From the early nineties to the late noughties, Michèle Crawford and David Smith together with the clergy team ran week long pilgrimages around the UK and northern France. Memories of these pilgrimages have become part of the fabric of our church. Some of the former pilgrims have stayed in the area, while others have moved away and return at Christmas or Easter. All are part of our wider community and the invisible threads that attach them to a shared history are woven throughout our church.
Pilg was a very special time, and the spirituality was not forced, the walking (if hard at times) I remember as a joy and the time spend together was such fun. Is this a metaphor for the Christian life?
Elizabeth
Former Pilgrims
We asked some of our former pilgrims to send us photos of themselves now and perhaps provide their favourite memories of the pilgrimages.
I do have an excellent memory of our beloved vicar allowing me to drive the trusty pilgmobile (a decommissioned ambulance, full of pilgrims and all their stuff) homewards down the busy A1 from Whitby – having only just passed my driving test…. Now that’s what I call faith….
Sarah
My memories of the Pilg are: loads of fresh air, David’s giraffe hat, the murder mysteries, amazing food (particularly the cookies and the famous pasta sauce), sweetie stops and Taize songs, washing up for hours, clifftop Eucharists and wonderful compline services when I was nearly asleep. They are some of my happiest childhood memories.
Jen
The memory I would like to share with your current teenagers is of the amazing experience of singing and saying compline together as a pilgrimage group. It always felt like a powerful connection between us as a group and God.
Megan
I came on the St David’s pilgrimage not long after I first came to St Margaret’s and only a couple of months after joining the choir. I only knew one or two people beforehand, but I was struck by how welcome I was made to feel. I remember coming across new hymns, compline and taize for the first time, and in particular, singing O Jesus I have promised with everyone squashed in the kitchen one evening. It remains one of my favourite hymns and we chose it for our wedding.
Lucy
Our pilgrimages are some of the happiest memories of my childhood.
My strongest memories are from the year we went to Taize, the ritual of preparing food together and the music there. My favourite will always ‘Ubi caritas et amor, Ubi caritas Deus ibi est’. I also think of our walk over the Malvern hills as a kind of pilgrimage. Walking is so meditative. It was a single day off in the half term before Sarah and I started our O levels which was a pretty stressful time, and suddenly we were out in the hills and the sunshine. For me God will always be in the mountains.
Catharine
I have many happy memories of Pilgs – I loved the walking, the wonderful food provided by Michèle, and Compline is a service that I loved being introduced to and have loved ever since. The simplicity, the reflectiveness, the repetition of the nightly prayers and the way that we adapted it with our own singing were very special. The routes were always well thought-out and all had moments of magic. Here are just a few:
- The beautiful Pembrokeshire coast path and then that breath-taking moment when you suddenly see St David’s Cathedral nestling in the valley
- Singing in the light and airy splendour of Vézelay
- walking up the beaches of Northumberland towards Lindisfarne (we all enjoyed this so much that I think John GC changed the route) and then coming to Lindisfarne first thing in the morning.
Elizabeth
One of the very first pilgrimages was a visit to Taizé, an ecumenical community in France – a trip that, years later, changed my life. It wasn’t the trip to Taizé itself that was so influential (enjoyable though that was), but a stop along the way at Vézelay. We camped under the hill atop which is perched Vézelay’s glorious abbey (and up the road from a fine bakery: as the earliest riser, I went with Michele to buy croissant and bread, and I seem to remember we had a sneaky almond croissant to reward ourselves!). This is, I discovered, one of the traditional start points of the Camino (‘the Way’) to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the supposed final resting place of St James – as shown by the scallop shell, symbol of the Apostle, that were pointed out to us. I never forgot it – and when I was offered a short sabbatical from work in 2015, the first thing that sprang to mind was ‘I want to do the Camino!’
When I first heard about it in the 1980s, only a few hundred pilgrims arrived in Santiago each year. By the time I first made the journey myself, 250,000 people annually make the pilgrimage (most starting closer to the destination than Vézelay). I have now made five Caminos, all by bike – the first from St Jean Pied de Port (in the Pyrenees, just over the French border), then from Lisbon, from Bilbao, from Porto and (the longest, at 1000km) from Seville – and I sing in any and all of the churches that are open along the route. Of course, my Camino planned for 2020 has had to be postponed – but pilgrims have been travelling these routes for over a thousand years. The Camino will still be there next year or whenever it is safe to travel again. I can’t wait!
The annual trips with St Margaret’s were wonderful experiences in their own right – but it is thanks to the Pilg that pilgrimage has become a reset button for my soul. I am enormously grateful.
Katy
So where do we go from here?
Following on from this year’s virtual pilgrimage, St Margaret’s is beginning to explore the possibility of taking some of our current young people on a pilgrimage. We want to get their thoughts and ideas so that we give them something that they want as young people growing up in this present time, whilst recognising the journeys that have already been made. If you think your child (14 years and over) might be interested or if you or they have any thoughts on what a post-covid pilgrimage might look like then email Eva.
With thanks to all our pilgrims, and especially to Michèle Crawford and David Smith
Join us for our virtual pilgrimage by clicking on the button below: