The author of this memoir thought he was walking the Camino alone until, on the evening of the 4th of September 2017, a clairvoyant hospitelera told him someone was walking with him. It’s the son who killed himself 26 years earlier. After this revelation the pilgrimage to Santiago becomes a walk into a mirror: the further they walk onwards together, the deeper they return to the past. In this way their family’s bohemian life is laid unsparingly bare until, at journey’s end, at Finisterre, the purpose of the son’s return is at last made clear.

In 2025 nearly half a million pilgrims from all over the world walked or cycled to Santiago. Their numbers grow year by year. A recent YouGov survey commissioned by the British Pilgrimage Trust found that nearly one in five adults in this country are considering making a pilgrimage of some kind. Why? The answer is written on our hearts.