(Pilgrimage Diary 1/3) The beginning: an optimism shaken but recovered

Zeb and I met in Church of England circles and have known each other for a few months, developing a strong bond around our shared Christian faith. One late lockdown evening we were watching Emilio Estevez’ 2010 film The Way, a story of how an initially bitter father fulfilled his late son’s dream to walk the Camino de Santiago to then come out a changed man, and I got a flourish of idyllic ideas about going on pilgrimage ourselves. The thought of walking through sprawling landscapes, having a routine of prayer, peeking into forgotten churches and making friends with complete strangers agitated the Victorian romantic within me, and Zeb happily went along. Gradually, the idyllic ideas solidified into a reasonably realistic plan: we were to walk a 105-mile route, over ten days, between Ely Cathedral and the Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. Responsible for the route is the British Pilgrimage Trust, who based it on medieval pilgrim routes to Walsingham, when it was one of Europe’s most popular pilgrimage destinations. 

What were our aims for the pilgrimage, anyway? Victorian pastoral fantasies were an initial motivation, but could not form the actual purpose for what was to be, really, a long, challenging and to a degree unpredictable walk. The concept of a religious journey is not exclusively Christian, but is predominantly associated with it. The zenith of pilgrimage in the Christian West was in the high and late Middle Ages, and the motivations of pilgrims could be various, including fulfilling a vow, penance, seeking a miraculous cure at a shrine with relics, or simply deepening one’s faith. In the later Middle Ages pilgrimage also came to be seen as an activity that could be indulged, something with which by default were associated spiritual graces, for oneself or for others. With those ideas in mind we decided to make the main aims of our pilgrimage a deepening of faith (“a greater communion with our Creator,” as Zeb put it), prayer for the discernment of God’s will in our lives, and prayer for those who gave us intentions and those we met along the way. We also set up a fundraiser for the West London Mission, so that our pilgrimage would also benefit those in need in a very tangible way.

And so, having picked a route, packed our bags, set some aims, we set off on August 2^nd. We decided not to go to Ely straight away, but go to St Alban’s Cathedral first, to see the shrine of St Alban, Britain’s first saint. The shrine of St Alban is unique as it is a late 20^th century reconstruction of the medieval shrine, using the large number of fragments of the medieval shrine found underneath the cathedral floor. The shrine is also beautifully situated behind the 15^th century Wallingford Screen, and flanked by medieval wooden choir stalls on one side and a fan-vaulted, late-medieval chantry chapel on the other.

 

The restored shrine of St Alban

The 15th century Wallingford screen

Medieval choir stalls

Late medieval chantry chapel

Other notable features of St Alban’s Cathedral are that at 85 metres it has the longest nave of any church in Britain; that the north side of the nave is Norman, whereas the south side is early Gothic; that the Norman part of the nave features many medieval frescoes in their characteristic earthy colours, presumably adorning altars which have long since been stripped; and that of late, in the light of the BLM protests, it exhibits a 2009 painting of the Last Supper by Lorna May Wadsworth, where Christ is modelled by a Jamaican model, reminding the viewer of the irrelevance of racial differences in the eyes of Our Saviour.

 

The Cathedral nave, looking towards the liturgical centre

Medieval frescoes which served as a backdrop for altars placed underneath

A Last Supper, Lorna May Wadsworth, 2009

 

Before we headed off for dinner and our first night camping, we stayed for evensong. About an hour before it started, the excellent 1962 Harrison and Harrison organ filled the vast space of the Cathedral with the round tones of English flutes and diapasons shaping the beautifully intricate first lines of Duruflé’s Prélude sur le nom d’Alain. Oh what a pleasure was it to hear a cathedral organ again after isolating for three months! Evensong was simple, cantored alternately by a canon and one chorister. The sermon was good enough, with erudite cross-testament links on the awesome experience of an encounter with God, but was clearly catered to the small group of laity in attendance, who, with all due respect, were on the wrong side of their 60s. Zeb and I couldn’t help but wonder what would become of the English church in twenty years, when even this small loyal group will have passed the threshold to blissful eternity. Time will tell, I suppose.

 

Our first night camping was in a wheat field just on the edge of St Albans. Zeb had camped before, but this was my first night, and I lay for quite a while pondering the realisation that I made myself very vulnerable by sleeping in a flimsy tent in complete darkness in a wheat field which, as it was early August, could be harvested with massive combines at any moment. Let alone the mice! I fell asleep nevertheless, and we woke up to a beautiful sight of a crisp blue sky enveloping the waves of quietly rustling wheat and grass.

 

All the while in St Albans I had the constant worry (can you tell I hadn’t gone on camping trips before?) that not all the lights at home were switched off. So we made the ridiculous decision to take a train back to London, I made sure all lights were off at home, which they had been, and then we took another train up to Ely, from where we would start walking our pilgrimage the day after. Ely welcomed us with showers of rain, and, because the cathedral had already closed, we headed straight to a nearby pub. While enjoying the delicate flavours of a portion of cheesy chips, Zeb made some calls to the Ely Cathedral clergy with a request to pitch our tent on cathedral grounds, because sleeping next to the dead is slightly safer than sleeping in an unharvested field. Having gotten off the phone with the Dean, Zeb said that sleeping on Cathedral grounds was not permitted. “Career-clergy,” he complained. Never mind the Cathedral’s past as a major site of pilgrimage to St Etheldreda’s shrine, and never mind Christian hospitality.

 

A rainy welcome at Ely

The situation, however, was not lost. The Dean directed us to the vicarage of St Mary’s, an evangelical church near the Cathedral. By this time the sun was out again, and we caught the vicar just as he was leaving for a run – after a brief conversation he was kind enough to let us pitch our tent on the grounds of St Mary’s, and even treated us to dinner with his wife. Before attending the dinner, we strolled through the Cathedral grounds, which are massive indeed. The medieval abbey of Ely was evidently very rich, with, at the time of the Norman conquest, lands exceeded only by Glastonbury.

 

St Mary's church, whose vicar let us stay on church grounds

 

After waking up with a splendid view of St Mary’s church, we headed to the Cathedral for Mass at 8am, as this was the last opportunity to receive communion for a while. We stayed after Mass to say morning prayer, and did so in the famous Lady Chapel of the Cathedral. It has remarkable acoustic properties, so we decided to chant the Office. St Augustine’s words rang in our minds: “a prayer sung is a prayer said twice.” Quite literally, the building was repeating the prayers after us, as if choirs of angels and saints had joined our company from the vaults of the chapel. Having received spiritual nourishment, we headed to the Cathedral café to receive physical nourishment in the form of scones, toast and coffee.

 

8am Mass at the Victorian high altar

The Lady Chapel, with a contemporary statue of the Virgin

The fabulous ogee arches of the chapel

Breakfast at the Cathedral cafe

Neither of us had walked long-distance journeys before, so we hadn’t realised that leaving at 3pm for the first ten-mile leg was very late. Anyway, Ely Cathedral having caught us off guard into its soaring ceilings, intimate chantry chapels and the slender feat of 14th century engineering that is the timber and glass octagon lantern, that is what we did.

 

The first few miles of the journey were along the Great Ouse river, after which we diverted to follow the road to Prickwillow. We weren’t staying at Prickwillow, but, rather, in the next village on our way – Sedge Fen. The land outside Ely is flat – as we were walking we could see the slowly setting sun illuminating the green and yellow fields in an orange glow, with bales of hay casting an occasional long shadow.

 

Walking along the Great Ouse river

Prickwillow's St Peter's Church, now shut and redundant

Some fine Prickwillow real estate

The walk was really rather enjoyable, until it was approaching 9pm, the sky was darkening, and the last stretch of our way to Sedge Fen as indicated on our map did not seem to exist anymore. In a sporadic panic attack we started searching for any spot at all where we could pitch our tent. The choice was meagre: the road was elevated above the fields, so staying on the edge of fields was impossible; the ground around sheds in fields was trodden with deep tractor tracks and really rather grim; the last remaining option were the earthen paths that led into the fields, but then again these could be used by tractors or combines during the night. Finding ourselves in a hopeless state which we weren’t quite ready to acknowledge yet, we knocked on the door of a farmer’s house. She refused to let us camp on the patch of grass behind her house. Zeb immediately fell to his knees in a despondent bout of prayer. And, lo and behold, the farmer opened the door once again and offered us to stay in her backyard, and even made us the most delicious cheese on toast I ever had and two sumptuous cups of tea. Prayer heard? I leave that up to you, dear reader, but we made up our minds quite quickly.

Waking up in the kind farmer's backyard
 

Our little miracle marked the end of the beginning of our journey. We started it full of optimism – an optimism heavily shaken towards the end of the third day as we struggled to find somewhere to sleep in the middle of Cambridgeshire fenlands, but an optimism recovered after a little nudge of approval from above.