We're Off! (rather unexpectedly)

Well, the idea is (was) to walk out our front door and head for Rome. This means following the Via Francigena, a modern pilgrim route following the route of Archbishop Sigeric from Canterbury to Rome in to receive his pallium of office from the Pope in 990 AD.

And that means walking from London to Canterbury first. As I said, we were going to walk out our front door and do just that. But today (Saturday, October 31, 2009) we went to an “open office” at the Confraternity of Saint James in Southwark. We were chatting about our plans when Janet, one of our hostesses, said, “but you should leave from Talbot Yard, it's where the Tabard Inn was.” So, Talbot Yard being on our way home and only ½ a mile away, we walked over to the lane, saw the sign memorializing the Tabard Inn and Chaucer and walked home (about 3 miles). So we have started our pilgrimage, albeit unofficially and without priestly blessing and approval.

From the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales:

“Then longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

(And palmers for to seken straunge strondes)

To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;

And specially, from every shires ende

Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,

The holy blisful martir for to seke,

That hem hat holpen, whan that they were seke.

Bifel that, in that seson on a day,

In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay

Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage

To Caunterbury with ful devout corage....”

So, we pilgrims are off, via Canterbury, to seek foreign shores, on pilgrimage to distant shrines....

Why Walk?

Walk to Rome? Why? Surely it's much faster to fly – and much cheaper.

The short answer is that I love to travel, I love history, I love adventure, I love to walk and I love the Catholic faith.

I remember my father saying that air travel had made a generation of “travelled illiterates”. He meant that air travellers had no sense of the distance of their journey, no sense of its difficulty, no sense of the territory between the airports of departure and arrival. He preferred to drive, if he could.

And so do I. But while driving permits (demands) more contact and engagement with people, it also can be pretty superficial. But to walk – this really is the way to engage with the terrain, with its history, and with the locals and their culture.

Walking is the natural pace; all our senses have evolved to process sensations at a no faster than walking speed. Modern transportation is like a radical speeding up of a film.

Modern transportation is very recent: roughly 50 years for air travel, 100 for cars and 160 for trains. For all of previous history people walked from A to B. If they were rich, they might use a horse or a boat. But most folk – soldiers, merchants, pilgrims – walked.

So to walk through Europe at 15 to 20 miles a day will be to re-connect with the past, to see the world as Europeans saw it for most of their history. And to experience the difficulties they faced: the vagaries of the weather, route-finding, language, crossing the Alps in the winter....

Two years ago I broke my femur cross-country skiing and I'm still recovering. Perhaps a good long walk will speed the process.

But why Rome? That question will be the subject of another blog.

Testing the blogsite

We have this idea, Wendy (my wife) and I, of walking to Rome from our front door in London. And to make a blog about it, for the interest and amusement of our friends and family. So, one of the first jobs is to set up a blog site, something we have never done before. This is a first test of the site.