Another Day in Paradise- the magic of the Camino

Eddie Gilmore • November 12, 2024

Pilgrim and writer Eddie Gilmore reflects on his recent journey with his wife along the Camino to Finistere.

I can’t think there are many places in the world with scenery so varied and so stunning; with the opportunity to share stories and meals, and to laugh, cry and sing with people from all over the world; where twenty-year-olds are happy to hang out with men and women thrice their age; and where we willingly walk an average of twenty-five kilometres a day for thirty-three days straight, all the while carrying a rucksack. Not to mention spending the night in a dormitory full of bunk beds, or perhaps on the floor of a big room with slanted walls and creaking floorboards, and to think it’s the greatest and most fun adventure we ever had.

Indeed I’m not sure there is any experience that comes anywhere close to walking the Camino. One of my fellow-pilgrims on my second stretch on the Camino in 2016 was Hollyanne from the States and as she says in my book ‘Another Day in Paradise,’ “I am incapable of believing there is another cultural experience that can satiate in the same way my perennial desire for travel and human connection.”

It’s hard to pick highlights from my 2024 walk because there are so many but I’ll compile a short list and group them roughly in the category of eating and singing, both of which activities I enjoyed immensely on the Camino:

1. Tosantos. The sleeping on the floor mentioned above was at a ‘donativo’ albergue, about ten days into the walk, by which time some of us knew each other pretty well. In addition to a bed for the night in a donativo, you get a communal meal (that you’ve helped to cook!), plus breakfast in the morning. And you leave a little donation. They are usually in lovely, quirky old buildings and there is often a lovely chapel with a time of prayer or sharing in the evening. The chapel in the albergue of St Francis in Tosantos is especially beautiful and we had there a most touching night prayer. And then the large group of us of all nationalities and ages bedded down on the floor but nobody wanted to go to sleep because it was like the most fun sleep over ever!

2. The donativo albergue in Bercianos. Like at Tosantos, there was a banquet of a meal, plus communal sunset gazing, then a gathering in the chapel during which each person was invited to say what had brought them on the Camino. A group of us also sang some Taizé chants and right at the end I was asked to sing the song I’d written after my first time walking on the Camino in 2015, ‘El Camino.’

3. The singing nuns albergue in Carrión de los Condes. I’d had a special time there in 2016 and I was keen to return. I wasn’t disappointed. There were more Taizé chants, I sang ‘El Camino,’ as well as telling briefly the story of how the song had been inspired, and I led a communal cooking session in the kitchen, after which there followed another feast.

4. Arrival into Santiago. Even though this didn’t involve eating or singing it was possibly one of the most incredible experiences of my life. It was our third time to be arriving in the famous Praza do Obradoiro in front of the cathedral where, for centuries, pilgrims have ended their journeys. The first time, in 2017, it was a complete anti-climax. Yim Soon and I had left our albergue early in the morning and in the dark to reach Santiago for the noon mass and on the way into the city had made a fruitless search for accommodation. I got to the square tired, hungry and stressed. In 2023 we were there again following our Portuguese Coastal Camino. We gave each other a hug and it was quite nice although as we’d done a less popular route we didn’t know so many people. Our 2024 arrival was on another level. We’d had a big breakfast and a leisurely departure from O Pedrouzo for the final 19 km, and we’d stopped on the way for café con leche and a big slice of Santiago cake. Once into the city, we made straight for the cathedral and passed the famous bagpiper. We turned the corner into the vast square and there was a huge cheer. Lots of our Camino gang were already there in the centre of the square and they formed a guard of honour for us. We passed through, I flung off my rucksack, and, with tears streaming down my face, I hugged each of those lovely people that we’d shared our lives with for nearly five weeks.

Just in case anyone reading this gets the impression that the Camino is one big pain-free party, I should point out that walking long distances day after day with that bag on your back, and then perhaps finding yourself in a dormitory with the world’s loudest snorer, can be tough. Some people had blisters that covered almost the whole of their foot. One of our fellow pilgrims, Michael, with whom we had sung and shared a feast of a shared meal, died of a heart attack on the steep ascent to the O Cebreiro peak. Our dear Taiwanese friend, I Hua had saved up two years’ of holiday to fulfil a long-standing dream of walking the Camino; then was hobbling along slowly much of the time due to sore feet. But whenever she saw us she broke into a big smile. And when we bumped into her again right at the end ‘by chance’ at Finisterre (the end of the earth) she said simply, “Amazing, very amazing!”

Yes, the Camino has its ups and downs, geographically as well as emotionally, just like life in general, and sometimes spectacularly so. And yet, there is such pure joy that I felt at times that my heart could burst with happiness. There is playfulness and laughter. There are songs and stories. And there is a satisfying simplicity to each day. You get up in the morning and scrunch your sleeping bag back into its holder, you pack your world into your rucksack, and you follow those yellow arrows to the next place along the way; with nothing to worry about except where the next café con leche is coming from. Well, perhaps also if there’s going to be a bed for you at the end of the day! It’s surprising to discover how little we need to live a contented life. When one of my three walking tops vanished into the black hole which was the Burgos launderette I was annoyed for a bit but then found that, with extra washing, I could cope fine with just the two. Likewise, when I unwittingly gifted one of my three pairs of thick outer socks to the English albergue in Rabanal! And when one of our two travelling towels went walkies, we just had to share the other! Plus it was less weight to carry!

I’ll conclude with one more highlight, and this is back on the theme of eating and singing!

5. Nájera. This is about a week into the Camino Francés and I especially wanted to stay in the communal albergue because of what had happened there nine years before and I especially wanted to cook a meal for some of the wonderful people that Yim Soon and I had been walking with. After our feast of a meal I picked up a guitar and before singing ‘El Camino’ I told the story of what had happened in 2015. I had been there with my friend James, who had brought with him from his home in Australia a stove and a billy can. I had brought from England a packet of tea! We were sitting in the early morning on a bench outside that albergue waiting for the water in the billy to boil for our tea. The sun was just starting to rise above the tall trees, the birds were beginning to sing, and there was the pleasing sound of rushing water from the nearby river. We were sitting there in silence and then James said the words which inspired both a song and the title of a book and which I often repeated to the amazing people that we shared our lives with for thirty-three truly unforgettable days along a path in Spain in the Autumn of 2024: “Another Day in Paradise.”

Eddie Gilmore

More about Eddie's books can be found here.

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Another Day in Paradise, but "Why are we walking?"

By Eddie Gilmore • July 21, 2025

I was in the north of Italy recently on the Via Francigena, the ancient pilgrimage path to Rome that begins in Canterbury. My wife, Yim Soon and I were with a group from L’Arche in France who are walking to Assisi in one-week sections. It was the second day, we were going up an interminably steep hill, it was hot, and we had ‘slept’ the night before on a floor, and with that motley group of twenty-five sharing two toilets (one of which had a door with no lock!). Yim Soon turned to me and asked, “Why are we walking?” The pair of us had done a lot of walking up until that point, and we had a lot of hiking still to come, so that was a very reasonable question to ask. One immediate answer was that we had the unexpected gift of time. I had moved to Ireland at the end of 2023 to take up a new job but things hadn’t worked out and I left in August 2024. We’d let out our house in the UK until June 2025 so Yim Soon had said to me, “Let’s walk!” I’d immediately agreed and our plans quickly took shape. We would do the Camino in Spain in October, the Lycian Way along the Turkish coast in February and March; then in April and May, we would follow the Way of Francis to Assisi and Rome. We also had an invitation to spend the winter with an old friend of Yim Soon from Korea who was now living with her family near Atlanta. This would include spending Christmas at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, the Trappist monastery of Thomas Merton that I’d always dreamed of visiting. There is a pleasing simplicity to life on the road. You scrunch your sleeping bag and the rest of your stuff into a rucksack in the morning and you walk. That's it! A lot of the usual worries of life seem to drop away and the biggest anxiety becomes making sure you don't get lost! Or where the next café con leche is going to come from! There's just something calming and centring about the age-old act of putting one foot in front of the other. There is also something about it that brings people together and draws out their story. And what incredible people we met on our various walks, and what wonderful stories we heard. And how we laughed with one another. The beautiful scenery is therapeutic too. In Turkey we were treated to one amazing view after another as we paced up and down the mountains that fringe the Mediterranean. In Italy we passed each day through yet another stunning medieval fortified hilltop town. And since we were doing all 500 miles of the Camino Francés, we would see the stark changes in landscape as we crossed the north of Spain: from the Pyrenees and the mountains near Pamplona, through the flat, arid meseta, then into the verdant hills of Galicia as we neared Santiago. There is a heightened awareness of the natural world: the sunrises, the sunsets, little wild flowers that appear as if out of nowhere. Food is deeply appreciated and I don't think that a meal at a Michelin restaurant could have satisfied me as much as the bread, cheese, tomato and cucumber I ate one day on a beach in Turkey, which we'd reached by a rocky and slightly hair-raising trek down a mountain. On the Camino I developed the art of the second, or even third breakfast. We had earned it! I also loved the shared international meals, and there’s one that particularly stands out. I’d been looking forward to returning to the municipal albergue (pilgrim hostel) at a town called Nájera because of what had happened there nine years before when I’d been doing that same walk. I’d got in with a group of Koreans, partly on account of having a Korean wife, and they’d prepared a banquet and invited myself and my Australian friend James to join them. We’d also got in with the Italians and they wanted to feed us as well. Then a Spanish guy Gerado offered us food. We could have eaten three meals that evening, and I was determined that on this next visit it would be me doing the cooking for some of the lovely people we’d met on the way. I got to work in the kitchen, with a little help from my international friends, and a large group of us sat and shared a feast. There were people from different countries and continents and speaking different languages; there were twenty-year-olds who seemed happy to hang out with those of us who were three times their age; and there was a range of backgrounds and beliefs and reasons for walking. It was utterly joyous. And after we’d eaten I picked up a guitar and started the singing, and various members of the group took a turn, and we were joined by others in that very diverse dining-room. The first song I did was one I’d written after that first Camino in 2015 and I told the story of how it had been inspired. James and I had been sitting on a bench outside the albergue in the early morning, waiting for the water to boil for our tea. The sun was just starting to rise above the trees and there was the sound of rushing water from the river, as well as the first birdsong. We were sitting there in companionable silence and then James said, “Another day in paradise.” Those words became the title of a book about pilgrimage which I wrote years later. They are also the first line of the chorus of my song ‘El Camino’ which I sang in that same albergue in Nájera in October, 2024. And I was so touched when one of the young people in our group, Lucy from Croatia, remarked at the end, “Wouldn’t it be cool if one of us came back here in nine years’ time and cooked for the other pilgrims and kept this story going!” Why do we walk? Well, yes, it’s the food, the fellowship, the fun, the breathtaking scenery, the little daily miracles and random acts of kindness, and the opportunity to live a bit more simply and to discover that we can be very content with very little. But it’s also, as my friend James observed one morning when sitting with me on a bench outside a pilgrim hostel in Spain, an opportunity to give thanks for another day in paradise. Eddie Gilmore is a Hearts in Search of God project collaborator. For more about Eddie and his books click here .

Become a Pilgrim of Hope for a Day!

By Phil McCarthy • July 20, 2025

Registration for Day Pilgrims is now open. On some days there are new shorter sections. Registration will close on 21st August 2025, so REGISTER NOW to avoid disappointment! The theme of the 2025 Jubilee is ‘pilgrims of hope’ and this has inspired a national walking pilgrimage with four main Ways converging at the Cathedral of St Barnabas, Nottingham, on Saturday 13th September 2025, for shared prayer and celebration. The four main Ways, named after the Evangelists, SS Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, start at the Catholic cathedrals in Cardiff, Leeds, Norwich and London, and will bless our nations with a Sign of the Cross and with the Gospels. The routes use established hiking routes and are off road as much as possible. A small group of 4-6 'perpetual pilgrims' will walk the full distance of each Way, and up to 20 day pilgrims will be able to register to join for stages. On some days there are opportunities for shorter walks.

The Pilgrimage of Hope is open for day pilgrims to register!

By Phil McCarthy • June 5, 2025

Registration for day pilgrims to join the 2025 National Walking Pilgrimage of Hope is now open! The Pilgrimage of Hope is a national walking pilgrimage with four main Ways converging at the Cathedral of St Barnabas, Nottingham, on Saturday 13th September 2025, for shared prayer and celebration. The four main Ways start at the Catholic cathedrals in Cardiff, Leeds, Norwich and Southwark, London, and will bless our nations with a Sign of the Cross and with the Gospels. The routes are named after the Evangelists and use established hiking routes and are off road as much as possible. A small group of 4-6 'perpetual pilgrims' will walk the full distance of each Way, and up to 20 day pilgrims will be able to join for day stages. Stretches which are suitable for wheelchairs and buggies have been be identified. There will be opportunities for non-walkers to provide enroute support, hospitality and prayer. There are possible feeder routes to the four main Ways from all the other Catholic cathedrals of England & Wales for keen long-distance walkers, so people from every diocese can organise their own pilgrimages. More information and registration Information about how to support the Pilgrimage with prayer and hospitality and how to register to walk stages as day pilgrims can be found here . Wishing you every blessing and joy during this Jubilee year, as we strive to become ‘pilgrims of hope’. I hope to meet many of you in Nottingham on 13th September. Buen camino! Phil McCarthy, Project Lead

Walking in the steps of London's saints

By Colette Joyce /ICN • June 4, 2025

A group of 25 pilgrims gathered at the English Martyrs Church by Tower Hill last Thursday morning, Feast of the Ascension, to take part in the Westminster Way Jubilee Year Pilgrimage, led by Westminster Diocese Justice and Peace Co-Ordinator Colette Joyce. At each station we prayed and reflected on saints connected to London and the inspiration they continue to be for us today: St John Houghton and the Carthusian Martyrs of the Reformation, the missionary St Augustine of Canterbury, St Anne Line who sheltered priests and held secret Masses in her home during the Elizabethan persecution, St Erconwald, St Ethelburga and St Etheldreda. We remembered the scholars of the 7th century who brought learning and education to both men and women, and St John Henry Newman whose own spiritual journey of conversion and prophetic sense of the nature of the Church had a profound influence on the 20th century leading up to the Second Vatican Council. From the church we walked past the Tower of London, where so many Catholic martyrs met their fate during the Reformation, stopping to pray at the site of the scaffold where St John Fisher and St Thomas More were executed. Our next stop was Mary Moorfields, the only Catholic Church in the City of London. From here we walked to the Charterhouse, once a Carthusian priory and home to the first martyrs of the Reformation. The Prior, St John Houghton and Companions were hung and quartered for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy. Watching from his cell window, St Thomas More witnessed the monks being dragged on hurdles from the Tower of London on 4 May 1535. He is said to have admired their courage and faith as they went to their deaths, viewing them as "Cheerfully going to their deaths as bridegrooms going to their marriage." From here we walked to St Etheldreda's, Ely Place, one of the oldest Catholic churches in London. Built around 1250 as the town chapel for the bishops of Ely. After the Reformation It had several owners . For a a time it was used by the Spanish ambassador as a private chapel. During Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, it was used as a prison and a hospital. The Rosminians bought St Etheldreda's in 1874 and have restored it beautifully. As we were walking during Laudato Si' Week, pilgrim leader Colette Joyce invited pilgrims to reflect on the flora and fauna of London on our way. London is a surprisingly green city, blessed with around twenty percent tree coverage - which makes it technically a forest! We are especially grateful to the Victorians who planted the ubiquitous London Plane trees which can be found in streets and parks all over the city, while there are more than 400 other species of tree to discover. "The entire material universe speaks of God's love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God… contemplation of creation allows us to discover in each thing a teaching which God wishes to hand on to us." (Laudato Si', 84-85) After a stop at Corpus Christi Church in Covent Garden - where former parish priest Fr Francis Stanfield wrote Sweet Sacrament Divine and Mgr Ronald Knox preached his famous homilies on the Blessed Sacrament - we made our way down the Strand, past Traflagar Square, through Whitehall, down to Westminster Cathedral. On our arrival, we weary walkers were greeted by the Cathedral Dean, Fr Slawomir Witoń. We ended our pilgrimage with prayers in the Martyrs Chapel and a reflection from Fr Slawomir on the life and witness of St John Southworth, patron saint of clergy in the Diocese of Westminster. The pilgrims received the final stamp in their Pilgrim Passports and a blessing before returning home. Colette Joyce, Westminster Diocese Justice and Peace Co-Ordinator Read more about the Westminster Way: https://westminsterjusticeandpeace.org/2025/06/02/walking-the-westminster-way/ This article was first published on Independent Catholic News: Independent Catholic News Image: Pilgrims at Westminster Cathedral (Archdiocese of Westminster)

The Psychology of Pilgrimage

By Phil McCarthy • June 3, 2025

In this podcast I discuss the psychology of pilgrimage, especially as it relates to visiting First World War battlefields and cemeteries.

Walking the St Wulstan Way

By Peter Chisholm • May 31, 2025

Pilgrims joined Fr Gerry Walsh tracing St Wulstan’s life and legacy, from Worcester Cathedral to Clifton Cathedral as part of the Catholic Church’s Year of Jubilee, “Pilgrims of Hope” celebrations. Participants explored their faith while journeying through stunning landscapes and historic locations.