Even though the nearest I ever got to a pilgrimage in my youth was an abortive trip to Salford Lads Club- an iconic building beloved by aficionados of The Smiths - I have long been fascinated by the concept of pilgrimage. As a student of Chaucer, I was intrigued by the trip that his pilgrims took from Southwark to Canterbury to worship at the shrine of Thomas Beckett. Years later, visiting Santiago de Compostela in Spain, I was struck by the sight of thousands of pilgrims worldwide who had embarked upon what is known in English as The Way. To complete the certificate given to pilgrims on completing The Way, one needs to walk a minimum of 100km or cycle at least 200 km. According to the records, over 325,000 pilgrims officially completed the journey in 2018 and it appears to be growing in popularity each year. Therefore, such visits to holy sites might be seen as a corrective to what TS Eliot, above, termed the turning world. Of course, for Muslims, the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, is fundamental to Islam and should be performed at least once in a lifetime.
Moving to the North East for my job last year, I was immediately struck by the otherworldliness of this stunning part of the UK. Although a trip around the North East in a VW Golf cannot replicate the peregrinations of the traditional pilgrim, this area has a plethora of holy places and shrines to visit. For me, Lindisfarne is one of the most wonderfully spiritual places I have ever visited, even topping Vatican City or St Marks Basilica. Here, on what would have been an extremely remote island, St Aidan founded the monastery in 635 AD, and the famous Lindisfarne Gospels were written there in the early 8th century. No need for me, therefore, to find spiritual succour in Southern Europe, or even the South of England: here is the place to sit and ruminate, and I am extremely grateful that my spiritual home is so near my actual one.
