We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Andrew Boddicker a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Andrew, thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

In the summer of 2015, I walked the Camino de Santiago, walking 500 miles in 28 days. Midway through that walk I envisioned (with a possessed-like quality) a place in North America where people would gather, walk, and re-sync their hectic lives with nature and fellow walkers. It came at a time in my life where my world had been turned upside down and my only option was to retreat or embrace the change. The Camino gave me many lessons but most important was that life is a journey and the low spots can make the high ones even higher if we can see beyond the weeds and embrace change.

For me, long-distance, multi-day, supported walking put me back in touch with myself and set me on a course of more authentic, fulfilled living. Our daily, stubbornly monotonous, lives are consumed by distractions that take us away from ourselves. Encountering new people, places, and walking amongst nature engenders this all-too-infrequent contact with ourselves. In walking we come upon brighter versions of the people we always knew were there.

We encounter our pasts that we’ve buried and deal with them. We stumble upon old dreams and reignite them.We sprout new ideas and relationships with like-minded seekers who have felt the itch of discontent for far too long. Walking Space provides the platform – the time, place, and pace – where these crucial discoveries and healings can take place. It is an introduction to a better way of living – closer to nature, others and, most importantly, ourselves. I invite you to join us here at Walking Space and start this journey of reinvention, rediscovery, and reconnection.

Andrew, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

After my great unlearning and embracing of change and flow on the Camino, walking became my outlet for healing, creating, and caring. At the time, I did not know how walking would influence a future business but the more I dove into the idea the more I felt that giving people the opportunity and support to walk for long distances could give them back their sense of self and reignite their creativity. Walking Space is the result of the belief and experience.

Humans have travelled long distances on foot for millennia. It is our most basic, simple form of travel – getting from point A to B. It is like breathing. For most homo-sapiens, it is something one does without thinking.

In our modern world, with our fast cars, fast technology, and fast food we have to look for opportunities to take walks and slow down. Walking can be, in itself, a form of meditation and as such, allows for personal growth and understanding. A “walker” gains confidence, strength, clarity, and self-awareness through endurance, patience, and achievement in natural surroundings. This is the central motivator to participate in Walking Space.

Long-distance walking engenders a connection with our deepest and truest selves. The walking pace, a natural pace, allows our bodies and minds to reset and recalibrate our personal pace and flow. With this reset, we are better equipped to face our challenges and move past the walls we continually encounter – step out of the cyclical monotonies of life and forge a more considered, mindful, and fluid way of living.

Outside of the benefits for the mind and heart, there are many reasons a person might want to participate in a long-distance walk. The challenge of walking 60 miles, or sleeping on a bus, or making new friends are as important as those seeking healing and mindful transformation.

Walking Space endeavors to provide the first long distance, multi-day, fully-supported walk based in North America.

Our task is to provide you space, time, care, and comfort.

Your concern for each day is to walk. And from that walk will come an array of discoveries, healings, and connections with nature, others, and most importantly, yourself.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When this idea was given to me on my pilgrimage through Northern Spain on the Camino, I spent the next 4 years working to save up enough money to start my project. This involved countless strategies to cut back on expenses, living in London at the time and quite literally living in closets and places where ceilings were falling in. But it didn’t feel like I was suffering – I felt empowered and excited to have this much dedication to an idea. And after all is said and done, it was more than worth it. The impact and personal reward I receive from this work is immeasurable and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

As a guide, I had to let go of my idea of what someone needs for a transformational experience. In my head, it was supposed to look exactly like my experience! I quickly learned, after leading a handful of walks, that transformation and impact can be had in the smallest of moments (or the biggest!). My job is not to tell them how it works, but to set the stage and allow it to happen for each individual as it will. Letting go of my idea of what it takes was a large lesson in trust and knowing that the people who come on a walk with Walking Space will have a moment of transformation not BECAUSE of what I do, but by crafting and environment for it to take place at one time or another – and it almost always happens, and sometimes in the most peculiar ways.

Contact Info:

• Website: walkingspace.org
• Instagram: walking.space
• Facebook: walkingspaceadventure