Arles

In fact, Arles holds a special place in the story of pilgrimage. It’s one of the four traditional starting points in France for the Camino de Santiago, and it’s known as the Via Tolosana. Pilgrims have set out from Arles for centuries, passing through Toulouse and crossing the Pyrenees into Spain to join the Camino Frances.

The city itself was a vital Roman and medieval crossroads, offering hospitality and spiritual grounding for travelers. To gather for a retreat in Arles is to step on to ancient pilgrim ground - a threshold where a sacred journey of return begins.

Light matters to painters; it mattered especially to the Impressionists and those who painted out of doors, en plein air, like Cézanne and Van Gogh. Artists have always gathered where the light is. For Van Gogh, it was transformative; you only have to look at his early paintings of gleaners and potato pickers on winter days in the Netherlands and then his paintings in the South of France to see that.

I am sitting in my little rented house in Arles, right opposite the Roman arena, on the corner of a winding cobbled street, writing this on the day before my birthday.

I find I can still take myself back to that inner courtyard at the secret house with the so-ordinary door on to the street, in Arles, and see my friends and colleagues there, sitting around the pool, writing, talking, being silent. It became, even for that short time, a hub – a place we could travel from, yet keep inside us, I believe.

And while the outer world gets ever more hectic and chaotic, the news ever more disturbing and demanding, I am glad that I can transport myself back there – there – to a quiet room with women sitting on sofas, writing, while the sun and shadow moved across the courtyard, the pool glittered, the house-martins circled, and the days were ours.