Wilna Wilkinson Travels Solo To Santiago

On the Camino
Photo: Wilna Wilkinson

Many women travel the road to Santiago - known as El Camino - but not all do it alone. And few do it in winter. Wilna Wilkinson is such a woman, and Women on the Road wanted to know more, much more.

Wilna, you walked to Santiago on your own. Why did you choose to do that?

Can there be another way to walk a pilgrimage? If it had been a trek or a hike or a walk anywhere else, I can well imagine you would welcome the company. But a pilgrimage is in a sense a walking meditation - in this case an 850 kilometre meditation. To be completely alone for that length of time, to have time and space to think, to reflect, to meditate, is very much a luxury in this busy and demanding world we live in.

What a pilgrimage looks like in summer...

...and in winter, when it's a little less crowded

If you had the choice of walking alone or walking with a hundred people in your sights in front of you - the next person only ten metres ahead, and a hundred people fast approaching from the back - which would you choose? Think of the litter and the pollution. Think of the number of refuges and beds and having to queue up for shelter and for food. Think of the noise, the crowding, the invasion of your meditation and reflection time and space.

You also did the Camino in winter. Is this to be encouraged?

El Camino in winter

Walking in winter is hard and there is a danger of slippery ice, hypothermia (a very real threat and not uncommon on the Camino), but for me it was no contest. There is extra hardship, but for me the heat and the crowds in summer would have been unbearable. The beauty of the pilgrimage route lies in its remoteness, its inaccessibility, its solitude. That is what makes it possible to think, to meditate, to be yourself without compromise, without any need to conform. None of that would be possible when there are hundreds of thousands of people crowding the pathway.

What advice you'd give a woman contemplating the Camino on her own?

The amazing explorer/mountain climber, Reinhold Messner explains how he managed to climb Mount Everest without any supplemental oxygen: there has to be complete acceptance of whatever will come your way - difficulties, pain, suffering, challenges, demands, physical and mental. Know that you have the resources you need within yourself. Discover those resources within yourself and believe that you will find them. Be ready for an emotional upheaval. 

What should a woman walking alone bring with her? 

Tell me a little about your book, The Way of Stars and Stones, and why you wrote it...

How could I not write about this amazing experience? I dedicated my pilgrimage to a friend with cancer and found that the walk helped me tremendously to understand her pain. I share the many parallels between walking the pilgrimage and suffering from a terminal illness in my book. The Camino provides so many answers on how to cope - it gives insight, understanding - it empowers beyond words. I simply had to share that. And the most heartening thing to hear now is from dozens of people who have cancer and found that the book  touched them deeply.

How did the pilgrimage change you and how have you carried that change into your life now?

Apart from finally finding my faith, finding the meaning of it all, experiencing the energy from the earth, from creation, from nature? For years I've worked as a motivational speaker and as coach in life skills. I taught people "Don't sweat the small stuff", "If you can dream it you can do it", "The power of the mind", "The power of positive thinking" - all these slogans we live by. But this was the first time I actually lived those slogans and really understood their meaning. For the first time my belief was tested - it is 800km of meditation - you cannot come back unchanged.

Do you really live in a French chateau? 

Yes - I really live in a little fairy castle (originally built in 1269) that stands with its feet in the Dordogne river in south-west France. To pay the bills, I run the chateau during the summer as a Chambres d'hote - and love that I can share this most idyllic spot with people from all over the world. 

I absolutely love living in countryside after having spent my entire life in big cities, eating only fresh produce grown within a radius of 50 kilometres. It has changed the way I eat, the way I cook. There is time to enjoy life and the world around me, time to be creative. 

I coach and speak as far afield as Japan, Iceland, the USA, but I love coming home to my little village by the river! 

Where do you want to go next and why?

I would love to walk the Camino again - if my feet allow me. I would want to go walk the route of the 88 Buddhist temples of Shikoku in Japan. But that is in the future. For now, my next trip is in a couple of weeks to South Africa where I am going to organise a fairytale wedding for my beautiful daughter, in the bush, under a maroela tree.

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Wilna Wilkinson's Camino blog is The Way of Stars and Stones, from which all the photographs on this page were borrowed. For a peek at her fairytale castle, read about The View from a Window of a French Chateau.