Vineyards as far as the eye could see stretched across La Rioja; beautiful medieval churches welcomed you into every village and town; lush, rolling hills carpeted the region of Galicia. But the beauty just seemed to underscore the absurdity of waking up each morning to walk in pain for 17 miles to reach some abstract point that was further along in Spain. Yet returning home was too humiliating; I’d committed to the end.

Walking, naturally, is what most people associate with the Camino. It should be food. Spain’s rich, spicy, fatty fare and the places we’d stop to eat it were the heart of the Camino. Cafes would be the first stop of the day, for pastries and café con leche and to catch up with friends who’d spent the night in a different albergue. Lunch would be pintxos of padron peppers, thick crispy slices of chorizo or fluffy slabs of Tortilla Espanola. If shivering and soaked, we’d revive ourselves with a Cola Cao hot chocolate.

Every night the nearest restaurant would become a meeting place to debrief on the day with flowing red wine and the famous ‘Pilgrim’s Menu’: a heaped plate of spaghetti bolognese for starters; meat and a mound of greasy chips for mains; ice cream or Tarta de Santiago, a local almond tart, to end.

Exhausted and faced with all that food, it would be a lie to say no former habits slipped back in. But with every morning that I woke up and decided to focus on walking just for that day, something in me changed. My body that I’d hated and abused for so long was the one thing I had to trust to carry me forward.

“How I walked 500 miles to recover from binge eating disorder”