… is a book by Ryan Holiday about a key idea in Stoic philosophy. I’ve been listening to Ryan’s podcasts for a while now and have read some of his many books on Stoicism. I find them thought-provoking and they’ve helped me consider how to approach various challenges in my life.

A tale of two days on Camino…

A walking day and a rest day.

The walking day… well… when looking at the elevation map for yesterday’s walk, you’ll notice two significant bumps… namely two significant uphills and downhills. My hope was that I could make it over and down at least one of the hilly sections, which I did. Then my stubbornness took over and I decided to keep going.

This has felt like a tough day. The first 2.5 miles were through the city of Vigo and I just wasn’t feeling it. Then we turned a corner, walked up the first section of a long, long hill and suddenly, there was greenery, flowers, trees. Immediately my spirits were lifted. And then… the hills.

We’ve been into quite a few churches along the way. All of them catholic churches so far. I was brought up in the Church of England, and we were a “high Anglican church” parish, meaning we had a lot of statues in the church, and there were “smells and bells” during communion each week. Yet, in comparison to the churches we’ve been in here in Portugal and Spain, ours would have been considered quite unadorned.

The main thing I’ve been pondering today is whether to share about the saint that the church next to our hotel is dedicated to.

While I was sitting in the sanctuary yesterday I was struck by the statue at the front of the church. What appeared to be a young woman with two arrows, one in her body and one in her arm.

Today was our 10th day in a row of walking the Camino, starting in Porto and heading north to Santiago.

I’ve walked…85.5 miles, 277,391 steps.