Walking the Pilgrims’ Way: Prologue

Tomorrow I set off on a pilgrimage.

 I’m planning to walk from London to Canterbury, following in the footsteps of Chaucer’s motley band of pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales. I have a wee guide book to keep me right (thanks to Leigh Hatts and Ciccerone publishers) which also points out places of note along the Pilgrim’s Way. It’s 85 miles in total and I’m expecting to do it in five days. I do like to plan so I’ve studied the route, scheduled my stopping points and booked places to stay.

You’ll know the history, but to recap: the route gained its status for pilgrimage after the murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170. Following quarrels with Henry II, with whom he had once been close, four of Henry’s knights heard the King’s cry of “Will no-one rid me of this turbulent priest?”, travelled to Canterbury and killed Becket in the Cathedral. Becket was made a saint in 1173 and a year later Henry II went to Canterbury to do penance. That’s a moment quite remarkably captured in the 1964 movie Becket when Henry – a bare-chested Peter O’Toole – gazes on the face of Becket’s sepulchre – Richard Burton in stone – before being whipped in the crypt by four cowled monks. Mercy me!

Over the next 500 years many more pilgrims embarked on the journey, including quite a few monarchs. Henry VIII removed the Becket shrine in the Reformation but in the last 19th century there was a revival of interest in this route and going to Canterbury. There’s also a longer pilgrim trail from Winchester Cathedral, the two pathways joining at Otford.

I love a long-distance walk; I’ve already walked Hadrian’s Wall and the West Highland Way. I find it reassuring and challenging at the same time. It’s such a simple thing, just putting one foot in front of the other to propel oneself forward. It’s hard work to be constantly moving but it’s also energising, particularly travelling through the countryside, and absorbing the sights, sounds and smells of nature. You can lose yourself in the rhythm of your body and the landscape and let your mind wander in a thousand other directions or deep into yourself. 

I have another, specific reason for doing this other than my love of walking – of which, more later. I’m not going to Canterbury for religious reasons but I do love ancient sites: places where people have gathered for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years; places where they have left markers of their existence for us to reach out and touch today, places that are portals into time. So there’s something special about both walking with purpose and taking a path followed by so many others over hundreds of years.

It feels that there’s a groundswell of similar emotions around, and there are plenty of people working to pluralise the ideas and practices of pilgrimage. The British Pilgrimage Trust is a “community advocating for the benefits and joy of pilgrimage”, offering a “comprehensive resource for learning about and planning pilgrimages in Britain, modernising the traditional”. The Trust recently held a conference on modern pilgrimage – parish priest Graeme Holdsworth, who blogs as Father Hilarious, wrote this article about cycling 225 miles to get to it.

In Scotland the Scottish Pilgrims Route Forum is reviving old pathways across the country while the Scottish Churches Trust offers guidance on Pilgrim Journeys “bringing together the travels of Scotland’s Celtic saints and medieval traditions of pilgrimage with modern faith journeys” as part of “growing international renaissance of pilgrimage”. Meanwhile, volunteers for Slow Ways are carefully mapping and checking thousands of miles of pathways linking up all of Britain’ cities, towns and national parks, in a vast connective network.

An exploration of the ancient paths of Britain – The Old Ways. A journey on foot by Robert Macfarlane – was a bestseller in 2013 – as was 2019’s The Salt Path by Raynor Winn, a memoir of walking as a response to personal catastrophe. So far this year, new pilgrimage publications have included On this holy island. A modern pilgrimage across Britain by Oliver Smith and Wayfarer: Love, loss and life on Britain’s ancient paths by Phoebe Smith, and Saraband is issuing a new edition of Doubling Back. Paths Trodden in Memory by Linda Cracknell.

Perhaps our COVID-19 lockdown experiences – the daily walk, the yearning for nature, the longing for connection – have helped to deepen and intensify a desire that was already there and growing.

I’m also inspired by one of my favourite films, A Canterbury Tale. Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, it is ostensibly a Second World War propaganda piece as three young people – British soldier Peter Gibbs (Dennis Price), US soldier Bob Johnson (played by real-life Sergeant John Sweet), and British ‘Land Girl’ Alison Smith (Sheila Sim) – work together to solve a curious and slightly sinister little mystery in a Kent village. But, like all Powell and Pressburger movies, there’s so much more to it.

The perpetrator is motivated by a deep love of the place where he lives, driven by his emotional connection to the past and a strong desire to inspire others to feel the same and keep the land safe from danger. But his passion leads him astray, and in the end it’s the young people who show him that, though his motivations may be virtuous, his passion has blinded him to change and to new ways of protecting and serving a place and community.

In the end, four ‘pilgrims’ go to Canterbury: three for blessings and one to do penance. They all discover renewed love and acceptance. All of them walk through layers of history, including the recent destruction in the city wrought by Nazi bombs, to unite with many other people in communion for a renewed and better world. Whether they experience a miracle, whether the miracles are divine or man-made, isn’t important. What is important is the new perspectives they gain; they change, and even the most rigid of them is able to accept and receive transformation. I find it beautiful and moving – and inspiring – every time I see it.

In the spirit of connection – and because creativity is another nourishing daily practice – I’m planning to publish an article each day I’m on the Pilgrims’ Way. These may simply chronicle the day or may dig deeper; I’m not very sure yet because of that purpose of pilgrimage – ancient or modern, religious or secular – the chance to change; and true change involves the unexpected. 

So, here’s to the unexpected journey!

And to inspire that very first step, here’s the music from the start of A Canterbury Tale. Created by composer Allan Gray, this soundtrack begins with a peal of bells playing a mid-15th century polyphony calledAngelus ad Virginem, and a recitation of the opening lines from Chaucer.

Next post: Walking the Pilgrims’ Way day 1: Southwark to Dartford