To be a Pilgrim by Patrick Rogers 16

© Gary Bembridge

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem attracts a crowd for a Travel Bloggers’ Event!

Over the Pyrenees into Spain, where the way of St James becomes simply El Camino (The Way), to Ponferrada and eventually to a hostel at El Cebreiro, a place high in the mountains of Galicia where the clouds swirl around and the views can be breathtaking. But I felt ill at ease and depressed and the only one who really understood was an Alsatian dog who nuzzled up to me whenever we met. After our arrival all I really wanted was to get away from the noise and have peace and quiet to think.

Finally to Santiago de Compostela itself, on a day when we walked 37km in constant rain and arrived cold and soaked to the skin. But Olwen, one of my companions, told me that despite, or perhaps partly because of this, she entered the Cathedral, where St James is said to lie, with a great sense of joy. She had become a Christian somewhere along the Camino. I attended the midday Pilgrims’ Mass the next day and saw that immense thurible called the botafumeiro, swung by eight men between the Cathedral transepts, so low and so close to you that each time you half believed it would take your head off.

In medieval times England was called ‘Our Lady’s Dowry’ and had a great shrine in her honour at Walsingham. Like so many others, it was destroyed by Henry VIII’s men but it lives on, in the peaceful Norfolk countryside, and is still an important place of pilgrimage. But other Marian shrines, notably Lourdes and Fatima, have become more popular internationally. On my first visit to Lourdes I saw a small boy, so ill and exhausted that his face was grey, gazing at me from over his father’s shoulder, and I felt a great wave of compassion and love and suddenly understood what Lourdes is all about. The next day I went with my sisters to the Grotto for the first time, and the sun shone down through the clouds in great shafts of light and the wind blew the leaves along the river Gave and around the Grotto in great swirling gusts, and I felt an immense sense of peace.

And finally to the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, which many pilgrims approach across the square on their knees. We stood waiting for five hours for Mass among tens of thousands of people, a significant proportion from Eastern Europe. But most were Portuguese from the surrounding countryside and were very wet, for it had rained heavily during the night and was still raining and they often had only a blanket to protect them. And so the Mass started and at the sign of peace a young Portuguese girl suddenly seized me and kissed me hard on both cheeks. So, of course, I kissed all the old ladies around me and everyone broke into broad smiles. For we had one God and one faith and were one people, though from many different lands.

What do you need on pilgrimage? Not much. ‘Fullness to such a burden is that go on pilgrimage’ as John Bunyan put it in Pilgrim’s Progress. The medieval pilgrim wore a long tunic, a cloak, a broad-brimmed hat and perhaps a pair of sandals. He carried a leather pouch, a gourd of water and a staff against wolves and thieves. All you need besides is an open heart and an open mind. For going on pilgrimage is like reaching out to God. He will do the rest. Ultreia et Suseia! (Let us go forward and beyond!)

At the end of the day’s walking, pilgrims on the Camino await the opening of their hostel for the night