Pilgrimage: Planning the route, maps, and navigation
Planning your pilgrimage adds to the anticipation of the journey, and it can also ease any fears as you learn about the task ahead. This chapter is an overview, and I have included more practical details about each route in the Appendices.
Guidebooks
For my two English pilgrimages, I used the excellent Cicerone guidebooks, Walking the Pilgrims’ Way by Leigh Hatts, and Walking St Oswald’s Way and St Cuthbert’s Way by Rudolf Abraham.
There are many Camino guides for each route. I used The Camino Portugués: A Wise Pilgrim Guide as it was slender and light. I also cut out the pages I didn’t need for my route to reduce the weight further. I also took some pages from A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Camino Portugués by John Brierley, which added questions to consider and aspects of the cultural and religious settings that the Wise Pilgrim guide left out.
Accommodation
If you’re traveling with a tour company, they will organise your accommodation. I booked through Macs Adventure for the Camino and was (mostly) happy with the places I stayed each night.
For the Pilgrims’ Way and St Cuthbert’s Way, I traveled independently and booked my accommodation well in advance. The guidebooks contain some options, but I also used Google Maps to search local places to stay along the route.
It’s certainly possible to wild camp, or find somewhere to sleep when you get tired, but as a solo female traveler, I like to have a safe, private room with a bathroom each night, and I also like to know how far I have to walk each day to get there.
The particular challenge of the St Cuthbert’s Way
The St Cuthbert’s Way has few places to stay on the route, so if you’re traveling independently without a tour company, you need to book in advance, especially if you want to walk over the sands to Lindisfarne.
Once you know the approximate dates you want to walk, check the tide times for your final day’s crossing at holyislandcrossingtimes.northumberland.gov.uk.
The tides wait for no pilgrim and you must walk the sands within the safe window, which changes every day. While it is critical to respect the tide and the weather, I highly recommend you walk the sands if conditions are safe enough. It is one of the most memorable walks of my life and a fitting end to the pilgrimage. Crossing on the edge of the busy causeway road or getting a taxi or bus over cannot compare.
If you have an early crossing window, you need to stay close to the coast the night before and there are only a few accommodation options. If you want to stay on Lindisfarne, and I highly recommend that too, you need to book well in advance, as there are only a few places available on the island.
Maps and apps
For my two English routes, I bought the paper Ordnance Survey (OS) Maps specified in the guidebooks. I traced the route in highlighter across the pages, then cut out the sections I needed and folded them into a waterproof map holder to carry with me, discarding the rest.
As part of my preparation, I joined them all up across my living room floor so I could visualise the route.
You can see a photo at
www.jfpenn.com/pilgrimswaymaps
I downloaded the OS Maps app and also mapped the walk on the Komoot app, where you can share walks with others. I planned each day and then shared them with Jonathan, so he knew which route I intended to walk.
For the Camino, I used the Macs Adventure app, which was excellent and included water and public toilets as well as the Camino route.
For all three, I also used Google Maps, particularly in urban sections, to find recommended places for coffee during the day or to eat in the evenings.
If you are traveling overseas for your pilgrimage, organise mobile roaming or get a local SIM card. Phone and internet access are both useful for GPS and also important from a safety perspective, especially if you are solo walking.
If you’re traveling to places where you don’t speak the predominant language, consider downloading the Google Translate app and the languages you might need for offline use. You can speak in one language and the app will show text and even read aloud the words in another language. You can also use Google Lens to translate signs and apps, all of which help in the less touristy places. I used both on the Camino in the smaller Portuguese villages along the way.
Navigation on the route
Pilgrimages are generally on established paths and people have been traveling some of them for hundreds of years. Most pilgrimages are well way-marked with a particular symbol representing the route attached to posts, fences, gates, stiles, and trees at regular intervals.
You don’t have to navigate much to stay on the right path, but it’s always a good idea to know where you are and if you’re walking solo on a less popular route at low season, then navigation is an important aspect of safety.
I did some navigation back when I was in the Girl Guides and I’ve been on two Outward Bound courses, but I was still apprehensive before my first solo pilgrimage. To counter that fear, I went on a navigation training day through the National Navigation Award Scheme (NNAS) to improve my map-reading skills.
A violent storm rolled in that day, and I was the only student who showed up at a farmyard barn in Wiltshire for the session. With two instructors teaching only me, it was an intense day, but I refreshed my skills at using a compass, reading maps, pacing and distance, as well as safety when walking. I finished the day feeling far more confident in my ability to stay safe and find my way if I got lost.
This navigation training was particularly useful for the St Cuthbert’s Way, which had fewer signposts than the Pilgrim’s Way and many fewer than the Camino. But the training was more about my confidence than anything else and certainly made me feel more competent as a solo walker.
Planning to visit cultural, religious, and historical places along the route
I enjoy pilgrimage walks, in particular, because their routes encompass places of cultural, religious, and historic significance. I love ancient churches and cathedrals, whether still active or in ruins, and I like to sense what remains in these places of meaning.
If there are particular sites you want to see along the way, then be sure to time your walk so you arrive when they are open — and you still have energy for a visit.
Schedule extra time at the beginning and the end of your journey, so you don’t rush those first and last days, and allow more time to see the sites as a tourist without a pack.
For the Pilgrims’ Way, it’s worth visiting Southwark Cathedral in London and Canterbury Cathedral at the end. For the St Cuthbert’s Way, the key sites are Melrose Abbey at the start and Lindisfarne, Holy Island, at the end. For the Camino, I started in Porto, which is a fantastic city, and you need at least a day for Santiago de Compostela after you finish.
There will be other places along the route, but you may not have the energy to visit, or the timing of the day’s walk may not allow for it.
On the St Cuthbert’s Way, I wanted to visit the ruins of Jedburgh Abbey, founded in the twelfth century and still a beautiful site. But after a gruelling day, I arrived too late the night before, and left before dawn the next morning in a storm. I visited it in the darkness and looked up through the ruins to the night sky above, vowing to return at some point.
It’s also worth checking if you need a ticket to visit, as booking in advance has become a lot more common since the pandemic to control visitor numbers. Some places might also be inaccessible.
I had hoped to stay at The Friars, Aylesford Priory, for a night on the Pilgrims’ Way. Founded in the thirteenth century, the Carmelite monastery is now a retreat centre and a place of pilgrimage in itself. But when I walked in October 2020, it was closed because of the pandemic, so I wasn’t able to stay. The open-air sections and the cafe were still open, and I appreciated their coffee and walnut cake, at least.
While the guidebooks explain many of the significant sites along the route, you will also find places that resonate and remain memorable, even if not considered important by others.
One morning on the Pilgrims’ Way, I walked into Boxley, a village on the outskirts of Maidstone in Kent. The autumn sun was low in the sky and cast a golden light over the gravestones as I arrived at the church of St Mary and All Saints, a place of worship for nearly 800 years. Under the canopy of the ornate lychgate (the roofed gateway to the churchyard) were benches for the faithful to rest, and on one sat a selection of pumpkins and squash, in shades of yellow, orange and green. A handwritten sign urged, “Please help yourself.”
I wandered alone in the graveyard, one of my favourite things to do anywhere in the world. Most of the graves were so weathered that the text could no longer be read, a reminder that our names will also be forgotten one day.
Several headstones had sunk deep into the ground, leaning to one side as if they felt the pull of the dark beneath. Wild cyclamens in shades of violet grew beneath a sycamore tree, late flowers of autumn marking new life from the bones of the buried dead.
One boundary wall was straddled by a huge beech tree, which must have started growing over it well before the World War II memorial that lay just on the other side. Our human-made barriers cannot hold nature for long.
I sat in the silence of that peaceful churchyard for a while before walking on. You might find a sparse line or two about that church in the guidebook, but it sticks in my mind as a far more special place.
Planning versus serendipity
Some planning is essential for pilgrimage, but don’t overschedule your trip. Leave room for serendipity and the possibility of chance encounters along the way, and certainly allow time at the beginning and end of your trip for reflection.
Questions:
• What resources will you use to research your pilgrimage route?
• Have you booked accommodation and any places of interest or necessary aspects of the trip along the way?
• Are you confident that you will be able to navigate the route? If not, how can you gain that confidence?
• Which spots along the route do you want to spend more time in?
• Have you allowed time for serendipity?
Resources:
• Walking the Pilgrims’ Way — Leigh Hatts
• Walking St Oswald’s Way and St Cuthbert’s Way — Rudolf Abraham
• The Camino Portugués: A Wise Pilgrim Guide — and other guidebooks at www.wisepilgrim.com
• A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Camino Portugués — John Brierley
• Lindisfarne, Holy Island tide times and safe crossing windows — holyislandcrossingtimes.northumberland.gov.uk
• OS Maps. Physical maps and app available. — www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk
• Komoot app — www.komoot.com
• Macs Adventure — www.macsadventure.com
• British Pilgrimage Trust — www.britishpilgrimage.org
• National Navigation Award Scheme (NNAS) — www.nnas.org.uk
