The Solitary Walker

Chapel above Digne-les-Bains (Wikimedia). In response to the philosopher René Descartes' famous saying, Cogito ergo sum ('I th...

Much has been written of travel, far less of the road. EDWARD THOMAS The Icknield Way (1913) My eyes were in my feet . . . NAN SHEP...

The Solitary Walker on Hadrian's Wall. (Photo taken by George at Transit Notes .) Walking was not always considered the normal, ple...

I wish to speak a word a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil — to reg...

The Via Francigena is a 1900 km pilgrim trail from Canterbury to Rome. It takes you across the English Channel, through north-eastern Franc...

A human foot carved in limestone in Egypt around 600 BC. . . . Take a look at your feet: the slanting row of toes, the ball, the arch,...

The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art. LEONARDO DA VINCI The feet of the Solitary Walker encased in a pai...

When my sister and only sibling, Elizabeth, died from a brain tumour at the age of 29 in August 1987, I found myself turning to poetry for ...

Put bluntly: deprived of mechanised means of locomotion — the car, the bus, the train — and without the aid of technology, the majority of ...

Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild. The Dog ...

 Camino, Spain  I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least - and it is commonly m...

Santiago Cathedral The idea of pilgrimage is much older than Christianity, but always it has been an expression of the same two main co...

Camino, Spain Nowadays we take it for granted that walking is a laudable pastime and recreational activity. We tend to give a positive n...

 Camino, Spain  Emptiness is the track on which the centred person moves. TSONG KHAPA The self may not be something, but neither is...

Camino, Spain  The dictionary defines 'spiritual' (which comes from the Latin 'spiritus', meaning 'breath') as ...

Camino, Spain The most soulful places are almost always reached only on foot. THE SOLITARY WALKER I've written about the health be...

Camino, Spain Many years ago, a friend made me a begging bowl like the ones used by the Buddhist monks. I keep it on my desk, where it c...

Camino, Spain To meditate does not mean to fight with a problem. To meditate means to observe. Your smile proves it. It proves that y...