Olot to Montserrat, and beyond.

Chapter 1: The Waning

​The Way did not begin with a glorious sunrise or a moment of clarity. It began, instead, with a hangover. It was Wednesday, July 30th, and the world was a dull ache. The mind was a mess, a scattered collection of thoughts, much like the allotment at home—disorganised and chaotic, but a whole, nonetheless. This was not a pilgrimage of piety but of honest, human struggle. I had chosen to walk towards something, towards a truth I could not yet name, and the journey started with the simple, painful truth of my own mistakes.

​The weight of the past felt heavier than the pack on my back. Memories of a broken family, of a father who had washed his hands of me, and a sister who had playfully called me uncle bonkers. The deep scars of a lifetime of being different from my peers seemed to pulse with every step. But the path was not a place for pity; it was a place for movement. One foot in front of the other. The Way is always one foot in front of the other.

​On Monday, I left Perpignan, making my own path to the border crossing at Le Perthus/La Jonquera. There, I saw the full horror of the transactional world, a place of human commerce that left me gagging for breath. It was a stark contrast to the pilgrimage I was seeking.

​Around Mas Sabole, I changed from walking to walkhitching. I would walk, and when a car passed by, I would offer a small hand sign to see if they were going my way. It was a new way to get to the moment, a method that allowed for brief, genuine conversations with strangers. They weren't transactions, but connections. After a short chat about my backpack and my route, the driver dropped me at Monestir del Camp.

​From there, I walked to Tresserre and on towards Le Boulou, through vineyards draped in history, the grapes drying on the vine. I picked a Grenache bunch and enjoyed it, a small act of communion with the land. Then I picked a raisining bunch overhanging a wall around a garden. It was a small, quiet act of living in the moment, a nourishment not of commerce, but of a deep and simple connection to the world around me.

​Around five kilometers from Le Boulou, and with the promise of a menu del día in mind, I got another spontaneous lift. The conversation was longer this time, and as she drove, she spoke of the geology of the area around the border and a place known as La Alberes. But as we neared the border, a traffic jam of an hour plunged us head first into a tailback for people driving to support their habits—sex, tobacco, alcohol, luxury goods—on the cheap. As we slowly reached Le Perthus, I was getting a little anxious. It was the full horror of the transactional world, and it was too much to bear. I got out around the signpost for the commune, choosing the quiet truth of the road over the hurried, transactional flow of the world. It was "the horror, the horror" as Joseph Conrad had described it, but in the mundane form of human habit.

​Walking through the many, many people carrying boxes and bags filled to the brim with stuff to support their perceived lack, I stopped to eat a small, solitary meal. The act was a quiet testament to the simple truth I was seeking. I then continued my journey on foot along the highway to bypass La Jonquera. Along the way, I saw a plastic bag filled with dog waste, a testament to someone's carelessness. Dog poo is less harmful than a plastic bag, in the long game, but they both return to the earth. I picked it up and put it in a nearby bin. It was a small, conscious act of care.

​Now, sitting in Dorca for a coffee and a Vichy Catalan, I am paying the ferryman. It is a moment of pause, a small, simple transaction that is necessary for my journey, one that is not born of greed or excess. I have left the modern world, for now, and have chosen to live with sufficiency.

​As the sun rose higher, the hangover began to wane, and with it, the anxiety. The body, rebalancing, allowed for a new kind of clarity to settle in. The scattered pieces of my being, which I had once seen as a mess, began to form a whole. The path, once a painful blur, came into focus. It was a beautiful, repurposed railway track, a path once dedicated to the rigid, scheduled movement of commerce and industry, now a space for the slow, meandering, and spiritual movement of a lone pilgrim. The beauty was in the transformation, in the new meaning found in old things.