Sadness and happiness. That is what we sometimes feel at the same time as we leave a place or site. Unlike usual travel, Sojourning in 2015 has been about passing through – places and sites. Usually setting this almost daily goal in our minds, we do everything we can to get there. The sadness has been inevitable, but not something we think about as we arrive at a new place or site – then it is happiness.

One of our favourite wild camping places: beside a 4th Century Synagogue ruin on the Jesus Trail, Israel (we define wild camping as camping where no formal campsite exists and where self-sufficiency is paramount for survival. This can be legal, illegal or dangerous, depending on the country. In Israel it is legal and safe).

These places and sites are camp sites. Not the most ‘romantic’ of places, a flat pitch is where we make home, and call home for a few days. Why the sadness? Maybe it is because we feel we leave a small piece of ourselves behind, yet at the same time we take a small piece of that place with us – all as we pass through.

Camping San Nicolò, Venice: after a tropical storm, we awoke to find hundreds of worms that made their home on our tent after dropping from a tree that we had camped under.

The destination is not the goal, although the small daily ones keep us going, but the journey is the motivation to sojourning. Passing through, unlike usual destination-type travel is heart wrenching and keeps us grateful for the snippets of those places we can enjoy. Sojourning means movement, and so although there is a tendency to want to stay and enjoy more, we cannot, and so perhaps this adds to the sadness.

Explorer or consumer traveller: you make the choice. Għajn Tuffieha Campsite, Malta, which happens to overlook the Radisson Blu Hotel!

But then we continue passing through, and as we realise that the destination nor the journey is the goal, so it is the lessons we learn about ourselves and how we respond to them that is what it is ultimately about.

Tent with a view: the evening of Day 6 of the GR20 trail in Corsica was one of those ‘in the right place at the right time’ kind of evenings…