Making a pilgrimage
Learning from the pilgrim's path.
If you're feeling the call to walk a remote wilderness trail or a well-trodden pilgrimage route in search of inspiration and meaning, you're not alone. Millions of people every year embark on the journey of a lifetime.
In part one of this short series on modern pilgrimage, we considered how to prepare, including reflecting on motivation and intentions, building a support community and facing the possibility of change. Last week, we centred on practical preparation, from choosing a route to packing a rucksack.
Pilgrimage can be a wonderful and uplifting experience, but it's good to be prepared for the challenges, too. So I want to share some learning from the pilgrimages I've made, and consider why the most important part of the journey begins when you reach your destination.
Blisters
My feet were a mess even before I set foot on the trail. Genetics blessed me with my grandmother's bunions, and redundant little toes that curl underneath their neighbours. No combination of socks and footwear can ever wholly protect me from blisters.
I've tried so many things in an attempt to avoid the inevitable. Seamless toe socks to shield my pinkies from incessant rubbing. Protective silicone sleeves cut to length to provide some cushioning. Preemptive Compeed plasters on my bunions. But whenever I've walked long distances, blisters have followed me.
Blisters are caused by shearing forces on the skin causing tears at a deeper level. Your body responds by flooding these injuries with protective liquid, and the result is a blister. An unburst blister is much like a scab, creating a protective layer so your skin can heal. But a burst blister is an open wound, and a potential entry point for infection. It needs attention.
So while walking the Camiño dos Faros, I settled on the simplest possible approach to blister prevention: a thick layer of vaseline. Instead of shearing and rubbing, my toes simply slipped against each other inside my socks. I did not avoid blisters entirely, but I was able to walk further than I imagined.
Exhaustion
Walking further means expending more energy, and an increased need to rest well. But in all my walking adventures, I've never once stayed in a pilgrim’s hostel or pre-booked accommodation that I needed to reach by the end of the day.
When I walked the Ridgeway, I wild camped. Wild camping in England technically requires the landowner's permission, so I tried to avoid drawing attention to myself. Arriving late, getting up early and leaving no trace were good general rules to follow. As the sun set, I reckoned I could always find somewhere quiet to tie up my tarp, roll out my bivi bag and climb into bed.
This approach worked, but it had a significant downside. I was walking in November and I honestly hadn't counted on how long a winter's night could be. After eating, I'd settle down before 7pm, and spend a solid twelve hours lying on the ground in the dark.
Despite the long nights, my sleep on the Ridgeway was fitful. My metal bottle filled with boiling water and stuffed in a sock was an excellent source of warmth, but the noises of creaking trees, rustling undergrowth and occasional passing footsteps would wake me often. When I finished the trail, I was elated but utterly exhausted.
So when I came to the Camiño dos Faros, I decided to let myself rest properly. I still wild camped most nights, but twice along the route, I found a hotel with a comfortable bed. Luckily, walking out of the tourist season meant I didn't need to pre-book. But I'd learned from the Ridgeway that proper rest is essential on a long journey.
Sleeplessness can be a gateway to a state of altered perception that can be a powerful tool to shift consciousness. But pilgrimage is demanding enough without the challenge of exhaustion. Even with meticulous planning, sleeping in a different location every night can be unsettling. So I decided to build in time to rest each day, giving myself longer than necessary stops to write in my journal and take in the view.
Getting lost
It's near impossible to get lost on the Ridgeway. The national trail is meticulously signposted, and the few route options are clearly waymarked. I had a map, but for most of the journey, it stayed in my backpack.
Walking the Camiño dos Faros was another thing entirely. I followed the route in its early days, when it was waymarked with green arrows and spots. I had a route map, but it was too high level to be truly useful. So instead, I relied on finding the turning points painted on walls, boulders and signposts, with subsequent green spots confirming I had made the right choices.
It was all going so well, until I reached a sign that had been ripped from the ground and hurled into a copse of trees. On it, I could see the green arrow. But out of context, its direction was useless.
Walking from Malpica to Cabo Fisterra meant travelling with the sea at my right shoulder. So I guessed. I followed what looked like a trail along the side of an inlet, only to find myself waist deep in thick bracken and gorse bushes. An impenetrable wall of foliage towered above me up the cliffside, and below, waves crashing against jagged boulders were a stumble away. The path vanished, and I was lost.
I struggled back to the broken sign. I sat next to it, tired and covered in deep scratches. I cried.
Finding my way meant turning away from the path and following my intuition. I followed a dusty road inland, and about two hours later, finally saw a friendly green arrow. To this day, I have no idea where the trail was supposed to go. But perhaps some mysteries are best left unresolved.
Doubt
Any process of change takes you beyond what you have known into unexplored territory. Doubt is unsettling, but I've come to see it as a necessary step in embracing the future.
Both on the Ridgeway and the Camiño dos Faros, there were moments when the scale of the undertaking felt overwhelming. Trudging for hours in heavy November rain through the English countryside, as wet inside my coat as out, I worried that the weather would defeat me. Waking with searing cramps after a broken night's sleep on a Galician clifftop, I doubted my legs would carry me to the end of my journey.
But somehow, in all of it, I learned the value of trust. Trust that I would find the balance between pushing and caring for my body. Trust that the process of walking would bring me some insights. Trust that I would find a path, even when waymarking became confusing and indistinct. Trust that this journey would take me to a better place.
Most of all, I learned to trust the past version of myself who earnestly believed that this pilgrimage was worth undertaking. Blistered, exhausted and lost, I could find a million reasons to stop and go home. But past me had felt this journey was necessary, and I wasn't going to let temporary hardship derail their intentions. And somehow, I heard another version of myself, further along the trail, encouraging me to keep going. I trusted that future me, too.
Coming home
Given all the self-reflection, practical preparation and countless everyday challenges of making a pilgrimage, you might be asking yourself why anyone in their right mind would walk the pilgrim’s path.
What can possibly be so good about pilgrimage that it makes all the hardship worthwhile?
When I completed my journeys, I couldn't answer that question. Walking step by step rooted me so deeply in the present moment, I lost any ability to put my experiences into context. It was simply too soon. But looking back now, I realise I had accumulated a treasure trove of insights that I'm still integrating into my life.
Pilgrimage took me, to quote Rilke, to the limits of my longing. I fronted the reality of my life, overcame physical challenges, and asked myself questions I'd never imagined I needed answers to. Following a path along the hills of southern England, and later along the coast of Galicia, changed me profoundly, though I didn't fully understand the extent of the transformation at the time. I needed to be with my experiences for a while to fully appreciate their significance.
But that's why perhaps the most important part of any pilgrimage is not what happens on the trail, but what comes after. I genuinely worry for people who head straight for an airport at the end of their pilgrimage, and I think they may miss the most important part of their journey as they rush back to their lives. If walking is truly going to change you, coming home again takes more effort than the months of preparation and planning that led to the trail.
Stories take time to be told. Endings and beginnings only make sense as the narrative arc of your life extends. At the point of completion, it's impossible to fully appreciate everything the trail taught you.
Perhaps the truth is that we pilgrims are not in our right mind, not at least when we first set foot on the path. And maybe not when we finish our pilgrimage either. But we give ourselves completely to the act of walking into the unknown, and we trust that, one day, we will make sense of our journey through this life.
I think part of me is still walking those trails, reaching their end and making the long journey home. Having made a pilgrimage, I will always be a pilgrim. But perhaps I always was, long before I took my first step.
Journal prompts
Pilgrimage can push your limits, both physically and psychologically. How might you prepare now to become more comfortable with discomfort?
Think back to a time when you got lost. What steps did you take to find your way again? What internal and external resources did you draw on?
Doubt might be a signal that you're growing beyond your comfort zone. What new territory are you exploring?
Before you embark on a pilgrimage, what preparation could you make for a gentle return? How could your support community help you when you come home?
Thanks for joining me on this journey. If you missed the insights from the first two articles in this series, read more about pilgrimage preparation and practical planning.