Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Taylor Swift and Jesus

A couple of days ago a friend got in touch to ask me what the experience of having my head shaved had been like. (A Pilgrim's Cairn: Bruce Springsteen and Barbershops)

The jumping out of my skin bit is no exaggeration. I remember walking into the loos at Heathrow Airport before my flight to Derry, and of course the place was full of mirrors. Looking up I found a stranger standing in the place where I should have been and there really was a palpable jump in my heart to discover myself replaced. That feeling of estrangement remained for several days. The other thing I discovered was that I clearly run my fingers through my hair (which has never exactly been long and lustrous) a lot more than I was aware of; in the absence of hair I'd find myself wincing as I repeatedly scratched my poor bare scalp.

Anyway, my friend was right to call it a ritual. I was shaving my head as a symbol of penitence for mistakes I've made, and it was very much the right thing to do at the start of the pilgrimage; it had an important role in making the journey into something other than just a long walk. I did become strange to myself and week by week as my hair has been growing back I've been returning to the person I was.

Except, that's not actually what's happening, because it can't. 

Almost as soon as I'd written about 'returning' I knew that I was mischaracterising what is happening. There's no question of returning to the person who once I was, because it's simply not possible. What's more, to 'return' would require a massively unhelpful attempt at amnesia; an erasure of the things I've done wrong would also be an erasure of the ways in which I've grown and the ways in which growth lies before me. The person I was might not have the failures I have, but the person I was hasn't learnt the things I've learnt either.

As I've been thinking about the mysterious Celts I've been reminded of how compelling a good story can be; how much we can be drawn to believing something not because it's factually true, but because it resonates, inspires and moves us (A Pilgrim's Cairn: Fighting and drinking their way across Europe. Or not.). One such story that resonates with many of us is the story of the Return to Eden/Return to Innocence; the idea that we can 'go back' to a time when life was better, when we were better. It's such a pervasive vision, from the Enlightenment story of 'the noble savage' through to Taylor Swift singing, 'Time won't fly, it's like I'm paralyzed by it. I'd like to be my old self again, but I'm still trying to find it'.

There's another well-known story which provides a counterpoint to the dream of returning to a perfect past. I'm always struck by the stories of the Resurrected Jesus still carrying the wounds which He suffered at the Crucifixion. Surely if God could raise Jesus from the dead, then God could have healed His wounds too? But that's not the story. The story is that the Risen Jesus was still the wounded Jesus, still the scarred Jesus.

There were no wounds in Eden, but then there wasn't much wisdom in Eden either.

The island at the end of the night

At St Columba's Bay

Day 24: Craignure to Fionnphort

Distance: 36.1 miles (488.4 total)

Time: 11 hrs 42 mins

Tomorrow: the ferry back to Oban, followed by the train back to Berkhamsted on Thursday.

The thing about a night hike is that it doesn't leave you with much to say about the scenery; even Barnaby's peerless powers of description would be tested!

Leaving the hotel at 7.30pm last night, the receptionist gave me a sympathetic smile as I handed in my room key and headed out; I don't think she thought my conclusion to this pilgrimage was a very good idea. Truth be told, I wasn't entirely convinced that it was a good idea either, but it had seemed like a suitably austere and challenging way to end a 'Celtic' pilgrimage and I'm sure St Columba would have been all in favour.

With various bit of hi-vis fabric dangling off me I set out into the night. I did have a head-torch, but I wasn't totally sure what its battery life was and so I wanted to keep that in reserve for as long as possible. It's remarkable how much light the stars shower into the darkness, and for the first eight miles or so I didn't need the torch at all; the borders of the single-track road were usually fairly visible. The left and right sides of the road dipped away slightly where they had been worn by the traffic whereas the centre remained fairly level, and my feet learnt to distinguish the difference most of the time. However, about two hours or so into the leg the stars were shrouded behind thick black clouds, and as the rain fell the wind rose.

Oddly enough, the most challenging miles were the earliest ones. Trying to follow the road without a torch felt mentally tiring a lot of the time; my concentration would weary and I'd find myself stumbling into a verge. My mind played its 'what if?' games: what if you trip and damage your knee, and there's no phone signal? what if this heavy rain turns into heavy snow? There were very few houses on the first half of the walk and that deepened my sense of isolation and vulnerability. At one point I was contemplating walking out for eighteen miles and then turning around and walking eighteen miles back to my hotel: I'd have done the 'mileage', did it really matter all that much whether or not I actually went to Iona?

Around the halfway mark everything became much easier. Although I couldn't really see it, I could hear the waters of Loch Scridain lap against the shore on my right and that sound was a comfort. There were more houses and signs of life, even if most of that life was tucked up in bed and sleeping gently. Although the rain could be hard, it never lasted for more than twenty minutes or so at any one time. With every step there was an increasing confidence that I could do this just fine. Slightly to my surprise the night was full of prayers of thanksgiving; I have so much to be thankful for, so much.

The rainclouds thinned sufficiently for the dawn to creep up behind me grey and weak as I approached Fionnphort. (That's one of my clunkier sentences. For the sake of clarity, it was the dawn that arrived in Fionnphort grey and weak, I was remarkably chipper). Just after 7am I arrived at the ferry-port. I was rather ahead of myself and had a wait of just over an hour for the first ferry to Iona.

On Iona I made my way straight to St Columba's Bay at the south of the island; the place where Columba is believed to have first set foot on the island I had walked through the night to. The weather was beautiful all morning and the brief, intermittent showers brought with them the gift of rainbows. The last time I had been on this island was with my dad at the start of my pilgrimage to Lindisfarne. Between my tiredness, this latest pilgrimage coming to its end, the memories of my late father, and just being on Columba's island, I expected it to be quite an emotional moment but it wasn't really. It all felt right. It was right that I was there. It was okay that I was alone. All was as it needed to be.

My plan had been to post a short video on Instagram marking the journey's end. I would find something to say which neatly and succinctly tied up all the themes of the past four weeks in a dinky little package. I made a couple of attempts at a recording but it was all very half-hearted and I gave up. This was time just to be. This was time just to be with St Columba, to be with his God and mine. This was time to simply be with myself and to believe again that I'm an okay person to be with. 

On rocks that Columba would have recognised, I sat in the morning sunshine and said my prayers and that was enough; that was the only thing that I needed to do.

Broken chairs

The Old Largs Road

Day 16: Largs to Greenock

Distance: 13.3 miles (343.2 total)

Total Ascent: shall we just pack it in with the whole ascent thing? I'm not exactly in the Highlands and so far as I can tell, the altitude function on my watch is no better than a random number generator, so who knows what the figure is actually worth. Enough.

Time: 5 hrs 10 mins

Tomorrow: Greenock to Milngavie (est  21.1 miles)

Yesterday evening I discovered that the B&B I was staying in was just around the corner from a Benedictine Monastery which is home to a community of Tyburn Sisters; the Tyburn Sisters are devoted to keeping a continual vigil of prayer every minute, of every hour, of every year. With a short day's walking ahead I decided to have a lie-in (well, I managed 7.30) and then go and pray in the Monastery for half an hour before finding somewhere for breakfast. It was an interesting experience. There was already one lady praying quietly when I arrived in the Chapel, so I tried to put my rucksack and walking poles down as quietly as possible before going to kneel before the Blessed Sacrament; I didn't want to disturb her. Having not been in a church since the very start of this pilgrimage, when I went to pray in Letterkenny Cathedral, this felt like a special moment. It felt like a very special moment for two or three minutes, and then the banging started in the entrance hall; I'm not sure exactly how they did it, but the cleaner who'd been there when I arrived was making one hell of a racket with her dustpan and brush. Then there was some quiet and I returned to my prayers, until another chap arrived in the Chapel and started a long and fairly loud conversation with the woman behind me about which chairs in the Chapel were broken and which were safe to sit on. Then there was some quiet and I returned to my prayers, except the man who'd just arrived clearly had a bad cold and snuffled, sneezed and coughed with remarkable vigour. Then there was some quiet and I returned to my prayers, and remained suitably reverent even as the Chapel door opened and closed again and the three of us became four as another man joined in prayer. The newcomer didn't have a cold, however he had clearly had a good breakfast and began to burp, regularly, freely, considerably. I thought about prayer.

You already know me to be a grumpy and fractious type and yes I felt some irritation at the dissolution of my time of peace, perfect peace. My Confessor for twenty years, the late Fr Bill Scott, often used to say to me, "Sometimes we need to not take ourselves too seriously and to see how ridiculous we can be, and just laugh at it." I've always had plenty to laugh about on that count. These noises were the sounds of life, and God didn't come amongst us in Christ to live in sepulchral silence; in Christ, God comes amongst us in a world which has noisy cleaners, and chatty friends fretting over broken chairs, and a world in which people catch colds and break wind. Praise God for that!

God is the God of life, and where there is life there is sound. Even in your moments of deepest meditation, still you breathe in, and you breathe out, and your heart beats in your blood, and those sounds say 'I am'. I've spent large parts of the past three weeks in some quite isolated and remote spots, and none of them have ever been silent: there has been the sound of the wind, of water chuckling down streams and roaring onto the rocks at Tremone Bay, the grass has stirred and rustled, I could hear the rabbits run from me in the fields outside Ballantrae, and so many hymns sung by the birds. The sounds of life. The sounds of God's Creation. The many songs and whispers of the One God. Yes, there is a great value in quiet sometimes, but too often we fetishise it to our own detriment: we'll find silence enough in the grave. Instead of seeking silence, perhaps we would be better off asking ourselves what we can hear of God in the sounds around us, even in the sneezes and indeed burps.

Anyway. Pilgrimages. Walking. Yes. It was rather good to have a shorter day. In addition to prayer at the monastery I was able to treat myself to a coffee and a bacon roll at Scotland's Best Cafe (2016). Instead of keeping one eye on the clock as well as the miles, I was able to meander a bit, take a few photos, and still arrive in Greenock by three, with time for a couple of coffees and a spicy chicken panini (instead of collapsing on a stool in the first bar I come to and barely whispering those magical words, "Guinness please, and two packets of dry roasted nuts.")

Today's leg came in one part and that part is called the Old Largs Road. It wove easily up into the hills and strung me along above glens and past lochs. Apart from a little rain that was barely rain at all for the first half hour or so of the day the weather continued to be brighter and milder than it has any right to be in February. The drop down into Greenock was a bit steeper than my knees would have liked and I'm trying to make sure that I take good care of them; they're definitely the part of this clapped out old sod that could most easily derail this adventure and I do not want that to happen. I'm going to Iona.

In the monastery Chapel my sense of failure and guilt were acute again. And then I remembered the kindness and generosity of my friend Rabbi Neil. It seems an odd combination of thoughts, I know. But I was reminded that life is lived best when it is lived as gift, as grace. My hero, Revd Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy (BBC - The Rev. Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy or Woodbine Willie) wrote a poem which ended:

To give and give, and give again,

What God hath given thee;

To spend thyself nor count the cost;

To serve right gloriously

The God who gave all worlds that are,

And all that are to be.

I heard the poem set to music once.

The God Who gave all sound-sodden worlds that are. The God Who speaks in all the musics of Creation.

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Thanksgiving: Musics.

In my garden a fern grew tall

Day 15: Irvine to Largs

Distance: 22.8 miles (329.9 total)

Total ascent: 374ft (21,786 total)

Time: 8 hrs 10 mins

Tomorrow: Largs to Greenock (est 13.4 miles)

At my home in Edmonton I planted a fern in the garden that I loved very much. I'd found it growing in the roof of the parish church when it was still just a tiny curlicue of green. Who knows what breeze blew it up there or what bird dropped it down there, but spores had landed on that roof and found enough light and water to grow. That sort of thing just amazes me endlessly. Whenever I watch a David Attenborough documentary or some other programme about the natural world, I'm always in awe of the capacity of life to persist, to endure: life always finds a way through.

Today's leg did not have best start ever. It's a sad truth that some people have their hearts broken on Valentine's Day; I discovered that my bladder had split. I'd always been slightly suspicious of putting what amounted to a bag full of water in my rucksack and now all my fears found themselves founded. As I left the bed and breakfast I'd been staying in, I'd noticed that a little corner of the rucksack was damp. Within a mile or so the problem had spread and was definitely tending more towards the wet than the damp. Taking the bladder out of the rucksack and giving it a squeeze, I discovered that it had indeed failed the one job it had to do and was leaking.

Things got worse a couple of miles later when I discovered that I'd made my first mistake in the mapping of this walk (missing the Giant's Causeway was not a mapping failure - A Pilgrim's Cairn: nowhere near Giant enough). I came up against an insurmountable obstacle in the shape of the A77 dual carriageway. Thankfully a bit of exploring led me to the National Cycle Route 7 (or 73, it was never entirely clear) which would take me into Ardrossan, from where I could rejoin the Ayrshire Coastal Path all the way here to Largs.

One of the bits of 'growing back to myself' that's been happening on this pilgrimage is rediscovering my capacity to find a way through. There have been all sorts of obstacles along the way, from collapsed roads, irritated farmers, tree trunk strewn footpaths and more, which have been hard at times to get around, over or through, but I've always found a way. Come to think of it, there were all sorts of obstacles before I even got on the plane to Derry, in the shape of leaking hiking boots, injured ankles, insufficient training. Over the past five years or so I think I'd lost faith in my ability to find that way through. Too often I felt lost and couldn't see a way forwards and so didn't dare to take the next step. Too often I began to listen to the voices which told me I wasn't capable of finding a way through even if I tried. And I lost a lot of belief in myself. This is quite hard to write. The boys deserved better than that.

So, without quite as much water as I'd hoped to take with me and in spite of the A77, I had just a great day's walking here to Largs. The oddest part of the day was when I reached a sign on a footpath just north of Portencross which said something like, 'Our armed patrols may be here at any moment.' This isn't what you expect in a farmer's field in Ayrshire. Passing through a kissing-gate I found myself in the canyon of barbed wire, CCTV cameras, concrete and towering white buildings which is the Hunterston Nuclear Power Station; it all felt slightly surreal. I upped my pace a little.

In my garden in Edmonton a fern grew tall.

Because God, life finds a way through, and so does love.

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Thanksgiving: that although we don't always get things right the first time, that's not the only time we have.

Going the long way around

Ailsa Craig

Day 13: Ballantrae to Maybole

Distance: 27 miles (286 total)

Total ascent: 1,420ft (20,943 total)

Time: 9hrs 45 mins

Tomorrow: Maybole to Irvine (est 21.7 miles)

If most of yesterday's leg most definitely felt like I was in Scotland, most of today's felt like I could have been in just about any rural part of the UK. The day began and ended on the A77, but from Girvan pretty much to Maybole itself I followed quiet country lanes that knotted in and out of one another as they rose and fell with the farmland. Here and there a quiet copse of February-bare trees and I was never far from the sound of rivers and burns, bubbling out of sight.

It was the sound of the sea that accompanied the first dozen miles or so of the walk as I made my way along the A77 to Girvan. I hadn't much been looking forward to that part of the day, but there was far less traffic than I'd been anticipating and most of the drivers seemed happy to share the road with a hiker and often waved a cheerful greeting.

For several years in the early 2000s, Mum and I would take a week's holiday in Scotland and the first of those holidays was in Girvan. It had felt very sad and run down at the time; a one-time resort that nobody really wanted to resort to anymore. Walking through the town today it felt much brighter and much more upbeat. Once again the amnesia of the present moment struck and I so nearly tried to phone Mum, because I knew that she'd be so pleased to know how much the town had changed.

Leaving Ballantrae I walked along the beach at first, and then I had a choice. The route I'd plotted for myself took me away from the A77 and along a coastal path around a headland. But the A77 route was slightly shorter and, you know, twenty-seven miles is a long way, so what's the harm in taking the short-cut? I went the long way around. It was beautiful scenery and an easy track to follow, apart from all the gates I had to cross over, which the farmer had made rather more challenging with the judicious placement of masses of rusty barbed wire. I'm not a pretty sight clambering over gates at the best of times, but when there are just a few inches between the aforementioned barbed wire and my... well, central parts, it can become quite a performance. Still, I'm glad I took the long way around.

We're not often inclined, or encouraged, to take the long way around. How often are we encouraged to buy something on the basis that it will save us time? This cooks quicker. That cleans faster. Learn a new language in four weeks. There are times when I need to make meals quickly, but how much better it is to cook the long way around; put on some Chet Baker, open a bottle of Rioja, invest time in something you love.

One of the things that religions offer us is time to go the long way around. Honestly, if we stepped back from our rituals and services and looked at them in the cold light of day, well a lot of them would seem really weird, and a weird way to spend time. You do what with a candle? You drink wine at what time in the morning? But these rituals take us into space which is sacred because it is not ruled by the laws of efficiency and utilitarianism; there's something gratuitous about practices of worship across faiths. 

We all need to take time in our lives to take the long way around. A spirit of efficiency never inspired anyone to write a poem worth reading. The laws of utilitarianism are put to one side when children become absorbed in their play. And someone once said, that unless we become like little children we can never enter the kingdom of heaven. Children know a lot about going the long way around. If we will have the humility and wisdom to learn from them, children can teach us a lot about going the long way around.

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Thanksgiving: giving thanks for the financial support of The Diocese of St Albans, The Clergy Support Trust and Ecclesiastical Insurance, without which this pilgrimage just would not have been possible at all.

The Noonday Demon calls me Billy

First sight of Scotland - Kintyre Peninsula

Day 10: Cushendall to Larne

Distance: 27.3 miles (216.5 total)

Total ascent: 2,037 ft (16,006 total)

Time: 10 hrs 37 mins

Today: Larne to Belfast (est 25.1 miles)

(A note on yesterday, today and tomorrow. Usually I write these posts at the end of each leg. At the end of this leg to Larne I was just flat out tired and sore. I went out, got a bit of supper and went to bed. What this means is that usually when I talk about 'today' I'm talking about the leg I've just done and when I talk about 'tomorrow' it's about the next day's leg. In this post the completed Day 10 leg is 'yesterday' and the upcoming leg to Belfast is 'today'. Actually, I think I might just have added to the confusion. Imagine that!)

The monks had a name for it, they called it acedia. Its been described as a form of listlessness, restlessness, a kind of depression even. When it stalks me, my acedia usually creeps in any time between eleven and two, depending on the length of the leg and what the walking's like. One of the tell-tale signs that it's creeping in is the amount of fidgeting about I start doing with the straps on my rucksack. I tighten up my waist strap, then I loosen it again. I do up my chest strap, then I undo it again. The fidgeting begins to become almost compulsive. Even as it's happening I know that I'm beginning to lose focus on the walk.

Acedia is also known as the Noonday Demon. I can't remember the Noonday Demon's name, but I know where she works.

The night before I started this pilgrimage proper, I decided I'd treat myself to a good meal. That afternoon I popped into a restaurant in Letterkenny to see if I could book a table. The waitress asked me what time I'd like the table for and then how many of us would be dining. I replied that I just needed a table for one, and joked that I was 'Billy-no-mates'. "That's grand", said the waitress, "I'll pop your name down as 'Billy'". Sure enough, when I walked into the restaurant that evening she called across to me, "Billy, come here, I've got your table ready for you!" The waitress was a lot of fun and the food was great, but at one point she asked what I was doing in Letterkenny and so I told her about my pilgrimage and how far I was walking. She looked at me incredulously and exclaimed, "Sure, but what would you want to be doing a thing like that for?"

This is what the Noonday Demon asks me when the moments of acedia strike: what are you doing this for? Carnlough has a pretty little harbour and the sun was just about shining through. Having started yesterday morning at half-seven, it was now half-eleven and there was still a lot walking to do; what's more, my rucksack straps were seeing a lot of action. I stopped and bought a chocolate bar and a drink from the Spar and stood looking at the boats in the harbour. Quite suddenly, I just wanted to stop. I wanted to spend the day by that harbour, go and get lunch in the coffee shop across the road, enjoy the day, get a bus to Larne. I don't suppose it was a completely remarkable feeling; I was on one of the longest legs of the pilgrimage, there'd been a few ups and downs over the past week or so, at times it had felt like I was carrying a lot more than a rucksack.

I pulled that pack back on, fiddled with the straps and set off again. Some of the walking that followed (off-road!) was the best of the pilgrimage so far. Following The Ulster Way up amongst the North Antrim hills and with relatively little bogginess to contend with. Dinner was good. I'd recommend 'Carriages' if you're visiting Larne. Oh, and the 'Yellow Pepper' in Letterkenny is a great place too.

What do you think? In the original 2010 'Pilgrim's Cairn', on one of the rest days, I invited people to share their thoughts, reflections, questions about this pilgrimage. Tomorrow, Monday, I've got a ferry day, from Belfast to Stranraer. If you'd like to post any thoughts, reflections and/or questions, then that will save me having to write anything! Plus, I'd really like to hear what you, my fellow pilgrims, are thinking.

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Thanksgiving: for Orli's Bat Mitzvah yesterday. Really sorry to have missed it, but glad that this important step in her pilgrimage went so well.

Don't shoot! I'm a pilgrim.

St Columba told me to do it

Day 9: Ballycastle to Cushendall

Distance: 18 miles (189.2 total)

Total ascent: 1,591ft (13,969 total)

Time: 7 hrs 1 min

Tomorrow: Cushendall to Larne (est 26.6 miles)

"See, where you're from you have this thing called right of way, but round here we call that sh*te." I can't remember if the sheep farmer told me this before or after he'd let me know that farmers have a right to shoot trespassers. Thankfully the nature of the conversation was much more amiable than the content might suggest. The OS mapping app had definitely indicated that this was a footpath, but the farmer was keen to make sure that I knew that although he'd permit me passage across a mile or so of his land, he could just as easily choose not to. I made sure that I made frequent mention of 'pilgrimage' and 'St Columba' in the hopes of appealing to his possible religious sensibilities, and I was tireless in exclaiming what a beautiful country Ireland is.

The morning had already offered some obstacles. Perhaps three miles or so along the quiet country road out of Ballycastle, I'd come across a load of Heras fencing blocking the road, a big red and white 'Road Closed' sign, and a variety of notices instructing me that absolutely nobody was to enter this area without the permission of the site foreman. I couldn't see a site or a foreman. Inspired by St Columba's disregard for the norms and customs of his day (which, of course, was to get him exiled from Ireland), I carefully moved a section of fencing aside and proceeded on my saintly way. It turns out that one half of the road had collapsed into the Glen below, but I felt confident that even with the combined weight of my rucksack and belly I was unlikely to cause any further damage. However, before I even reached the original cause of the road closure, I had to clamber over two or three trees that had come down in the recent storm. I am not a pretty sight crawling about on my hands and knees at the best of time, but with the tortoise like addition of a rucksack I am the very image of ungainliness.

Once again the day fell more or less into three sections. I'll be brief: quiet country lanes (with collapsed road, collapsed trees and almost collapsed pilgrim) - off-track farmland and forest - more quiet country lanes. Once again the weather was idyllic, except for a hint of rain to come when my friend the farmer was telling me about his shooting rights vis a vis trespassers.

Its been a difficult couple of days and at times the sense of loneliness has felt quite acute; it accumulates slowly like the feeling of tiredness. However, it was another sheep farmer who gave me a really beautiful gift as I came down the Glenaan Road towards Cushendall. She was inspecting fencing that needed to be replaced, but it seems few people in Ireland are ever so busy that they can't share some time for a blether. A conversation about where I'd come from that day and where I was heading, led to my explaining the whole route I was taking from Gartan Lough to Iona. The farmer told me that she'd walked some sections of the Camino de Santiago and was hoping to do some more later that year to celebrate her sixtieth birthday. As we parted ways she called after me, "Good luck for now."

I really loved that 'for now'. It spoke to me of a sense of the present moment being all we have to live in. The passage of Scripture I read at the end of every day as part of my Night Prayer (from Matthew 6) includes the line, 'Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.' I know that really positive change is happening on this pilgrimage; some of it I can feel, and some of it will be going on in ways that I can't yet perceive. But for all that, I also know that a lot of the things that have made the past five years so tough aren't about to suddenly disappear. But that's okay. I just need good luck for now. God's gift to us today, is today.

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Thanksgiving: the farmer who wished me 'Good luck for now'...

...oh, and the farmer who didn't shoot me, I guess.

nowhere near Giant enough

Day 8: Portrush to Ballycastle

Distance: 23.7 miles (171.2 total)

Total ascent: 1,797ft (12,378 total)

Time: 10 hrs 1 min

Tomorrow: Ballycastle to Cushandell (est 17.3 miles)

Okay, so let's begin straight out with the elephant in the room. As those of you who have been following on Instagram will already know, I am the man who added eight miles to an already fairly long walk for the specific purpose of seeing The Giants Causeway... and somehow managed to walk right past it. I know. Let that sink in. It happened about nine hours ago and it still hasn't sunk in with me. I do remember one point on the coastal path where these two American guys were looking down at the bay below with an expression that bordered on reverence; I peeked down and didn't see anything to write home about, and not wanting to interrupt their reverie I strolled on. It was a couple of miles further along the path when I saw a sign pointing to The Giants Causeway, and it was pointing back in the direction I'd come from. It was too long a day for doubling back on myself so I just had to keep on going. How did I miss a World Heritage Site? Mind you, I've never been that impressed by Stonehenge either, so maybe it's just me.

Like yesterday, today's walk fell rather neatly into three sections. The day began and ended with several miles of road walking. The first section was entirely pavemented, so I didn't have to slow down or stop every time a car went past. The final section had no pavements, but it had virtually no cars either, so the walk into Ballycastle was really lovely. I headed out walking into the sunrise, and headed home with the sun setting behind me. The middle third of the walk was the marvellous coastal path from Bushmills (no, I didn't visit the distillery, I was in a hurry to get to The Giant's Causeway) all the way to Portbradden Harbour. Having grumbled about the lack of off-road walking I've been getting, this was just heaven. The first half was fairly easy going, the second half a little more challenging but nothing too onerous. The views throughout were stunning with the blue sky illuminating the sea; the coast being punctuated throughout with dramatic rocky outcrops. I did, however, make pretty slow progress for some parts of the coastal path and when I got to Afternoon Prayer at 3pm, there was still over eight miles to go, which is more than I'd have liked at that point. I shamefacedly confess that I did, briefly, toy with the temptation of getting a bus. In the end I made slow but sure progress to Ballycastle and supper at O'Connor's Bar.

It was tough going at times today and I'm getting increasingly tired, and increasingly slow to get going in the morning. I'm glad that it's a shorter day tomorrow and that I've got a hike-free day coming up when I get the ferry from Belfast to Stranraer.

A lot of my thinking about St Columba and the other great Celtic Saints, has been focused on their fortitude, their faithfulness, their endurance. I've been thinking too about the ways in which a pilgrimage is supposed to be hard, it's supposed to be challenging. I guess that there's a lot that appeals to me about all that at the moment: St Columba sleeping with a stone as his pillow, all the Celtic Saints praying the Psalms up to their neck in the freezing sea, Harry Lauder singing 'Keep Right on to the End of the Road', and so on and so forth. That narrative of life as struggle and managing to endure certainly has its allure. But I'm a bit over struggling and enduring. I know that has to be part of life, but I'm not sure I want it to be the lens through which I see life day after day after day.

When I was in Derry I visited the St Colmcille (Columba!) Heritage Centre at the Long Tower Church. In their collection they have a facsimile of The Book of Kells. The wonderful illuminated manuscripts created by many of the great Celtic monasteries highlight another dimension to the lives of these Christians. Alongside all the hardship and austerity, there was also a great creativity, a playfulness; the manuscripts have such enduring beauty, and also mischief, little visual jokes. There is a profound effervescence about these texts. Both St Columba and St Bridget are patron saints of poets. Life is not meant to be lived entirely in prose.

Jesus told His followers that one way to learn about God was to 'consider the lillies'. Well you 'consider' lillies by stopping, by really looking at them, by absorbing and giving thanks for their colour, their texture, their fragrance. The God of our struggles is also the God of our joys and delights.

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Thanksgiving: for life.  

Pork scratchings, Deep Heat and tattoos

I'm rooting for you

Day 6: Derry to Limavady

Distance: 19.8 miles (125.1 total)

Total ascent: 777 ft (9072 total)

Time: 7 hrs 30 mins

Tomorrow: Limavady to Portrush (est 22.2 miles)

A couple of nights before I flew out to Ireland, I was enjoying pork scratchings and a glass or two of red wine with my friend Tim, and we were discussing the role our mental state plays whenever we're taking on any kind of challenge. My experience of the past two days' walking offers a perfect illustration of the place of that relationship between mind and matter. Both days were fairly similar in terms of distance and terrain; actually, today was a little longer and the weather a little worse. However, yesterday as I trudged into Derry I just couldn't wait to get to the hotel and get showered and changed. Today, I could have strolled on through Limavady and easily done another five miles without complaint.

Today, like yesterday, my shoulder started playing up around late-morning. Today, unlike yesterday, instead of trying to 'push on through' and ending up making things worse, I stopped in a bus shelter next to a dual carriageway on the fringes of a light industrial estate; I took a couple of ibuprofen, smeared on some Deep Heat and treated myself to a biscuit. As a result I didn't go through a miserable hour or so of really tough going, which was to endure for the rest of the day in a bit of a hangover of despondency.

Yesterday, I sang to keep my spirits up. Today, often in torrential rain, I sang because I was really bloody happy.

Anyway, just a really good day's walking. Although a lot of it was along or near busy roads, it was not the hair-raising (probably not the right expression for me to use right at this moment of time) traffic-dodging saga of yesterday. The landscape was nice enough but the real drama was provided by the weather. I posted a video of the start of my Afternoon Prayer on Instagram. Standing on the edge of a field in some pretty heavy rain, I confidently predicted that it wouldn't be letting up any time soon, only to be walking along in bright sunshine no more than fifteen minutes later.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DFqXSqHOHDI/

Arriving in Limavady I found myself opposite a pub called Owens. It would be rude not to. Walking into a cramped main bar, every stool but one was occupied and everybody was chatting to, with and over one another. I ordered my Guinness and prepared to slope off to the back room which I'd dumped my rucksack in. As the pint was pushed across the bar to me, the old guy sitting next to where I was standing pointed to the vacant stool and said, "You. Sit there!" I just had the loveliest hour.

I'm liking Ireland. I'm loving the Irish.

PS My 'penitential' shaven head is really growing on me (no pun intended), and I quite fancy staying shaven-headed. So, is it still a penance if I like it?

PPS Maybe I'm spending too much time on my own, but... I really fancy getting a tattoo. Any suggestions?

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Thanksgiving: The friends who've been checking in on me and making sure that I'm never walking alone. You know who you are, and I'm so grateful.

This Bank Holiday is a Bad Idea

Day 3: Bulcrana to Carndonagh

Distance: 15.7 miles (63.1 total)

Total ascent: 1295ft (5018 total)

Time: 5 hrs 28 mins

There are lots of good reasons why a skinhead with an English accent should probably refrain from trying to tell the Irish how to run their country, but nevertheless... This is a Bank Holiday weekend here in the Republic of Ireland, in honour of St Bridget. Now, St Bridget is one of Ireland's three patron saints, along with St Patrick and St Columba. Of those three, only two get a Bank Holiday, Patrick and Bridget. Obviously I'm already slightly put out that Columba gets overlooked in this way, but there's another consideration that's also being overlooked. Whilst St Bridget's Feast Day is February 1st, St Columba's is June 9th. My Irish friends I ask you, would you really rather have a Bank Holiday weekend in February than in June? I think we all know the answer to that.

After yesterday's especially long leg, I was delighted that today was one of the shortest; not least because it meant that I was able to tuck myself into a bar with the obligatory Guinness only fifteen minutes into the Scotland vs Italy Six Nations match... although there were moments when hitting the road again would have been more comfortable.

The day almost started well. Chatting with the waitress at breakfast I couldn't help sharing my observation that this is a beautiful country, but it's such a shame that there are no footpaths and walking is largely road-walking. To be honest, I'd been hoping that she might let me in on some local secret; there's some app out there, or a locally produced set of maps, which showed all sorts of tracks and trails unknown to the good people at Ordnance Survey. Instead she shook her head gravely and said, "I know, walking, and with the way people drive it's just so dangerous." It wasn't, really, what I wanted to hear. 

Nevertheless, its been a really lovely day's walking. It was blowy out there, with none of the blue skies and sunshine that we had yesterday; but the countryside was wide and rolling, beautiful shades of  auburn, and largely traffic-free.

One of the things I've been trying to reflect on during this time, is the question of our stories and histories; the narratives we have of ourselves and of others. Ireland's patron saints give us something to think about in that regard. St Patrick's story is perhaps the most reliable, as we have his autobiography, the story of his life in his own words. With St Columba we're on slightly different ground; our main source of information about Columba was written around a hundred years after his death and it's a hagiography, an account whose main purpose is to demonstrate Columba's saintliness. And then we come to St Bridget, whose very existence is questioned by many; it's observed that she seems very like the Celtic goddess Brigid, and it's possible that the early Christians of Ireland simply took the story of this popular goddess and Christianised it.

Does it matter? Does it matter how accurate our 'histories' are? In an earlier post I wrote about one of the sceptical views of Celtic history, which proposes that the very idea of 'the Celts' was a response to growing English political power in the eighteenth century (A Pilgrim's Cairn: Fighting and drinking their way across Europe. Or not.). If we tell ourselves stories about ourselves which help us to feel a sense of purpose and justification, tell ourselves stories about ourselves which make us feel good, does it matter all that much how true they really are?

My answer to that question would be this pilgrimage itself. What matters most this month, that I get to Iona or how I get there? If I took the bus to Moville tomorrow, and a cab to Derry, and so on and so forth, would it still be the same? Is the only thing that matters that I get to the place I want to be?

Two or three days before I set out I had a dream, or a nightmare; I think St Columba would have thought of it as a vision, so let's call it that. In my vision I walked through the night across Mull to Fionnphort, all ready to get the ferry across to Iona. However, for some reason (dreams are rarely good on detail) the ferry couldn't run that day and I wouldn't be able to get to the island, I wouldn't reach Iona; I could see so clearly that flat green strip that was so close that I could almost touch it. I felt that powerful sense of 'this can't be happening'; a feeling that all of us have known at some time or other. And then just as suddenly I felt a great sense of peace. I'd done the hard bit. I'd done my best. Getting to Iona wasn't the most important thing after all. What mattered most was that I had made the journey.

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Thanksgiving:

The Pilgrimage Begins: of Celts and their jewellery

From this bank of Gartan Lough

Day 1: Letterkenny to Gartan Lough and back.

Distance: 19.2 miles (19.2 total)

Total ascent: 1952 ft

Time: 7 hrs 4 minutes

The pilgrimage began this morning at Gartan Lough when I threw my wedding ring into the winter-dark water. It was a very hard thing to do. If it had been an easy thing to do, then I probably wouldn't have needed to do it at all.

It has been painful enough trying to come to terms with us having no shared future. In recent months that pain has been compounded by the increasing awareness that we no longer seem to have much of a shared past either. That ring was no longer a token of future hope nor a memento of past happiness, it had been emptied.

I had known for some time that this action (this ritual?) needed to be a part of this pilgrimage, or it would be a journey that took me nowhere. There's a tradition that pilgrims to Iona go to the beach where Columba first landed and throw a stone into the sea to symbolise things that they want to leave behind, but I knew that by the time I reached Iona I absolutely needed to be looking forwards not looking back. Stroove Beach was the next candidate; only four days into the walk, it was the place where Columba left the people and land he loved and went into exile. Last night however, I just knew with sudden and absolute clarity that it had to be done today or it would always be something for tomorrow.

I'd like to think that my Celtic ancestors are proud of me; they were forever chucking their precious metal possessions into seas and lochs and rivers.

The plan when I'd set out this morning had been to spend a little time at Gartan Lough, birthplace of St Columba. Just as I'm hoping to spend at least a few hours on Iona, it seemed right to linger in that place; I'd made good time on the way there so there was no need to hurry away. However, I found myself itching to return to the road. I footered about for a bit, said some prayers, took some photos, but I just wanted to be walking again.

Climbing away from Gartan Lough in bright sunshine it felt like the journey had finally, properly begun. Each step now was a step forwards, a step towards Iona and all that it represents; a step towards Iona and all that I hope to find on the way. There was a wholly unexpected sense of elation and renewed purpose.

That sense of elation did dissipate considerably when I got lost in a housing estate on the outskirts of Letterkenny. Bad words were muttered.

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Thanksgiving:

So thankful for enjoying the most perfect walking weather in a very beautiful landscape. 

But above all I give thanks for the joy I experienced when I came across this shop front...

Fighting and drinking their way across Europe. Or not.

When I was preparing for my 2010 pilgrimage from Iona to Lindisfarne, most of my reading centred around Celtic Christianity. If you're interested in this subject then get yourself a copy of Donald Meek's 'The Quest for Celtic Christianity'. Read it, read it again, and then keep it handy to hit anyone with when they invite you to their Celtic Christian Messy Matins or whatever.

This year my reading has been much more focused on the Celts in general. Heavens to Betsy it's a minefield. Up until January I'd believed what's apparently called the 'standard model' of the history of the Celts. This was a rather marvellous story of a people from Central Europe who over the course of many centuries fought and drank their way across Europe until they reached the continent's westernmost shore and there was nowhere else for them to go. It stirs images of this great Warrior People staring out across the Atlantic bereft; rather like the story of Alexander the Great weeping because there were no more worlds to conquer. There's something darkly romantic about this 'standard model'.

Unfortunately the 'standard model' is not very popular anymore, with one author writing that 'the persistence of the standard model is puzzling...' ('The Celts: Search for a Civilization', by Alice Roberts). Some go further still and reject the very idea of a Celtic people. In his book 'The Atlantic Celts', Simon James writes that 'the 'canonical' story of the island Celts is much more an invention than a discovery'. Broadly speaking the new narrative is that in this country the idea of a Celtic people was an eighteenth-century reaction to the expanding power of England and the corresponding draining of power from Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The story of the Celts was a defiant story of a people who had lived on these islands much longer than the English interlopers, who were just the Johnny-come-lately offspring of French invaders. Or something like that.

I've also read that the Celts originated in Portugal and then moved up and down the Atlantic seaboard all the way to the Hebrides and beyond, largely as a result of trade. Oh, and then there are other historians who are claiming that new DNA evidence suggests that the 'standard model' might have had something to it after all.

Exactly.

What I've found most thought-provoking about all this is the idea that sometimes the stories we tell of our histories are more about the needs of the present moment, than about the verifiable truths of the past. 

Iona, 2010

I wrote in an earlier post that part of my sense of 'exile' is born of a sense that I have lost hold of my own 'history'. Some of that history has been lost, some of it has been wilfully distorted, some of it I think I chose to let go of. Across these weeks ahead I pray I rediscover and reclaim my history as a way of coming 'home' to myself.

St Columba's history is contested too. Some people claim that he was sent into exile and excommunicated for a while as a punishment for a battle he instigated, others claim that he left voluntarily as a missionary. Some believe that he went to Scotland to convert the Picts, some that he went to Scotland as a kind of ambassador to the Picts. Although I largely accept the story of Columba's fall and exile because I think the weight of the evidence supports it, I realize that I am also drawn to it because it resonates with a story I need to hear, the story of my faith; the story of sin and redemption, of failure and new beginnings, the story of a light that shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

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When the walking proper starts tomorrow, I'll head up each blog with a summary of how far I've walked, how long for, the weather etc, just as I did fifteen years ago. However, as part of my fostering a sense of thanksgiving on this pilgrimage I'm going to conclude each blog with something that I'm particularly thankful for that day. So to begin:

Thanksgiving: for James and Barnaby's mum for agreeing to look after them over these four weeks so that I could go for a walk. Thanks too to her parents and anyone else who's helping out with those amazing boys of mine.

Benedicite

Bless the Lord all that grows in the ground

Those of you who have been keeping up on Instagram will already know that (with great reluctance), I've added a fourth theme to this pilgrimage. Alongside exile, penitence and pilgrimage, it's going to be an opportunity to think about thanksgiving. Here's the why...

First there was the question, then there was the litany and finally came the benedicite.

The question was simple and always the same: I would ask, "How are you this morning?"

The litany varied, but could be something along the lines of, "My husband's been rushed back into hospital. The doctors just don't know what's wrong with him, but he's in a lot of pain and he's just not eating. My daughter's finally left her partner, you know the one I told you about; she's with us just now but she needs to find somewhere, and it looks like she might lose her job; they say they're 'downsizing'. And my eldest grandson, he helped at the last Quiz Night, remember? He's a good boy you know, but he's in with the wrong crowd, bad boys, and it looks like he might get suspended from school. Maybe next week we'll find out, I don't know, he doesn't say much."

Then came the benedicite: "But it's Sunday morning and I'm in my church, so thank God."

For sixteen years I was privileged to serve churches in Edmonton, North London. It was a world away from the world I'd grown up in or am serving in now. The Church Urban Fund provides a great tool for looking up demographic information on parishes (https://cuf.org.uk/shinealight). In Edmonton, working age poverty is 22%, child poverty 26% and pensioner poverty 31%. In my current parish those figures are 4%, 5% and 6% respectively.

For sixteen years I had a lot of learning to do, and I had some of the kindest, hardest-working, most generous teachers I could ever wish for. One of the most important lessons they taught me was about thankfulness. Those who know me well might observe that, perhaps from time to time, I can be a little bit 'glass half-empty'. To find myself serving a community where people daily faced struggles the likes of which I'd never known, and yet never lost sight of all that they had to give thanks for, was something that always inspired me. This wasn't a shallow, 'Don't worry, be happy' view of life. My friends there knew very well the reality of how tough life could be. What I was being taught (and I was a terrible learner!), was that the night never got so dark that some light could not be seen; and if some light could be seen, then give thanks to God for the light.

Living thankfully is not an easy thing to do, because in large part our culture is devoted to fostering dissatisfaction. How many times a day do we see/hear/watch an advert telling us how much better our lives could be if only we had a more nutritious breakfast cereal, clearer skin, a more exotic holiday, a better car, or phone, or anything, or everything. It's hard to be thankful for what you have in life if you're being bombarded with the not so subtle message that life could be that much better if you would only get out your credit card.

One of the great hymns of the Church which was much treasured and celebrated by Celtic Christians was the Benedicite; it's a great outpouring of praise to God and I pray it every morning:

Bless the Lord all you works of the Lord: sing his praise and exalt him for ever... Bless the Lord sun and moon: bless the Lord you stars of heaven; bless the Lord all rain and dew: sing his praise and exalt him for ever... Bless the Lord all birds of the air: bless the Lord you beasts and cattle; bless the Lord all people on earth: sing his praise and exalt him for ever.

It's almost breathless in its exuberance and its celebration of life and its gifts. Tellingly, this great hymn of thanksgiving is taken from a story of persecution and suffering, the story of the faithful Jews, Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego being thrown into the fiery furnace by the tyrannical King Nebuchadnezzar.

Perhaps it's when we have little or nothing, in times of hardship or struggle, that we are most acutely aware of what we do have and can give thanks.

I am so sorry that I was not a lot more thankful for all that I had.

Pilgrimage

Last August my two boys and I made a pilgrimage from the Premier Inn in West Derby (it's in Liverpool, not Derby - I was as surprised as you are) to Anfield, where we were going to see Liverpool play Sevilla in a pre-season friendly. 

Up until the age of eight I lived in Kidderminster, in Worcestershire. Three doors down the road from us lived my 'Aunty' Jean and 'Uncle' Arthur. I think they were already retired and I suppose they were a bit like an extra set of grandparents to me. My mum used to tell me that sometimes I'd sneak out of the house to visit them. I don't remember the sneaking out but I do remember that they used to make me the most glorious chip butties, and I can remember very clearly the butter dripping off my little fingers. Aunty Jean and Uncle Arthur came from Liverpool and I thought the world of them. It was largely because of them that Liverpool was the first football team I ever supported. No doubt the fact that then, as now, they were a tremendously successful team also helped to influence my footballing loyalty. In the last three years or so my youngest son, Barnaby, has also become a Liverpool fan. However, given that he doesn't have any Liverpudlian neighbours treating him to chip butties, it's clearly glory-hunting all the way in his case!

Why do I call both that walk to Anfield and my walk to Iona, pilgrimages? What transforms a journey into a pilgrimage? I'm going to suggest three factors, and if you'd like to share your thoughts, please do use the comment section below; I'd really value your insights.

Story: A pilgrimage can be a journey which tells a story that's important to us. Walking through a Sunday afternoon to a pre-season friendly at Anfield was an interweaving of so many precious stories for me. It told me a beautifully happy story of my childhood and I could feel the boy that I had once been delighting in every step as I finally took him to a place that he had only ever dreamed of. The fact that Barnaby was supporting the team that I supported when I was exactly the same age as him, told me a story about the ways in which our lives can resonate with the lives of those we love. That afternoon I was a child again, and we walked not as father and sons but as three boys out on an adventure.

Destination: Traditionally, a pilgrimage is a journey whose purpose is drawn from what the destination means to the pilgrim. It's this that leads believers to Jerusalem and Mecca, to Varanasi and Rome, to Lumbini, to Amritsar, to Iona. It's because we attach importance to the stories that we tell about these places, that the journeys we make to them become pilgrimages.

Belonging: However we're using the word, pilgrimages are about locating our individual journeys, our lives, in something that's much bigger than ourselves. Whether I'm going to Lord's for a day's Test cricket, or to Hyde Park to see Bruce Springsteen, or whatever else, I always love that feeling of being part of a growing crowd. The closer you get to your destination the more people you see wearing their MCC bacon and egg ties or their Springsteen t-shirts, and for me that creates a sense of belonging. More traditional pilgrimages do the same. As I look ahead to my pilgrimage to Iona I find that sense of belonging being stirred in multiple ways. Going to Scotland always roots me in a sense of home and family. Iona roots me in the story of Celtic Christianity with its creativity, its compassion, its sense of wildness. Iona also roots me in the Christian story itself, a story of what the grace and love of God can do with people like Columba, people like us, even in our foolishness and sometimes our woundedness.

A pilgrim knows that the journeys they make are part of a much greater journey. A pilgrimage invites us to write our own short line in a much longer story. 

You might say that a pilgrim never walks alone.

Penitence

What could be more appropriate than to reflect on penitence the day after Donald Trump's inauguration as President? Trump's mentor, Roy Cohn, taught him, 'Attack, counter-attack, never apologize'. It's a mantra which Mr Trump has become the living embodiment of. On the campaign trail in 2015 he told an audience at a Christian conference, 'Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness if I am not making mistakes?' Why indeed.

Penitence, true sorrow for the things we do wrong, isn't easy; I know it isn't easy. Sir Elton John wrote: 'What do I say when it's all over? Sorry seems to be the hardest word.' Much as I hate to disagree with a fellow Watford FC fan, actually sorry isn't a very hard word to say at all. But being sorry, true penitence, that can be tough.

One of the things that can make it so tough is that just as exile presupposes a sense of home, so too penitence presupposes a sense of shame or regret. However, we've become people whose regrets are few, too few to mention. And shame? Well shame itself has become shameful, something to be rejected. I know that there are good reasons why we've reached this place. Shame has been horribly misused for generations, not least by the Church, but I'm not sure that tossing it out altogether is a very clever thing to attempt. We have no shame, but we're very into shaming and 'cancelling' others; ideally from the comfortable distance of our social media accounts. But if we don't feel a sense of regret, shame even, when we do things wrong and hurt others or ourselves, then we're unlikely to feel penitent. If we don't feel a sense of penitence, then we're unlikely to feel the need to repent. Without repentance we become trapped in our weaknesses and failings.

The other thing that makes penitence hard is anger. To truly face and acknowledge our failures can be at best uncomfortable and at worst deeply painful. None of us likes to feel pain, so it's all too easy for us to turn those feelings outwards; the step from shame to blame can be a small one. So many times I've heard people take five minutes to tell me about something they regret doing, and then twenty-five minutes telling me how it's someone else's fault. In case I appear to be staking a claim to the moral high ground, I'd have to acknowledge that that's something I've found myself doing. I start to explore my own sense of failure and so easily that exploration mutates into ugly blame and sometimes anger. Anger at the time I'm apart from my boys. Anger at the petty spitefulness of some people. Anger at the loss of friendship. Anger at being treated as worth very little; indifference. Anger at my need for forgiveness and anger at being unforgiven. Anger at myself, which brings me full circle to that sense of penitence. 

I hope this resonates with some of you: I hope it's not just me! I've got a lot of work to do on this pilgrimage.

It was two years before Columba was exiled from his homeland for inciting the Battle of Cúl Dreimhe. To me, that suggests that he continued to believe that he had been in the right in his dispute with St Finnian of Moville. He was angry when the High King of Ireland ruled against him and in favour of St Finnian, and his anger set conflict ablaze. He must surely have felt anger when he was excommunicated and sent into exile. However, he clearly came to feel penitence for what he'd done. The tradition that he made it his life's mission to 'win as many souls for Christ' as had been lost in the battle, speaks of someone who recognizes that he's done wrong and wants a new beginning.