Each time over the past months that I had gone somewhere and came back home, I ‘parked’ my bag in our bedroom with the very firm intention to empty it and store it away. Today, I finally started to empty almost half a dozen bags from different journeys, including those from the Camino. You can now get into the room again without breaking your neck, but there is still a lot of clearing up left to be done.

When I left the big suitcase we bring with us for Pádraig’s stuff when we travel in his room, I couldn’t believe how organised and cleaned up it was. Probably the best organised room in the house. It looked even better as the late afternoon sunlight came in from the windows on the two walls. His is the only room in the house with windows on two walls which makes it the really bright.

When it hit me why it was so cleaned up, so organised, I felt my body flushed out. That feeling of total emptiness and shock I’m not experiencing that often anymore.

Life goes on. We make new memories all the time. Old memories fade away. Until something happens that just shouldn’t.

There’s that room. And it shouldn’t be so well kept. It should be messy.

Microsoft today hosted the Rehab Technology Innovation Meeting, check it out on Twitter: #RehabInnovation, to which Pádraig and I had been invited to contribute. On behalf of the two of us, I talked about the need to support sABI survivors, introduced the An Saol Project, and talked about the obstacles on the way, our camino. Prof Lizbeth Goodman of UCD’s SMARTlab showed a short video of “An Saol on the Sea” as part of her keynote – our dream of a centre that would, under one roof, offer living and rehabilitation space to sABI survivors (and their families), a food court, artistic spaces, a technology and innovation hub, and accommodation for visiting artists, researchers, and therapists.

In the afternoon, we sat outside in the garden, a really nice, ordinary afternoon with phone calls, cold orange juice, and maltesers.

Later, we heard that the Society of St James had invited us to their annual mass on 23 July in St James’ church where Pádraig and us will meet some old and some new friends who have helped us so much to make last week’s walk such an unforgettable and life-changing experience. If you’re free that day and in Dublin – why not join us?

You probably wouldn’t believe it, but stretching out your hand is actually something quite difficult. So difficult that many persons with neurological problems can’t do this even with help.

Here is Pádraig doing it voluntarily. With purpose.

There are things that are hard to believe. There are moments when I thought (and think) that it’s difficult to see what life is all about.

Well, it’s about not giving up. About pushing that chair up that hill. About trying to overcome the most difficult obstacles. About believing that if you really want to do this, you can.

I think everyone who’s been seriously ill has had a visit (or at least the offer of a visit) from someone bringing in the glove, the mitten of Padre Pio. If you are very very sick, you might even have different people offering you to bring in “their” mitten.

On one of those occasions, on one of those visits Pádraig received while he was still in Beaumont, something happened. No miraculous healing or anything like it. Instead, I’ll remember that moment so well because it was then that I started to accept what had happened and was able to begin to deal with it.

Pádraig stretching out his hand, making this incredible effort and making it happen, tells me that he continues to fight the fight of his life. That he is dealing with his injuries and that he is doing all he can to recover from them. An example I’ll follow.

Without imposing any restrictions – what would be the ideal living scenario for Pádraig, myself and the rest of the ‘gang’? In other words, if I could dream something up: what would it look like?

It would be flat. There would be an abundance of space. Wide corridors, wide doors. Super-sized windows, plenty of light. Community areas, formerly known as living rooms, with large screens and great sound system. Cosy, comfortable, mood-adaptable private spaces. Kitchen with a table everybody can sit on. A gym. Large storage space for stuff and equipment when it is not needed. An office for all the paper work, for the communications, the printer. A meeting room where we could plan our next steps.

Guest rooms. Carer and therapist rooms, maybe like small appartments. Where they could stay in the house for periods.

All of this on a large plot with a great outdoors garden, preferably (close) by the sea.

What am I missing?

Now, what would it take to make this a reality? And not just for us, but for anyone affected by a severe acquired brain injury? Together?

A visit to Niall in the NRH. Great to see him, Sandy and Mary!

I’m still pretty exhausted from the walk but will start writing again, properly (whatever that is) over the coming days. Tonight, it’s all about getting to sleep. Good night!

Sometimes, things are just at your fingertips.

What a brilliant control of his fingers! A first!

Russians to the rescue. – Funny thing to say for a native German, but today it really was the Russians who saved the day.

I suppose it had to happen. So just when we were going to leave our accommodation today to walk down to the bus stop to get the bus to the airport, with not that much time to spare, Pádraig’s super chair got a flat.

In no time two mountain bikers from all the way to Russia fixed the problem.Otherwise, we’d have missed the plane.

Thinking of all the people we met along the way. The people who help us to make this happen with their incredible and spontaneous generosity. There are trizillions of things that could have gone wrong. Like, Pádraig’s new MountainTrike getting ready just two days before we were going to leave, collecting it, accompanied by a good friend who took a day off work, from England on the ferry, when it suddenly dawned on me that we would have to return with two chairs in the one car – never having even thought of measuring the dimensions, of the car, the chairs, and Pádraig sitting in one of them. All that before the journey had even started.

Pretty mad and disorganised (I hear what you’re thinking – borrowing a phrase from one of Pádraig’s consultants:), but even now that we are coming to the end of the Camino and went through all the challenges on the way, I cannot remember the number and kind of occasions when I thought (deep down, very deep down) ‘this might not work out’. So, at least in my mind, even with all the time in the world, not having the busy days we have anyways, we could not have planned for each and every eventuality. There were just too many to consider.

For a German mind, this is a considerable challenge, I can tell you.

And this is one of the important lessons I’ve learned on this journey: a Camino, especially the kind we went on, cannot be planned. In fact, neither can life. Thinking “what if” followed by a long, long list of all the things that could go wrong doesn’t get you anywhere. In fact, that kind of thinking paralyses. You become one of those civil servants who discovered that nobody will ever be able to blame them for having done anything wrong if they never take a decision on anything. If you have to think “what if”, think: what if “I took a risk here”, would if “I helped”, what if “I tried out something new, even if it feels a little uncomfortable at first”, what if “I pushed the boundaries, rather than staying with established routines”, what if “I listened, really listened, tried to understand, feel what the other is about, rather than pushing my ‘knowledge and experience’ down their throat”? Too many people think ‘horse’ when they hear ‘gallop’ (borrowing yet another phrase from one of Pádraig’s doctors I had a long conversation with).

Living life, being able to manage it and being able to enjoy (!) it is all about the unexpected twists and turns. Not about the every-day routine we never think about twice. Life’s surprises are often not easy, in fact, they can be extremely difficult, sometimes unbearable, and very hard on the body and the mind (especially if that mind is still a little bit German, even after so many years in Ireland).

Walking the Camino with Pádraig was a brilliant experience. It taught me that worrying, panicking, at times being close to packing it in, thinking that this was just about a too big a slice to swallow, is very normal – but something you can get through. There is so much help along the way and there are so many kind people always lending a hand just when you need it.

Above all and anything else, being together so closely on this Camino, sharing the experience of doing the impossible, seeing the smiles on our faces when we shared a funny moment, having our meals together, enjoying the wonderful fresh air, the smells from the eucalyptus and the grasses, feeling the cold wind, the warm sun and the refreshing rain on our skin, breathing a sigh of relief when we were able to lie down in the evenings – that experience of just a short week will not just stay with me for the rest of my life, it has changed it.

For Pádraig, who so immensely enjoyed being the Camino Celta, and told us so several times every day, it was a huge step forward on his camino to recovery and healing. This was one of his most outstanding Personal Bests (PBs) as an athlete, a stepping stone towards life being fun, challenging, and exciting again.

A cold, windy, beautiful sunny day with clear skies, a mix of paved roads and gravel paths through open fields and woodland. Sounds familiar? And looking at the photos: I mean, how many pictures of ‘scenery’ and people walking through it can you look at before you wonder whether you’ve seen it all before?

But there are some pictures that are different. The ones with our taxi driver, Ramón, from Ordenes, for example. Ramón brought us to our starting point in the morning (where we had finished the previous afternoon) and collected us from our finishing point later in the afternoon. Without him and his wheelchair taxi, the only one in Órdenes, none of what we did would have worked out. We also said ‘good-bye’ to some really kind people in the place we’d staid for the past few days, who got their granny’s wheelchair so we could get Pádraig up the stairs and into his room (the building we stayed in was built in pre-MountainTrike time).

Tomorrow morning, we’ll walk the last remaining 17km to Santiago and, if all goes well, celebrate arriving in the city of St. James’s!

A cold, sunny day on a really beautiful stretch of the Camino. Long roads leading straight into the horizon, dark haunted woods with no way out, abandoned century-old houses and dinosaurs grazing on the side of the road. Life is exciting and there are adventures at each turn of the road.

You don’t believe any of this?

It’s all a matter of perspective. Remember the Dreamboat?: Will it sink or will it float down the stream?

In my simple German mind, impossible things are just that: impossible. Mainly because I wouldn’t even try them. Roads just do not lead into the horizon, there is always a way out of even the darkest wood, and dinosaurs are dead. End of story.

It’s when I do the really scary stuff, it’s when I don’t even bother my (German) mind because it couldn’t process what I’m doing anyhow, it’s when I just know that what I’m doing is the right thing to do, it’s then that I feel I’ve joined Pádraig on his journey.

I don’t like to be proven wrong. I want to be right. But at least this time, Pádraig has been right all along. Especially in relation to the really scary stuff. Especially in relation to the stuff that no-one “in their right mind” would even have considered to be doable.

We’ve just two days to go. Our arrival in Santiago on Friday will be mega. Because the impossible journey will no longer have just happened in a dream. But in reality.