Finding peace, one step at a time
Pilgrimages are becoming more popular – and increasingly secular. Victoria Trott joins a one-day walk in the spiritual setting of Glastonbury
Connecting with nature can help you move into a more soulful way of being
Iam standing in a supermarket car park hugging a huge oak tree, linking hands around its trunk with two people I met today. We’ve clambered up and down muddy Wearyall Hill to see the latest incarnation of the Holy Thorn – a hawthorn said to have originally grown from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea (a follower of Christ). Now we’re having a break by Morrisons in Glastonbury.
This Somerset town is considered one of the world’s most spiritual locations, attracting pagans and Christians for centuries.
I am undertaking a one-day pilgrimage with The British Pilgrimage Trust. Since its inception in 2014, the Trust has led more than 2,000 pilgrims of all beliefs (and of no religious or spiritual belief) aged between nine and 87 on more than 100 guided pilgrimages, ranging from one to seven days, throughout the UK.
It aims to make pilgrimage accessible to as many people as possible, regardless of their background, age or physical ability.
The Trust has a guide to making a pilgrimage with a disability. Its Great Stour River pilgrimages are on a route accessible to mobility scooters or wheelchairs and all routes include plenty of “sensory practice” so that everyone will find them rewarding.
A pilgrimage is usually associated with walking a long-distance route for religious reasons. One of the best known is the 500-mile Camino de Santiago, the Way of St James, which runs from the Pyrenees across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela.
This is no doubt partly due to its high-profile pilgrims. Actor Martin Sheen starred in and directed the 2010 film The Way as a father going to collect the body of his estranged son, who died while hiking the Camino. The sequel wrapped filming late last year.
BBC Two’s Pilgrimage, which starts its sixth series this Friday, followed seven celebrities on their journey along the route in 2018.
Around 446,000 pilgrims, including 8,200 Britons, completed the Camino in 2023, according to Santiago’s pilgrims’ office – up from 415,000 in 2022, which was a Jacobean Holy Year (with special celebrations for 25 July, St James’ birthday). A 2023 report by the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela found only 48 per cent now have a spiritual motive.
But not everyone has the time, means, inclination or ability to take four to six weeks out of their life at an average cost of €50 (£42) per day. This is where the British Pilgrimage Trust comes in.
Its one-day guided tours start from £50 in towns and cities with ancient and renowned spiritual sites including the City of London, Winchester and Canterbury.
Longer guided pilgrimages of two, four or seven days are themed around English Heritage, Anglican or Catholic cathedrals, and routes like the St Thomas Way from Swansea to Hereford or Camino Ingles, the English sections of the Compostela pilgrimage. These usually include church accommodation.
For anyone undertaking their own self-guided pilgrimage along one of the routes listed on the Trust’s website or in its book Britain’s Pilgrim Places, The Sanctuary Network offers low-cost accommodation on key waypoints. Pilgrims are given somewhere clean, safe and dry to stay in return for a donation.
Dr Guy Hayward is the Trust’s director and co-founder, and is our guide in Glastonbury.
He says: “A one-day pilgrimage is a gateway to the experience. It’s more manageable for the average person. But it’s also a refresher or booster for those who undertake longer pilgrimages.”
Our group of eight consists of five women and three men aged from 30 to 70, although Guy says there can be up to 40 pilgrims on a walk. Rae from Dorset sees the day as a “reset”. For David, from London, it’s a “walk with intent” since his dog died. For me, it’s the opportunity to explore one of my favourite parts of the UK in a different way. For several of us, it’s our first pilgrimage.
We are following The Glastonbury Way, a 7.5-mile trail. We are taking in sacred sites, including the Tor, a 518ft-high tower-topped hill reputedly the dwelling place of the Lord of the Celtic Underworld, and Chalice Well, a spring where Joseph of Arimathea was said to have hidden the Holy Grail.
We stroll from location to location, stopping at each one to contemplate, or so that Guy can talk to us about it. It’s as much an inner journey as an outward one, and it strikes me that our walks between sites may have been kept fairly short to achieve this.
Guy explains: “Just connecting with nature and heritage can generally help you move into a more soulful way of being.
“Long-distance pilgrimages are different in that they give you space to leave your daily life and open yourself up to chance experiences and encounters. The people who undertake them are invested, whatever their motivation.”
Throughout the day, I open myself up to what comes, meditating in the town-centre Goddess Temple and swirling my hands in White Spring, a pure water source in a candle-lit cavern.
But it is the kindness of my fellow pilgrims that affects me most: Julie, who helps me up and lends me her staff when I slip and fall in mud, and Peggy who gives me a tea-towel to wipe my dirty hands.
“I picked it up on the way out for no reason,” she says.
At the start of the day, sitting in tiny St Margaret’s Chapel, a 15thcentury satellite of now-ruined Glastonbury Abbey, allegedly the burial site of King Arthur, we are asked to set an intention. Mine is “show me the way forward”.
As the day ends, I immediately spot the sign for Knight’s Fish Restaurant, named Restaurant of the Year at the 2024 Fish and Chip Awards. Intention fulfilled.