Mike Timms has always been a wanderer – into the bundu ('back of beyond') as a child in 1950s Kenya, around Dublin during his college years and along pilgrim paths in Wicklow and southern France as he approached the end of his working life. He has never felt lost or alone, holding a faith in moving forward, one step at a time and finding a peace – and sometimes reverence – in the quiet.

So upon retirement, he embarked on his first Camino, setting out on foot just north of Carcassonne in France in the direction of Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain. He walked as a true pilgrim, with the scallop shell hanging around his neck, his pilgrim passport in his pocket and no guarantee of a bed in the albergues along the Way. Falling in and out of step with fellow walkers, he learned to trust them and to see the unexpected – injury, fatigue, detour and the generosity of strangers – as blessings in disguise.