Pilgrimage: JF Penn, British Writer & Traveler, on Solo-Hiking Three Ancient Way Walks [Ep 47]

Jo Francis Penn is English, currently living in Bath. As an 11-year-old, she lived in Malawi, Africa; in her teens she lived for a short period in Israel; and as a young adult she lived in New Zealand and Australia. Once back in the UK, she made a career change, moving from tech into writing fiction and non-fiction. Her international relocations and ongoing travels inform her trove of fiction thrillers, and dark fantasy stories, and her entrepreneurial savvy with the business side of  writing informs her collection of non-fiction books. Jo is also an avid walker, often solo-hiking long distances. And in this episode we talk about the circumstances that lead Jo to walk three ancient way walks, including the Camino from Porto in the north of Portugal, to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and her recently-released, aptly titled memoir, Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned From Walking Three Ancient Ways.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Louise: Welcome to Women Who WaIk. I'm Louise Ross, writer and author of Women Who Walk the book, the inspiration for this podcast. And just as I did for the book here, I'll be interviewing and unpacking the journeys of impressive, intrepid women who've made multiple international moves for work, for adventure, for love, for freedom - reminding us that women can do extraordinary things. You can find a transcript, with pictures, to each episode, and my books on my website, LouiseRoss.com.

[00:00:47] Louise: Hello, listeners. Welcome to Episode 47 of Women Who Walk.

[00:00:52] Louise: My guest today is Jo Francis Penn, writer of upward of 45 books. Under the name JF Penn, she writes fiction thrillers, and dark fantasy stories set in international locations. And under the name Joanna Penn, she writes non-fiction books for writers and creatives.

[00:01:17] Louise: Jo is also a podcaster, audiobook narrator, creative entrepreneur, and a sought after interviewee on the business of writing. In short, she's a bit of a celebrity, and so I'm absolutely thrilled to have her as a guest on Women Who Walk.

[00:01:34] Louise: But first, a bit of background: Jo is English and she currently lives in Bath. As an 11-year-old, she lived in Malawi in Southeastern Africa with her mother and brother. As a 16-year-old, she lived for a short period in Israel as a volunteer. And as a young adult, she was burning the candle at both ends while living and working in London. Thoroughly burned out, she left behind her career in tech and traveled south. Living and working in New Zealand and Australia for a number of years before eventually returning to the UK.

[00:02:15] Louise: Jo and I met January, 2021 when I reached out to her to see if she'd be interested to interview me for her podcast Books and Travel. I thought my book Women Who Walk, How 20 Women From 16 Countries Came to Live in Portugal, might fit the theme of her podcast and be of interest to her listeners. She agreed and so you can hear Jo interview me in Episode 66 on BooksAndTravel.Page

[00:02:46] Louise: And actually I have to credit Jo for helping me figure out the logistics of creating a podcast, because not long after I reached out to her, I bought and read her non-fiction how-to book titled, Audio for Authors: Audio Books, Podcasting and Voice Technologies. I mined that book for all her tips on setting up a podcast and voila, a couple of months later, I'd managed to upskill and launch Women Who Walk.

[00:03:19] Louise: Once I had a handful of episodes live, I then proposed to Jo that she come onto my podcast as a guest, as I knew she had lots of fascinating stories to share about living in Africa, spending time in Israel, Vanuatu in the South Pacific, and living in New Zealand and Australia. Plus, I knew she was an avid walker, often solo-walking long distances, and that she had plans to walk the Camino from Porto in the north of Portugal, to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

[00:03:53] Louise: She agreed, but requested that we wait till her latest book had launched. Well, it's the middle of May, 2023 and Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned From Walking Three Ancient Ways is now out. It's a combination memoir and self-help filled with practical tips about walking the Camino and two other ancient way walks.

[00:04:19] Louise: And so onto my conversation with Jo Francis Penn.

[00:04:35] Louise: Welcome, Jo thanks for being a guest on Women Who Walk today.

[00:04:39] Jo: Oh, thanks for having me, Louise. I'm excited to be here.

[00:04:43] Louise: Oh, thank you so much. I wanted to start by asking if you'd be willing to recount a story you tell in the very first episode of your podcast, Books and Travel, and it's a wonderful story that led to your mum moving you and your brother to Malawi when you were 11.

[00:05:01] Jo: Yeah, sure. So it's interesting, isn't it, when we think about the travels that impacted our lives. And this was sort of the beginning of when I first have the standout memories and Malawi of people don't know is in uh, central, Southeast Africa and it's kind of landlocked.

[00:05:17] Jo: I was living in England at the time. My parents ,divorced. And my mum, uh, moved to Malawi to teach English and we stayed with my dad for a while, but then later on, she moved us out there with her. I went to school in Malawi. And this particular story that I tell was in 1986. It's funny cuz it was also the year that, uh, Paul Simon's Graceland album came out. To give people something to kind of remember is that, is that dated? But also that is the African album. And I still hear songs from the album and remember.

[00:05:47] Jo: But basically my mum was like, okay, we only have a certain amount of money in the bank as everyone does. But she's like, look, we need a new kitchen. The kitchen was really grotty. She was a single parent. The kitchen was awful. But she said, look, do you want to go back to Malawi? We could have a couple of weeks in Malawi. We can go to the lake where, where there are all these amazing fish and, and all this. Or we can have a new kitchen. Me and my little brother were just like, why would you even need a kitchen? There's a working cooker and all this stuff. And we were like, let's go to Malawi. So she took us back that summer. And I, I think it was just one of those glorious memories. We were swimming everywhere and, um, the weather was lovely. And these giant Baobab trees that stretch up to the blue sky above and reading by the lake. I also think of, um, purple grape Fanta, which is something that you don't seem to get in the UK, and brise barbecues by the pool. Just these moments where you choose experience over stuff.

[00:06:50] Louise: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:50] Jo: That's why that trip shaped me. But also that sense of being able to leave the freezing cold winter of England and arrive in a country with bright flowers and sun and that early idea of what travel really is, which is escaping what you know and going to somewhere that's different.

[00:07:13] Jo: Again, spending money on experiences and not on stuff. I don't think I've ever spent money on buying a new kitchen or anything like that. Not there's anything wrong with that if people want to do that. But yeah, sort of choosing, choosing experiences and, and that's definitely shaped my life in terms of any time I feel like, oh, do you know what, I'm just getting too bored, or too stayed or too much in a rut. And for me, traveling has always been a way out of that because as soon as you leave the normal world, you can go somewhere else, even if it's someone else's normal world, you know, like you live in Portugal. But for me, coming to Portugal is another world. Whereas it's probably, you are, you are pretty used to it by now. You've been there a long time, right?

[00:07:51] Louise: Mm-hmm. 10 years. Mm-hmm.

[00:07:53] Jo: Yeah, exactly.

[00:07:54] Louise: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:54] Jo: So, and that, I mean, that's interesting in itself, right? I mean, when you moved there and left Australia, I mean, it, it was other, and probably now when you go back to Australia, it's quite different.

[00:08:04] Louise: Mm-hmm. Well, actually moved here from the US. I've, I've lived out of Australia almost 40 years now, Jo..

[00:08:10] Jo: Oh, there we go. It must be so different when you go back. Do you go back?

[00:08:14] Louise: Not a lot.

[00:08:16] Jo: Neither do I. And of course I lived there for people listening. I lived there for five, six years as well.

[00:08:21] Louise: Yes, yes.

[00:08:21] Jo: Yes, yes. It's like these places change, don't they? Over time.

[00:08:24] Louise: They do. They do, of course. Well, that early experience of going to Malawi, I mean, you've already alluded to the fact that it sort of shaped you because it really did begin your travels. And in the early '90s when you were 16, I dug deep on your, on your blog.

[00:08:43] Louise: So when you were 16, you traveled with a Christian group to Israel to volunteer to teach English at a school on the West Bank. And again, you tell a riveting story about this trip on your podcast, but can you recap the most personally impactful experience you had there and perhaps what drew you back to Israel? Because I understand you went back a number of times, didn't you?

[00:09:08] Jo: Yeah, I've been back to Israel over and over again. And it's interesting cuz when I was 16, I was in that sort of teenage, I, I was a, a evangelical Christian back then. I'm not anymore. Um, I have respect for people of faith, but I'm not a Christian. But at that time I was. I was in that sort of Christian phase. I was working for charities. I really thought there could be peace in the Middle East.

[00:09:28] Louise: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:28] Jo: Which now seems quite a naive view, but, um, it was only a few months after the end of Gulf War one, I think it was back then, and we didn't even know it was Gulf War one, but there were missiles flying overhead. Amazingly, I mean, there was no social media, obviously. There were, were no cell phones back then, uh, but my mum trusted the group and me enough to let me go. And I do remember being out on the streets with some Palestinian students from the school and, there were kids throwing stones at, uh, Israeli military vehicle.

[00:10:00] Jo: And I was on the side with the Palestinians at the time. I did later work on the other side as well with the Israeli side. My husband's actually Jewish, so I've tried to span all sides of the conflict. But I do remember sort of hiding under a car with, with a friend of mine, and it was like, oh my goodness, it could go really wrong at this point.

[00:10:21] Jo: And I got this sense of what being on that other side of the barrier meant. And I went back over and over again for years doing, working for various charities, also tourism, you know, I went back with my husband even just a few years ago, and every time I go to Israel and the West Bank, I feel something different.

[00:10:40] Jo: The situation there is so fraught, it's like the blood is soaked into the land there and these sort of blood feuds that go over generations. And so I guess in terms of my fiction, I write fiction as JF Penn, and I have Israel in there so many times, I mean, I have Jerusalem in there, multiple times. Crypt of Bone opens at the western Wall, and my thriller End Of Days has a lot to do with Israel's Safeds, the center of Kabbalism, it's also in a number of my books. I just find the place deeply, the sort of religious history and the, the crossroads of three great religions: Judaism, uh, Islam, Christianity, all fighting over such a tiny area of the world.

[00:11:25] Jo: It's kind of crazy and it inspires stories over and over again. Even if you go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and you walk up onto the roof there's these Ethiopian Coptics that have these tiny, uh, shrines on the roof. And in fact, that made it into my thriller Arc of Blood, now I think about it.

[00:11:42] Jo: I just find stories there over and over again. I guess from the, the experience perspective over the years, as I've grown older and the conflict has changed, I still feel a draw to the place and I still put aspects of Israeli politics and Judaism and Christianity into my books.

[00:12:03] Louise: You've gone on to write many novels actually. You're a prolific writer of action adventure thrillers set in international locations, and often they're set against religious backdrops of sorts. And one of the things I noticed as well is that you tend to travel to the destination that you're going to write about. Do you do that because you feel that you need to sort of immerse yourself in the environment in order to conjure up the story that you're going to set in that place?

[00:12:36] Jo: It's a bit of both. I absolutely use my full-time job as an author to fund travel.

[00:12:42] Louise: Ah, okay.

[00:12:42] Jo: You know, according to the tax authorities, if you do spend money as part of a business, in order to make income, then that is tax deductible. So yes, I do tax deductible travel and thus have to write a book at some point. But as you say, mainly I get ideas from places I visit.

[00:12:58] Jo: For example, we went to Amsterdam for a weekend trip, and it wasn't originally meant to be a specific story, but I knew I would find a story there. Let's face it, you can find stories everywhere. So we went to Amsterdam, and then in the middle of Amsterdam there's a synagogue called Ets Haim, which means tree of Life. And essentially this is a Portuguese synagogue in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. And I was like, what? Why is this a Portuguese synagogue? This is really weird. So then I started to research the history of Portuguese Jews after the diaspora, and where they ended up and how they ended up in Amsterdam and then looked at how the Portuguese Empire, which we both know was massive at one point. It spanned the world and now of course Portugal does not have an empire like the UK. But at the time, it spanned from East Asia, Macau through the Philippines, and through Goa in India and the South of America.

[00:13:53] Jo: So I came up with the story and then we visited Lisbon and when I was in Lisbon, I went to all the different places and put those in the book as well, like the ruin convent there, the Carmo Convent, I think it's called.

[00:14:07] Louise: Mm-hmm. And mm-hmm.

[00:14:08] Jo: And the monument of the explorers, that kind of thing. So I do both. I decide on a place to go in order to write, but then I also go to places and then I find stories.

[00:14:20] Louise: Mm.

[00:14:20] Jo: And then I write about them or I link them together. So that book was Tree of Life, but Valley of Dry Bones, for example, I was walking around Majorca. Palma Majorca. And I came across a statue of Junipero Serra who actually then left the Spanish Island of Majorca and went to Mexico and then was part of the founding of the Missions up the west coast of the USA. This was a time in history where it was not easy to get places, right. And so I was like, wow, this is amazing. And there are these relics of Junipero Serra in San Francisco, and that led to me writing a book that spans from Majorca to Toledo, all the way over to Alcatraz.

[00:14:59] Jo: The funny thing is with fiction, the type of fiction I write anyway is when I think there might be a connection, it turns out there often is. So that's really weird.

[00:15:07] Louise: Or you find it, you definitely find it. I noticed that because I follow you on Instagram and oftentimes there's a picture and some little caption added to it that already is you finding a story in that image or that place.

[00:15:21] Jo: Yes, exactly. Although, uh, I do cheat a bit sometimes. I'm often going to places later. So for example, with uh, my latest memoir Pilgrimage, which we'll talk about. I finally went to Santiago de Compostela. I had never been before, and yet my first novel, which came out in 2011, um, has scenes at Santiago de Compostela and, uh, is about the bones of St. James and the other apostles. And so I finally visited that cathedral and thus could post pictures on Instagram and mention that novel, even though it had been over a decade since I'd written the book.

[00:15:55] Jo: Now we have smartphones it's much easier to take photos and I have barely any photos, well, like two photos from when I went to Israel and a couple of photos from Malawi in the '80s. It was just a different time, you know? Now I'm like, I have to revisit everywhere in order to then do promotional pictures for my books.

[00:16:13] Louise: Yeah, as I said, I, I follow you on Instagram and I'm aware of your travels and that you're often going to find story, but one of the things I'm also aware of is that you're an avid walker, especially an avid distance walker, and often you are walking distances solo. So tell us about this choice to challenge yourself in this way.

[00:16:35] Jo: I'm an introvert, so I like being on my own. Being alone is never a problem and so I've done a lot of traveling on my own, that doesn't bother me very much. But walking solo for more than a day was definitely outside my comfort zone. And so I've done walking trips with, uh, companies like Exodus and companies that will arrange things, multi-day trips. But I've never walked multi-day carrying my own pack, on my own and doing the navigation and all that kind of thing.

[00:17:03] Jo: I mean, it stemmed from wanting to do the Camino de Santiago like many years ago. Decades ago. Probably back when I was a Christian, back in the day. And then the pandemic happened and I was like, oh my goodness, I have to get out the house. I really need to go somewhere. Lockdown, obviously, stopped us traveling. This was in-between the stay at home bit, the, the first trip I did. And I was like, I, I have to do something that takes my mind off this whole situation. I felt like this sort of caged bird with bleeding wings cuz I was trying to escape my cage.

[00:17:36] Jo: Obviously at the time we were all very anxious. Uh, it was a, a very scary time. This was September, 2020 and we all thought it might have been over by Christmas, and then of course it wasn't. I guess I wanted to challenge myself in a different way because I desperately needed some kind of adventure and escape, and this was a way to do it while still staying within pandemic rules.

[00:17:57] Jo: I mean, when you are walking solo, you are outside most of the time. So it seemed like a sensible option for pandemic times. And also I wanted to get in training for my Camino walk. I didn't want to just leave my house and go and try and do the Camino even though I couldn't even at the time cause we couldn't go very far.

[00:18:16] Jo: That first walk I did was, um, The Pilgrim's Way from Suffolk Cathedral in London to Canterbury, and that was six days. And then I did St Cuthbert’s Way from Melrose in Scotland to Lindisfarne on the east coast of the UK. That was five days. And these are sort of 150 to 180 kilometers. So decent, um, kilometer'ridge or mileage, we could say. But there was a lot of challenges in terms of navigation, carrying my pack and all of those practical details where you are learning as you take your walks from one-day walk to a multi-day walk. So learning those skills was really good.

[00:18:57] Jo: But also just the mental health aspect of getting out into nature for more of an extended time was very valuable. We're over two years later, almost three years later, I guess, at this point, and I still do long walks, but, I did my Camino last year and I'm focusing on other things now. But the, the multi-day walks, they just take your brain into a different place, I guess.

[00:19:19] Louise: And so you documented these three ancient way walks that you did in your book Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned From Walking Three Ancient Ways. Now, before we get into detail about that book, I also saw something you posted on Instagram, uh, about these three walks that you did, and you said, "I thought doing one pilgrimage would somehow fix me, but it took three for me to find meaning and a way ahead." Can you talk us through this comment?

[00:19:51] Jo: I should also say that I was coming into the sort of perimenopause stage of a midlife female. That was a challenge in itself. I wasn't sleeping. I had insomnia. I had anxiety. Depression. A lot of mental health issues that I was struggling with. And when I went off to walk the Pilgrim's way and I said to my husband, I have to get out. I have to go and do this. I have to get out the house. And apparently many women walk a lot in their midlife challenge situation.

[00:20:20] Louise: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:20:21] Jo: Um, and I thought, oh, well if I just walk for six days, then I'll be exhausted. It'll help me sleep. Maybe I'll just get over this feeling of just needing to escape and get away. But when I got back, and I thought I would write like a travel guide to the Pilgrims Way, that's the book I was gonna write cuz as we discussed, most of my travels turn into books. It's my job as well as my hobby and it's, it's my lifestyle, writing. Uh, so I thought I'd write this book about the Pilgrims Way. And then I got back, I was like, I don't wanna write another travel log. What's the point in doing that? And yet a memoir didn't make any sense at that point because a memoir has to have some kind of story arc. Uh, there still is a character arc in a memoir. You start in one place and you end in another place, not just a physical movement from one place to another, but an emotional arc as well. And so I didn't find that after that first pilgrimage. So then I did the Cuthbert’s Way a year later in 2021. And again, I just was still in mental health pain. We were still in the pandemic. I still desperately needed to escape. I still had a lot of, um, physical issues as well. And then, uh, a year later I did the Camino, and this time it was different. For a start I was on HRT, so that made a big difference. I was actually sleeping, but also the pandemic was pretty much over.

[00:21:41] Jo: We could travel again. So I did my Camino from Porto up to Santiago de Compostela. And people still wore masks, like in taxis and on buses, but you could go in a cafe, you could walk around town. There wasn't the masking everywhere and you could travel. It was like a revelation.

[00:21:58] Jo: Also, on my return, I felt like I wanted to come home and rather than desperately wanting to escape, I felt like coming home. It might seem small to some people, but we adopted two cats, at that time when I got back from Camino, Cashew and Noisette, and they're lovely. I put lots of pictures with them on instagram.

[00:22:16] Louise: You do. You do. I see those. Yes.

[00:22:18] Jo: You see them? Um, we had a cat when we lived in Australia and when we left Australia, we had to find a, a new home for him and it broke our hearts, because you love your animals. We put off adopting another cat for more than a decade. So what, so 12 years since we left Australia, and so 12 years of not having a pet, because I could not commit to staying in one place, and I didn't want to leave an animal behind again. When I say leave behind Schme, our old cat went to a very good home, so he was not like just left on a corner.

[00:22:50] Jo: But so it was, it's interesting, again, it might seem small to some people, but that's how memoir worked. Memoirs, like this is me desperate to leave. And then by the end, couple of years later and a lot of miles later, this is me wanting to commit to being home. I still travel obviously, but just differently and I don't feel so desperate to leave all the time.

[00:23:11] Jo: That's kind of how the three pilgrimages work. But also, In terms of putting together a book, uh, the book is not a travel log, it's not a day-by-day account of each of those guides. Although I've done solo episodes on my Books and Travel Podcast about each one, and I've got loads of pictures and tips and stuff like that. But the book is a combination between memoir and self-help, but also practical tips, and it really just made sense. I got back from the Camino and I was like, oh, I know what this book is gonna be now. I understand how it will work. I understand the story arc.

[00:23:46] Louise: Mm-hmm. That's a, a great description and a great story around how you came to it too. Thanks for sharing that. And it's also available as a spiralback workbook, which I love because this is a way for people to use your experience as a, a, basically a, a how-to in order to map out their own pilgrimage, isn't it?

[00:24:09] Jo: Yeah, so, uh, what I found useful also was obviously pilgrimage is a physical walk. So your body, you have to walk and your feet hurt and you are tired and all of this. But you could just go on a long walk and get that. But pilgrimage is particularly to some kind of sacred place. Santiago de Compostelo is one, but one particularly great part of the walk was the crossing to Lindesfarne.

[00:24:32] Jo: That was a very sort of spiritual moment where the seals are singing and you're walking over these tidal flats in this incredibly beautiful area. When I walk, I take a journal like many people do, and I printed out a load of questions. These questions, the goal of it was to take my mind out of just the physical side of pilgrimage.

[00:24:51] Jo: So it might be, I'm heading in this direction physically, but what direction am I heading in emotionally or with my life. I always think about memento mori: remember, you will die. And every day I would look for evidence of memento mori. So it might be a particularly beautiful gravestone. I love graveyards, so I'm always stopping at graveyards. Or it might be, like the seals singing over those tidal flats. They have sung there for like thousands of years. You just walk across there thinking, this is out of time. My footsteps will wash away and a thousand years of pilgrims have walked here.

[00:25:27] Jo: And this sense of being part of a line of pilgrims stretching back through history and just getting some perspective on your life, you know? Cause we get so head up with the minutia of every day and, uh, technical things and this, that, and the other. And, and then when you do a walk where you are thinking differently it can just give you much needed perspective.

[00:25:49] Jo: So the workbook has both practical things like, uh, why might you want to walk alone or why might you want to walk with a group, for example, to help you think about the planning side. But then it also has questions around the deeper side of pilgrimage and aiming to sort of, uh, help you think about your journey in a different way.

[00:26:07] Louise: Hmm. I love the sound of that. I'd be interested just to buy the workbook because I think that the way you set it out is an opportunity for readers to not just think in terms of a possible pilgrimage, but how they might think about their life differently.

[00:26:22] Jo: Mm-hmm. Maybe I can just, um, add there. You can certainly just buy the workbook. Uh, people can find that at CreativePennbooks.com and that's Penn with a double N. It is only on that site. It's not on Amazon or anything like that, because they don't do spiralbound. So that's why I've got it on there. But I, as a journaler myself, I really like a lie-flat notebook or journal. So that's why it's spiralbound. It means you can actually lie it flat to write on it. So that's CreativePenBooks.com.

[00:26:51] Louise: Oh, great, thanks for adding that. And you are right. I think you, you said something about, um, that walking, just walking distances is, is something that women of a certain age tend to do in order to sort of walk through their frustrations or their menopausal or postmenopausal issues. Interestingly, Portugal attracts a lot of single women of a certain age, and I have conversations with many women who are talking about wanting to do the Camino or planning to do it. They've never done a big walk before, so I'm wondering if you have one top tip to share with initiates who are considering challenging themselves in that way.

[00:27:37] Jo: Yeah, well I do have a top tip if you've never walked long distance, and that is use a luggage service. And it's funny cuz I mean we all set, we set rules for ourselves, right? And I set a rule for myself, which is I will walk every step of the way and I will carry my own luggage. For all three of my pilgrimages, I carried a pack, I walked with my pack. But every day on the Camino, it was actually an Australian couple, an older Australian couple in their 70s, and I would leave before them every morning. Cuz they're stages of the journey a lot of people stay in the similar area every night. And, uh, every morning, like within an hour or two, they would overtake me and they would always be sitting in some cafe drinking wine when I arrived, like hours after them because I was carrying my bag and they got their luggage moved.

[00:28:23] Jo: So I would say, depending on your rules for pilgrimage, but definitely using a luggage service. What that does is just takes the weight off your legs because if you don't walk regularly, like um, if you do the Portuguese coastal, which is what I did, it's from Porto up to Santiago to Compostela, and it's about 14 days. You can do it over longer, but 14 days was manageable. Some longer days, some shorter days. But yeah, I hadn't walked for two weeks before. I got blisters, I had pain like anyone. But those people who got their luggage moved had a lot less pain. So, so I think personally, if I was gonna do a long walk again, I would use those services and just carry a day pack.

[00:29:04] Jo: The other thing is if you book with a company, so I used Mac's Adventure, but in Portugal, I think it's Tee Travel, there's a whole load of Camino companies, but they can book your accommodation every night. You can use the hostels and just walk until you find the next hostel. But personally, I really just wanted to know where I was sleeping every night and I also wanted my own room.

[00:29:27] Jo: You have to decide what are the challenges you're going to give yourself on your long pilgrimage. And is that challenge gonna involve also, for example, staying in a hostel, which has its own challenges, or is the challenge the solo walking? Is it that daytime section?

[00:29:44] Jo: When I got to my accommodation every night in my private room, I would have a shower. I would wash my clothes every day because I carried my own stuff. That just meant a lot to me, having a room and knowing where I was sleeping. The main thing is to think about it and plan it in a, in advance for those longer walks.

[00:30:00] Louise: That's a great tip. And as you were talking, I'm reminded too of how apt this is for my podcast, Women Who Walk. The name is actually a metaphor for women moving through the world, but the walks that you do are both, um, part of your writing journey and they're also, they're a metaphor for your spiritual life too, aren't they?

[00:30:23] Jo: Yeah, and I think all of my fiction particularly resonates with the deeper questions of life. Uh, I think about good versus evil, and like I said, memento mori: remember you will die. Is there something beyond the grave, beyond the veil, I often write about. Because I have had these sort of supernatural, spiritual moments, mostly with nature, but also in places where there's deep human connection to a place like the Western Wall in Jerusalem, as we mentioned.

[00:30:50] Jo: Scuba diving. I've, I've had these various experiences. And I put these into my fiction through the thoughts and memories of my characters. People come to fiction, yeah, they want an action adventure, thriller, for example or a crime novel, but they also want a touch of the deeper side and the deeper questions of life. So I do try to think about both of those things and that both keeps me interested in writing my books, but also hopefully keeps people coming back.

[00:31:20] Jo: So then if listeners would like to find out more about you and your books and your podcasts and blogs, where can they find you online? There's a lot there isn't there, cuz it's not just one podcast you have several.

[00:31:33] Jo: I can't help myself, but for most people listening. So I have a podcast called Books and Travel, and you can find that at booksandtravel.page. You've been on that podcast, so maybe we can link to, uh, your interview on that show. Links to all my books are there too.

[00:31:48] Jo: I'm on Instagram @jfpennauthor, Penn with a double N. And my books at creativepennbooks.com is my store. But all my books as JF Penn and Joanna Penn is my nonfiction, are on all the usual bookstores in all the usual formats and places. So I'm, I'm pretty easy to find online I think these days.

[00:32:10] Louise: And then Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned From Walking Three Ancient Ways that is due out this month. Where can listeners find it? You mentioned one site. And where else?

[00:32:21] Jo: Yeah, that's everywhere too. So you can get that ebook, audiobook, paperback, and then the hardback and the spiralbound workbook are at creativepennbooks.com. Wherever you buy books online, you should be able to find Pilgrimage by JF Penn.

[00:32:34] Jo: Terrific. Thank you, Jo. It's just been a delight to have you on the show, and thank you for sharing your stories with us.

[00:32:41] Jo: Thanks for having me, Louise. That was great.

[00:32:43] Louise: Thank you for listening today. So you don’t miss future episodes, subscribe on your favorite podcast provider or on my YouTube channel @WomenWhoWalkPodcast. Also, feel free to connect with comments on Instagram @LouiseRossWriter or Writer & Podcaster, Louise Ross on Facebook, or find me on LinkedIn. And finally, if you enjoyed this episode, spread the word and tell your friends.