John Brierley, a self-effacing man who never courted publicity and rarely gave interviews, who to most of the public was unknown, but to those who love outdoor life, hiking, hillwalking, and especially walking the Camino, he was a hero, inspirational, and well-loved.
He was a former chartered surveyor who set up a successful business in Dublin. In midlife, he found that his business was dominating his life, he was irritable and working long hours with little time for family life and had reached an existential crisis.
He knew if he didn’t change course, he would have a mental breakdown. He decided to take a year’s sabbatical from his work and with a campervan, his wife, and two children headed off to travel the world and find himself as the saying goes. When in France he came across the small town of Saint-Jean-Pied-de Port, snuggled up into the foothills of the Pyrenees, a place that would change the course of his life. He noticed people with backpacks with scallop shells hanging from them and hiking sticks at the ready, busying themselves for a day’s hike. He asked what was going on and was told this was the beginning of the Camino Francés, a gruelling 900km pilgrim walk to Santiago de Compostela in western Spain.
There was a feeling about the place that caught his imagination and knew that one day he would walk it. Two years later he did, and it transformed his life in so many ways and at the end of the journey he knew which path in life to take. On arriving home, he gave up his secure, pensionable, and well-paid job, then moved to Findhorn, a spiritual retreat in Scotland where later his family joined him. They lived there in a caravan for seven years. His wife agreed with his life-changing decision, she had her husband back and their children had a less stressed-out father, and they were never happier.
When walking the Camino, he noticed there was no comprehensive map covering the whole journey, so using his expertise as a surveyor he compiled his first of many Camino guides complete with detailed maps, accommodation listings, and the history of the villages, towns, cities, and places of interest along the way with miscellaneous hints and suggestions to help make the journey more bearable.
