GET ON TRACK WITH THE IRISH CAMINO Life coach Barbara Byrne lost more than 5st and found her renewed vigour for life led her down an even more exciting path...

We can all identify with wanting to lose a few pounds but throughout her 20s and 30s, Barbara Byrne was several stone overweight and knew that if she didn’t make some changes to her diet and lifestyle that she would be in trouble as she got older.

So in May 2010, she joined a slimming group and with a controlled eating plan, she soon began to shed the pounds, and this gave her the motivation to change every aspect of her life. ‘Following trauma, grief and a marriage breakdown, I used food and drink as a crutch,’ she admits. ‘I realise now that I wrapped my pain up in layers of my body as I was trying to numb it.

‘I was 15 stone 8lbs at my heaviest and at 5ft 1½in that was deemed morbidly obese. I was due to attend a family wedding in 2010 and, desperate not to be the biggest person there, I joined Slimming World and couldn’t believe that although I was eating normal food every day and still able to enjoy chocolate and wine, I started to lose weight.’

Barbara, who has lost over 5st since she began her weight loss journey, was so impressed with the group that she bought into the franchise and began working as a trainer herself. Now, ten years on, she is also the co-author of two books and is a self-employed executive and life coach as well as a motivational speaker.

But her experience of getting in shape also added another element to her career – after a chance meeting saw her take part in a charity walk in northern Spain, which led to a new passion for walking and helping others to do the same. ‘In 2015, I met Linda Keating, head of fundraising for the Marie Keating Foundation and she told me she was training for the Camino,’ says Barbara, who lives in Newbridge with her partner. ‘She was talking about The Camino de Santiago, which is an 800km pilgrimage from St Jean Pied de Port in France to Santiago, which is the journey St James took as he spread Christianity across Spain.

‘I never realised how much I loved a challenge but decided I wanted to do this. Back then my girls were still in school, and I knew I couldn’t take a month or more to do this journey but when I learned you can just do the last 120km or even do it in stages, one week at a time, I knew I would give it a try. A few months later, I saw an advert looking for people to take part to raise funds for the MKF Comfort fund, so decided to go for it.’

After her first experience, Barbara has been back six times, starting from different locations, and says she has so many wonderful memories. ‘There have been so many amazing aspects to it but the stand-out moment for me was probably the last bit of the walk into Santiago de