity.

If you feel called to share any insights that arise from these prompts, I’d be honoured to witness your discoveries. Simply reply to this email. I read every response personally, though my visual limitations sometimes mean I take a little longer to reply.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, they say. But perhaps it truly begins with a single word written with honesty and hope.

Your fellow pilgrim on the path,

Feeling called to attend a Camino Walking Retreat? Contact me at Welcome2Gascony@gmail.com and book a free 15-minute consultation to discuss if my retreats align with your needs and expectations.

Buen Camino,
Margaretha Montagu

PS. This e-mail is part of a series I send to subscribers to my mailing list. If you would like to receive the free series, as well as the free 10 Powerful Lessons My Guests Learned While Walking the Camino de Santiago guide, you can subscribe by clicking here: Download the Guide.