Wellness travel after 40: Mercedes setting off for the Camino
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Wellness Travel After 40: Why I Chose the Camino

ByMercedes Diane Griffin Forbes

Before I chose the Camino de Santiago, my body had already started asking me for something different. I felt stiff. My range of motion had decreased. Too much sitting had left me disconnected from the strength and energy I remembered having.

I did not want another short-lived workout plan or a wellness retreat that would remove me from daily life for a few carefully curated days. I wanted an experience that required me to move, adapt, reflect, and rebuild trust in my body over time.

That desire led me to something I had never attempted before: walking hundreds of miles across Spain on the Camino de Santiago.

As I approached 50, the Camino became my answer to a larger question: what could wellness travel after 40 look like if it focused less on escape and more on transformation?

Why I chose the Camino for wellness travel after 40

I had already begun changing my health before deciding to walk the Camino. Weight loss, better nutrition, and greater awareness of my habits helped me feel healthier than I had in years.

Still, I wanted more than a smaller number on the scale. I wanted mobility, stamina, confidence, and the freedom to move through the world under my own power.

That distinction matters. In Wellness Beyond Weight Loss, I explored the idea that true well-being also includes strength, energy, emotional balance, independence, and the ability to participate fully in life.

The Camino gave me a way to pursue all of those things at once. It offered physical challenge, time outdoors, cultural immersion, simple routines, and enough distance from ordinary life to hear myself think.

I wanted to rebuild trust in my body

For years, I had pushed through work, travel, stress, and responsibility without always listening closely to what my body needed. Stiffness became normal. Reduced mobility became something I tolerated. Rest often came only after exhaustion forced it.

Walking the Camino represented a different kind of relationship with my body. Each day would require attention to energy, pain, hunger, hydration, balance, and recovery.

The goal was not to punish myself into becoming stronger. I wanted to learn how my body responded when I gave it consistent movement, adequate nourishment, rest, and time.

That is one reason walking appealed to me more than an intense fitness challenge. The practice felt simple: place one foot in front of the other, pay attention, and continue at a pace my body could sustain.

The Camino offered structure without controlling the experience

The Camino provides a route and a destination, but it does not require every pilgrim to walk the same number of miles or carry the same motivation.

  • Structure without constant pressure: The route provides direction, while each pilgrim controls the pace.
  • Movement with personal meaning: Every walking day creates space to process, release, and reflect.
  • Time outdoors: The journey includes changing landscapes, small communities, fresh air, and mornings shaped by movement.
  • Affordable, intentional travel: Pilgrim accommodations and simple routines can make the Camino more accessible than many conventional wellness retreats.
  • Cultural immersion: Food, language, history, religion, agriculture, and community remain present throughout the route.

Unlike a quick vacation built around highlights, the Camino requires time. It is slow travel in its most physical form.

Preparing my body without pretending I was an athlete

I did not approach the Camino as a highly trained athlete. My preparation began with the body I actually had, not the body I thought a pilgrim should have.

Daily walks helped me spend more time on my feet. Light strength work supported my legs, hips, back, and core. Stretching and mobility exercises addressed some of the stiffness that had developed during more sedentary periods.

I also began thinking more carefully about recovery. Sleep, hydration, food, rest, and stress management were not separate from training. They made training possible.

My preparation was imperfect, and the Camino later showed me where I still needed more strength and conditioning. That experience deepened my understanding of what preparing for a long-distance walk at 50 truly requires.

Women’s health belongs in hiking preparation

Many walking guides focus almost entirely on shoes, backpacks, and mileage. Women’s bodies require a broader conversation.

Pelvic-floor health, bladder concerns, posture, breathing, core stability, and pressure management can all affect comfort during long walking days. These topics deserve the same attention as socks and trekking poles.

I explore those issues more deeply in Pelvic Floor Health for Hikers.

Wellness travel after 40 should not ask women to ignore their bodies in order to prove that they can still be adventurous. It should help us understand our bodies well enough to keep moving safely and confidently.

Food became part of the preparation

Preparing for the Camino also changed the way I thought about food. I could not treat nourishment only as a tool for controlling my weight. My body needed energy for walking, protein to support muscle, water for hydration, and enough food to recover between training days.

At the same time, I wanted to understand my relationship with sugar, cravings, restriction, and emotional eating more clearly.

In Nourishing Wellness: The Power of Food for a Balanced Life, I wrote about food as more than calories. Nourishment supports physical health, emotional stability, pleasure, culture, and our ability to remain engaged with life.

The Camino would require me to eat for the work in front of me rather than chase perfection.

The soft life can include difficult things

Some people imagine the Camino only through grit, sacrifice, and suffering. I saw room for softness too.

Softness did not mean avoiding effort. It meant refusing to make discomfort the only measure of whether the journey mattered.

I wanted slow breakfasts, meaningful conversations, beautiful landscapes, quiet moments, and the freedom to rest when my body needed it. A warm drink, a journal, clean clothes, and a comfortable bed could coexist with long miles and difficult climbs.

The soft life is not a life without challenge. For me, it is a life in which challenge does not erase care.

I wanted my 50th year to begin with courage

The Camino represented more than a walking route. It gave me a way to reclaim parts of myself that had become buried beneath responsibility, fatigue, and routine.

I wanted to feel stronger in my body. I wanted to trust myself in unfamiliar places. Most of all, I wanted proof that a woman approaching 50 could still begin something large, difficult, and completely new.

Age had given me more experience, but it had also made me more aware of time. I did not want that awareness to create fear. I wanted it to create intention.

Wellness travel is not always relaxing

The phrase “wellness travel” often brings to mind spa treatments, yoga retreats, green juice, and luxurious surroundings. Those experiences can be valuable, but wellness can also emerge through effort.

A demanding walk can reveal where the body needs support. It can expose habits that no longer work. It can also build confidence through repetition, adaptation, and the discovery that discomfort does not always mean danger.

I wrote more about that broader approach in Preparing for Wellness Travel After 40 on the Camino.

Wellness travel after 40 is a decision to remain engaged

I did not choose the Camino because I believed one walk would heal every part of my life. No journey can carry that responsibility.

I chose it because I wanted to meet myself outside the routines that had made me feel smaller. I wanted to move through beauty, fatigue, uncertainty, culture, and solitude with enough time to notice what each experience revealed.

Wellness travel after 40 does not have to look like the Camino. It may involve a coastal walk, a quiet retreat, a cultural journey, or a week devoted to rest. The destination matters less than the decision to treat your health, curiosity, and joy as worthy of time.

The Camino became my decision to show up for my body, my future, and the woman I still had time to become.

Every step would not feel soft. Every day would not feel inspiring. Still, the road offered something I needed: a chance to begin again while moving forward.

Continue the journey

You can also follow my travel, wellness, food, and cultural stories on Instagram at @dgspeaks.

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