TO BE A PILGRIM: THE FIRST TOURISTS
Before travel as we know it, there was the holy journey — a licence for extraordinary adventures. Simon Reeve explores the allure of the modern pilgrimage
DRIVING high into the Alps on an icy road, past towering walls of snow, I slid carefully round a bend and found my route blocked by a house-sized heap of powder. Switching from hire car to snow-shoes, I continued on foot along an ancient path between Switzerland and Italy, and headed to an extraordinary refuge that has provided sanctuary for hikers and pilgrims for more than 1 000 years.
Inside the sprawling Hospice du GrandSaint-Bernard, its thick walls holding back tons of snow piled in drifts on all sides, there was a spirit of camaraderie among travellers who had arrived on the roof of Europe. I was given a bed, a bowl of thick soup and, to my astonishment, a yoga session with a group of young American design students, most of them Mormons, on a tour of European holy sites and places that inspired great works of literature.
We stretched, we strained, and then we paused for a few moments of meditation, to reflect on our journeys and our lives. Some of the students giggled, a few sobbed. I was struck by how utterly surreal it was to be at more than 2 400m, doing yoga and listening to the Sacred Chants of Shiva.
I had reached the Alps while travelling across Europe for my new TV series, Pilgrimage. I’m not religious, and I wasn’t trying to be a pilgrim, but the journeys were an unmissable opportunity to learn more about the adventures of our ancestors and to meet inspirational modern travellers.
The first episode took me south, from Holy Island to Canterbury, with stops at Lincoln, Walsingham and London. Along the way, I tasted a delicious potage that nourished medieval pilgrims, and played the part of a lovelorn prince in an impromptu retelling of a Chaucerian tale next to a supermarket in the Old Kent Road.
For the second journey I travelled across Europe, following parts of the Camino, perhaps the most popular longdistance walking route in the world, to the beautiful and holy city of Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. From there I zipped back to the Alps, to the pass where for centuries different pilgrimage routes from northern Europe to Italy all converged, before I headed on to Rome. For the third programme I travelled from glorious Istanbul to the Holy Land and Jerusalem, the ultimate destination for a Christian pilgrim. Everywhere I went there were tales and travellers.
Near Calais, I met Ian Brodrick, a longdistance hiker who has spent 10 years walking thousands of miles across the continent and has trekked all the way from Britain to Jerusalem. On the Camino I met a determined American hiker who had endured an astonishing 72 operations following a horrific house fire. In Nazareth I was introduced to David, a reformed drug addict who has been on his own personal pilgrimage. He now wears biblical clothing and lives in a historically accurate recreation of a first-century village, rearing and shearing sheep.
From the start, the journeys were a revelation. Like many of us, I had associated pilgrimage just with piety and blisters. But for hundreds of years a holy journey was the motivation for extraordinary adventures, in comparison with which our comfy modern travels sadly pale.
Our medieval peasant ancestors had few opportunities for exploration, and if they left their fields they could be arrested for vagrancy. But with written permission from their bishop they could escape a life of drudgery and set off on a pilgrimage across the country or continent, on magnificent quests to places of myth and legend.
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But then and now, pilgrimage was not just the preserve of the saintly and devout. In the 800s, priests were criticised for going on pilgrimage just to escape their duties. In the 13th century, a French bishop complained that people were going on pilgrimage “out of mere curiosity and the love of novelty”. They weren’t so unlike us. The thrill of travelling in foreign lands still draws people to ancient pilgrim routes today.
Some 200 000 hikers and bikers completed the Camino to Santiago last year. Ancient walking routes from Britain to Jerusalem are now being studied and mapped. Long-closed refuges and guesthouses on pilgrim routes are reopening. In Western Europe, there are thought to be more than 6 000 pilgrimage sites attracting tens of millions of visitors every year. Pilgrimage is experiencing a revival.
In Britain, continental Europe and the Middle East, I met people trekking towards ancient shrines who claimed or confessed they had no faith, but were drawn to the journey because it combined a clear destination with history and meaning. I felt it too. At the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, I sobbed at the memory of a childhood of Christmases, and was utterly overwhelmed by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the holiest site in Christianity, but also the origin of so much of our civilisation, art, music and conflict.
Filming the series was a deeply moving experience, a journey that helped me to understand more about where we’re from, and perhaps a little more about who we are.
When I asked him what he was doing on a pilgrimage, Ricky, one of the young American students I met at the top of the Alps, said, “I’ve got to get some meaning in my life.” It was an honest, unguarded line, expressing the desire of many and capturing the allure of the modern pilgrimage, for those of faith and those with none. Going on a pilgrimage, whether to Old Trafford, Memphis or the Holy Land, can provide a sense of purpose often lacking from life and much modern travel. So don’t just leave pilgrimage to the pious. Get on the road, and head towards your own Jerusalem. — ©