When does a trip become a journey, and a journey become a pilgrimage?

The longest and most important journey we’ll ever make is the one we’re on right now. As I write this, and as you read it, we are both somewhere between birth and death, the ultimate journey.   I am on day 18 232, having started 49 years, 11 months and 1 day ago. 

Most recently, I left my home in the Northwest of Ireland on the 16th December, staying in London Town until the 21st, before travelling onward to Switzerland. The Winter Solstice felt like an appropriate and significant time to both leave and arrive, and also to transit between the two.   

I’ve already done some globetrotting before this trip, as an emigrant child and an adult with insatiable wanderlust.  Often travelling solo, with little or no itinerary, I love to walk, dander, wander and wonder in new places.  

Of the many physical miles I’ve covered, I feel I’ve travelled farthest while still, very still.  Being fully present wherever I am.  Different countries and continents have shown me different landscapes, but my internal landscape has remained constant in parts, and changed beyond recognition in other parts.   By internal landscape I mean the terrain of my thoughts, feelings,observations, core values and beliefs.  

My internal landscape differs from yours, as it should.   We are on different journeys.

When I travelled the least in my life it was due to parental responsibility, financial restraints and work or study commitments.  I spent long periods of time in my birthplace of Derry, Northern Ireland. Being in one place forced an awareness of my internal landscape, especially at times of emotional distress, feeling lost, stuck and under pressure.  That was when I most needed the reference points of self awareness to navigate my way forward, slowly and painfully. 

I moved mountains in my mind when I was physically unable to move at all.   This felt more like a pilgrimage than any physical travel.  Struggling through tough terrain makes a person grateful for easy passage.   

This is why the travel diaries that follow don’t start on day one of my first visit to Switzerland, but somewhere in the middle of a far greater journey.   There are prologues of “How I got on in  . . . Australia, Kenya, Austria, Turkey, Spain and Berlin”.  But so far these are scribbled musings in countless tattered notebooks. 

Let’s start in the middle with ‘How I’m getting on in Switzerland”.

I hope you enjoy some of this journey with me.