Walking for her life

Walking for her life

Jane O’Loughlin talks to a local with a passion for walking that has changed her life.

Jennifer Andrewes is walking for her life, in more ways than one.

Diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disease, the Mt Victoria resident took up walking as a way of fending off the advancing condition.

She has walked more than 5000 kilometres across Europe over the past four years, completing four of the famous pilgrim paths that wend their way across the continent.

Her pilgrimages - which take one to two months at a time - include the 800km Le Puy Camino, the 900 km Vézelay Way, the 2,400km Via Francigena from Canterbury to Rome, and the 1,100km Via de la Plata across Spain.

She intends to carry on completing a long walk each year for as long as she can, for her health and for enjoyment. 

She has written a book about one of her walks, and another is about to be released in March.  She volunteers for Walk Wellington, and organises walking excursions for groups of friends. It seems safe to say walking has become a defining feature of her life, and she describes the long distance European walks as “addictive”.

The long pilgrim routes can get you into what she calls “the pilgrimage zone”.

“Somewhere around week three or four, you just get into this zone of ‘this is just what I do’. Everything else has dropped away, your body is physically in rhythm, all of the minutiae of daily life has dropped away, nothing matters except like getting up, eating, walking, sleeping, repeat.

“And then when all of that's dropped away, you have different thoughts. I found it specifically on the Canterbury to Rome walk which was so long. You know, you really get deep into the sort of philosophical spiritual zone and your mind goes places that you had no idea.

“…You get perspective, I suppose, on what matters. And you're only carrying what you need to live on. It's just the liberation of that. It's quite intoxicating.”

For Andrewes - a fluent French speaker and Francophile - walking in Europe has obvious appeal.  But the attraction is also the well-established routes that have been accommodating travellers for centuries. Pilgrims can stay in charming local accommodation, buy delicious pastries from bakeries along the way and enjoy cooked meals and wine each night alongside other pilgrims, making it a very social event.

“In the evening, you'd be staying somewhere and typically there might be 10 to 12 people staying and dinner would be provided by the host. And so you'd be around the table having conversations and then the next day you acquire a little community. That dimension is fantastic.”

Walking, she says, has completely changed her life.  She now has a plan to reduce the hours she spends working, and to refocus around walking.  Part of that is downsizing – selling the family’s Mt Victoria house and moving to Island Bay, freeing up money to allow both her and her husband Stephen more options.

Andrewes credits the steep slopes and rough trails of Mt Victoria for preparing her well for the idiosyncratic European pathways.  Some of her fellow walkers, accustomed to easier groomed trails, struggled with the terrain. But for Andrewes the terrain was ‘totally familiar’ right from the start.

She has already booked her flights to Europe for another walk this year – route yet to be decided.  Whichever it is, the plan is, basically, “to keep walking”.

Jennifer Andrewes’ books are available on her website myparallellives.com, on Amazon (Kindle), at Unity and in libraries.