Wander Woman: A Travel Podcast

Ways and Means

• Phoebe Smith • Season 3 • Episode 10

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A simple walk can change a life and a place. Join Wander Woman Phoebe Smith as she head's to Umbria to undertake part of Italy’s lesser-known pilgrim path - the St Francis Way - and see how it is bringing life back into the region. In association with this episode's podcast partner Sloways. From truffle hunts on the village edges to choirs echoing through convents, to ridge walks above Assisi and stamps in a well-worn pilgrim passport, this journey shows how slow travel creates real ties between people and landscape.

Also coming up:

  •  Co-founder of the British Pilgrimage Trust Guy Hayward about his mission to change the path of walks with purpose to enable everyone to bring their own beliefs... 
  • Travel Hack: How to have a meaningful pilgrimage
  • Top 10 non-religious pilgrimages around the world
  • Meet Andrea Devicenzi – the Italian Paralympic cyclist who is using pilgrimages to change people's perceptions about disability
  • Gear chat: what to pack when doing activities in very hot weather
  • Margery Kempe - pilgrim and author of the first memoir in history is our Wander Woman of the Month



Contact Wander Woman

www.Phoebe-Smith.com; @PhoebeRSmith

Speaker 5:

On this month's Wander Woman podcast.

Speaker 2:

It can help little communities, very small villages, young people going to town, people not working anymore on the fields. And The Way is changing all these.

Speaker 5:

I head to Umbria in Italy to discover how a 30-year-old pilgrim path has helped regenerate life into quiet corners of the region. I also chat to Guy Hayward, co-founder and director of the British Pilgrimage Trust, about why and how he decided to take on the challenge of opening up pilgrim routes for everyone.

Speaker 1:

And it was an opportunity here to kind of have a blank slate, we can write a new tradition that's very inclusive. We then use the slogan Bring Your Own Beliefs.

Speaker 5:

And I meet Andrea Devicenzi an Italian Paralympian who walked, then cycled the St. Francis way in order to motivate others that they can do anything, even after incredible trauma.

Speaker 7:

When he was 17, he on his motorbike hit a car, and with his knee he hit the car. And it damaged severely his leg, and the doctors couldn't manage to save his leg, so they had to amputate it.

Speaker 5:

Also coming up, how to have the most meaningful pilgrimage, no matter what your beliefs, in my monthly travel hack, the top 10 non-religious pilgrimages around the world, and in my regular gear section, I help you ensure that you can feel comfortable when walking in the heat. Finally, I'll be revealing this episode's Wander Woman of the Month, the traveller whose name is lost in the history books. You're listening to the Wander Woman Podcast, an audio travel magazine with me, Adventurer Phoebe Smith, exploring off-the-beaten track destinations, wild spaces, wildlife encounters, and the unsung heroes behind conservation efforts. Come Wander with me. "Oh Well, tell us what we're looking at..."

Speaker 7:

He has a Lagotto dog, this man, and it's a truffle hunting dog. And he's just finding truffles. He's found already two in in a minute. Under a minute.

Speaker 5:

I'm on the outskirts of a small village called Poretta, deep in the countryside of Italy's oft-called Green Heart, Umbria. I'm with a woman called Tullia, and we've just by chance run into a man called Roberto and his dog Leone. They are busy searching for valuable treasure in the form of truffles, which this region is famous for, some of which Roberto tells me can fetch upwards of 3,000 euros. But I'm not here on the trail of wealth. Instead, I'm looking for richness of a different kind. Tullia runs a series of self-guided walking tours across the country with her company Sloways, and we're on a path called the St. Francis Way, which runs from La Verna to Assisi and then all the way to Rome, a route which her company was key in establishing.

Speaker 7:

So the trail was first designed, let's say, or identified by a Dutch priest who walked to Rome from Holland and it was around 1995. And then in the year 2000, which was a Jubilee year, there was a grassroots association that started to Italian association started to promote the idea of this route. Then an Italian woman wrote a guidebook about this trail following, and she called it in the footsteps of St. Francis. That was 2003, and then the regional government provided some funding for the actual development of the route, and it was officialised, let's say, fully marked, especially in the Umbrian section in 2008.

Speaker 5:

A keen hiker herself and passionate about taking travellers off the beaten track and spreading money and tourists all over Italy rather than just in the main honeypots, Tullia's company were early adopters of the trail, and since 1999, Sloways has been key to helping develop it, working with local suppliers and family-run businesses and sending walkers from all over the world to these lesser trodden parts of Italy. They run it as a self-guided route, where you simply follow the trail as marked on both a physical map and with an app. But I had managed to persuade Tullia and her best friend Adria to come along too, as well as keen photographer Susi. We begin in the town of Assisi, the birthplace of the eponymous St. Francis, which sits on a hilltop in the countryside, crowned by the grand-looking white stone basilica. Around us, swallows are busy nesting in the eaves of old buildings, calling out like bats. We wander through its many winding streets, being accompanied by the sound of church bells. Soon, however, we reach a rough gravel track behind houses, and in just a few minutes are plunged into the forest, where we take a moment to sit and listen to the bird song. I decided to take some time to get to know my fellow pilgrims. I knew that four years earlier Tullia and Adria had walked the first section of the St. Francis way from the north to Assisi and wanted to know why, so I asked Adria.

Speaker 4:

It was a very critical period of my life. I was uh like a ground zero. Yeah, everything was done. And I I didn't know who I was in that moment. And yeah, I was just asking myself, what can I do now? And Tullia said, Come with me and we will walk to A ssisi. Yeah. And that was uh like uh she saved my life, I think, because that was my first step outside this house, and I started walking through towards my life.

Speaker 5:

At that time, Adria's sister had just died. Adria had got divorced and quit her job and felt she'd lost her identity as a sister, a wife, a graphic designer, and she walked to get it back again.

Speaker 4:

This uh Camino was yeah, like rediscovering who I was, who what I wanted to be, and I felt like uh at every step I found something new.

Speaker 5:

I was moved to hear Adria share her story. I, like many other pilgrims, lost my way on a Camino and found my way back through walking a great many others. We continued on, sharing stories, visiting the Hermitage of St. Francis, a small cave within a forest looked after today by Franciscan monks. I heard the story of how Francis gave a sermon to the birds, such a nature lover was he. Then we climbed, up and up the path, to reach the summit of the highest peak in this area, Mount Subasio, whose pink stone is used throughout many buildings in the town below. We cleared the tree line and began walking along its ridge, and the views really began to open up, as Tullia explains.

Speaker 7:

This valley here on the right, which is one of the biggest plains in Umbria, is called the Valle Umbria. And running along the side of it is the ancient Flaminia Road that goes from Rome to the Adriatic Sea in Rimini. It's a very wide plain with chequered fields of different kinds of um productions, so you have wheat and forage for the for the cows, and then we have some small hills that separate the two sides of the main valley. And in front of us we see Montefalco, which is a famous village for its uh the DOC wine.

Speaker 5:

Oh nice.

Speaker 7:

And to our right, what that we can't see from here is Perugia, which is the capital city of the region of Umbria.

Speaker 5:

I had no idea quite how lush, beautiful, and productive in terms of wines and food this region was, overshadowed as Umbria often is by its neighbouring Tuscany. It was eye-opening, and I was keen to see more. That afternoon we ended by descending into the old wall town of Spello with one stop to make on the way.

Speaker 7:

We will go to visit the Spello Pilgrim Hostel, which is run by uh retired missionary nuns that have uh travelled throughout the world and now uh they run this small place. And that happens in in many places, so they have small convents where the nuns or priests retire to.

Speaker 5:

We arrive to hear them in full song. And listened for a while before heading to our first hotel, a family run in in the heart of town. The next morning, over breakfast, I spoke to the owner, through Tullia, who has offered accommodation to St. Francis Way hikers since the trail opened and was keen to show me photos of its famous guests from the last 50 plus years.

Speaker 3:

That's 1963 actor of the time, Don Camillo. Questo areo. Who is this?

Speaker 7:

Francis Coppola.

Speaker 6:

Wow.

Speaker 5:

When he'd finished reminiscing, I asked him how things have changed since the pilgrims started coming.

Speaker 7:

It's changed a lot because there's many more uh people coming and more uh travel agencies doing also other routes that intersect here in the Spello leg.

Speaker 5:

It was great to learn that the trail began bringing people into this small enclave here in Umbria, allowing a small family business like this to thrive, even after a lot of the young people began to leave for the big cities. We continued on the St. Francis way, moving through farmland, where the long grass chirped with a thousand crickets, until we reached the ancient lowland city of Foligno, our endpoint on this shore today. Here I met with passionate local Luca, who explained, kindly translated by Tullia, why this place was so key to the St. Francis story.

Speaker 7:

His father and Francesco were cloth merchants and they would come here regularly to sell their goods. He sees in a dream that he receives the cross of Saint Damien, and Saint Damien uh says to him, Go and rebuild my church. Being a merchant, he said, I need to have money in order to rebuild the church. So he stole his father's uh all the cloths that he had, and he came here and sold them all, including his horse, in order to have the money to rebuild the church. So it's the beginning of his uh his way, his camino.

Speaker 5:

The church he built was just the beginning. Luca also explained how even today Francis is impacting the town in terms of bringing people together.

Speaker 7:

Yes, absolutely, it benefits not only economically, but also to meet people that are coming from different places, from different countries, different cultures like us today.

Speaker 5:

Before I left, Luca told me how new businesses had been able to start in Foligno thanks to the tourists being brought in by the St. Francis Way. And he said that soon there will be another pilgrim path that is being signposted right now and crosses Italy here too. That night, we ventured by taxi to a restaurant in nearby Montefalco to give me a real taste of the local cuisine. The Restaurante alla Via di Mezzo da Giorgione, owned and run by Chef Giorgioni. The food is not fancy, but home style, meant to evoke memories of family dining. It is some of the tastiest I've had in Italy, from stacks of anti pasty made from only the freshest ingredients close by, to the local Strangosi pasta, a thicker, more rectangular version of spaghetti with truffles and olive oil. I was glad I was on a walking trip. I asked Giorgioni what food he would serve to a pilgrim, which Tullia kindly translates.

Speaker 7:

So, a good dish it would be stringozzi alla Norcina. Stringozo is a typical pasta from here and it's made only with flour and water.

Speaker 5:

Well, it sounded good to me. Fuelled up the next morning, we hiked on from Fellino to Trevi. We passed by another convent where the choir was in full song, walked through holloways beneath the shade of oak trees and maple while the air was filled with bird song. Then we emerged into a sleepy village of Scandolato. As we walked between the houses, a cat made me stop, and I looked up to see a man, an artist, sitting on his veranda. We got to talking, and I found out he had moved here two years ago from the city of Foligno. I asked if he knew about the St. Francis Way before he moved here.

Speaker 7:

I didn't know about the way before, but thanks to the people that were passing by, who uh I I asked myself why they were passing by and learnt about the way.

Speaker 5:

And what kind of people do you see walking on the St. Francis Way?

Speaker 7:

It's mostly uh women, groups of women that pass. Uh not so young, um, you know, middle aged to older, yeah, and uh yeah, a lot of women more than men.

Speaker 5:

I found it fascinating that this path, created to honour a saint who stood for nature, the environment and equality, was popular with female hikers, especially when I was walking it with three other women myself. As we left, he handed me a small painting, one of three sunflowers against a dark background. He told me it was called A volte i fiore pian giorno, aka Sometimes Flowers Cry. He asked Tulia to translate why he was giving it to me.

Speaker 7:

Yesterday I started with this idea of sketching different things in order to donate them to the passers-by as a reminder of memory of um of their passing of uh the town, the village of Scandolato.

Speaker 5:

I was touched by the gift. We left the village, passing through more farmland until we reached the next hilltop town of Trevi, where we enjoyed ice cream and beers in the main square, and got stamps for our pilgrim passports from the local police station. The town consisted of a maze-like network of houses painted burnt orange and faded mustard, with the occasional hand-painted faded fresco that seemed to emerge like a mirage from the brickwork. It was beautiful. But we weren't going to stay here. Instead, we descended the hill and headed for an olive farm where a trio of sisters had kept the family business of olive growing alive by allowing guests to stay in their converted barns in an agritourism business. After cooling off in the sublime outdoor swimming pool, I chatted to the owner, Maria, about how the St. Francis Way helped her business to grow from its humble beginnings in 1995.

Speaker 6:

We start for St. Francis for the jubilee of 2000. The two years before, in 1998, one group from SMP they came here for organise the track. And the way are lost because a lot of um old way are on the maps but not on the reality. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and they reconstruction all the way, and that is the the start of San Francesco Way.

Speaker 5:

And how important are the workers who are doing the San St. Francis Way to your business?

Speaker 6:

Yeah, it's very important because um during the year we know a lot of people, and these people um came back sometimes for harvest for uh olive uh for pick up the olives because they want to to see the harvest. I speak about the harvest, the olives, uh the but they now they won't realise these and they come back.

Speaker 5:

It was so heartening to hear that another small family business had developed and was being sustained by the trail, and how it is pilgrims who then came back again without their backpacks, bringing much appreciated money into the region and to the pockets of small producers. The next morning we were doing our second to last segment of the St. Francis Way, from here to Poreta, and joining us was Gigi Bettin, an authority on the trail who quite literally wrote the book on it. I asked him how he first got involved.

Speaker 2:

There is a link with Saint Francis, even if I'm not into religion. Saint Francis, at a certain point of his life, he completely changes his life. But at the beginning, in the uh Franciscan uh histories, yeah, there was this question. Uh there was this sentence uh telling, and he didn't know what to do with his life. Something that usually can happen, I think, to human beings. And it was to me the same because I had a degree uh on law, I used to work in the international cooperation, I changed life and uh but I didn't know what to do. And then uh from the Umbria region uh called me to follow this project at the beginning.

Speaker 5:

Gigi went on to explain how he approached officially setting up the route and winning over locals.

Speaker 2:

The difference for me was to involve at the beginning the uh communities because we used to have uh hikers and pilgrims come from all around the world, but people, the the people living here was like watching and then were they, you know it was what is going and the that those times uh Caminos so hiking was not so common uh in Italy. And so I try profess to give power to the association how like going together and signing painting the signs on the way or explaining how it's important to encounter to meet people how can uh as well uh this kind of uh travel it it's a way I mean it's sustainable, it can help little communities because on the way of Saint Francis we move of on the mostly on the Apennine. So very small villages, yeah, young people going to town, uh people not working anymore on the fields. And uh and the way is changing all these.

Speaker 5:

That night we reached Poreta, but before we had dinner, I wanted to meet a woman who is something of a legend on the St. Francis Way. Rosa, aka the mother of the trail. She started hosting pilgrims in her home back in 2000, buying into the idea of the way when other locals didn't think it would work. The result? Tullia translates.

Speaker 7:

First they were all Dutch, and then they started coming from all over, and she writes everybody who comes through, she writes where they are from. They keep arriving with that same uh spirit of uh curiosity, kindness, uh and that hasn't changed. It has not changed over time.

Speaker 5:

Okay. She says she never had problems with people coming here. I could have stayed chatting to Rosa for hours. She had tales of people meeting in her hostel and falling in love, then coming back with their baby a few years later, of families revisiting long after they'd finished their pilgrimage, and people who had called her months after their stay to ask her for the recipe for her pilgrim soup. Before we left, I asked if she thought the St. Francis way coming through Poreta had changed her life.

Speaker 7:

For her, yes, absolutely, because she's met many wonderful people. And in winter, when she there are no pilgrims, she doesn't see them, she goes a little crazy because she misses them.

Speaker 5:

Our last morning began with us all wandering slowly out of Poreta, in no hurry to end these magical encounters we'd experienced along the way. This was when we met Roberto and his truffle hunting dog, and he showed me handfuls of the culinary treasure buried deep under the ground. We wandered on through the woodland and open countryside, and then happened upon a man carrying a huge yellow rucksack adorned with scallop shells and sewn on patches from Caminos all across Europe. I found out his name was Niccolo Mara, age 70, who began walking pilgrim paths back in 2006, when he failed an exam he'd attempted three times and happened to pass a church and go inside. He pledged that if he'd passed the exam next time he took it, he'd go and do the Camino de Santiago in Spain. He passed and hasn't stopped walking since, clocking up thousands of miles each year on pilgrim paths. Before he left, he told Tullia to tell me something.

Speaker 7:

The word in Italian Pellegrinares like a rambler to to ramble, not just to be a religious pilgrim, because it fills you a lot more again as a person.

Speaker 5:

After our meeting with Nicola, it was not far to go to reach our endpoint of Spoleto, an ancient city on the foothills of the Apennines, loomed over by a medieval fortress and home to a network of cobbled streets. As we walked over leaves that had begun to fall from the trees that line the route, I ruminated on how rare it is these days to allow ourselves time for chance encounters, serendipitous moments, and the openness to make new friends and change our perspective on a country like Italy that we may assume we know well, even just by visiting the main sites. I had been blessed with all this on this adventure, and my coming here had helped local food producers and businesses thrive. And really, what more could you want from a pilgrimage or even just a holiday? That was such a beautiful journey into a part of Italy that few take the time to explore. I think it's fair to say that we all left a little change by the experience. We were now friends with a week's worth of memories that each of us will never forget. To recreate this journey yourself, you can go to sloways.eu/wanderwoman . I look forward to seeing you out on the trails.

Speaker 5:

That's what I love about pilgrimages and Caminos. They take you to places you would never have reason to venture to go to otherwise. And travelling on foot means you get to meet more people, see more than just a fleeting glimpse into local life, and really and truly slow down. Which brings me nicely to this episode's travel hack, which is how you get the most out of undertaking a pilgrimage yourself, no matter what, if any, your beliefs. Because let's be honest, every pilgrimage is different, every reason different, every encounter and every journey unique. That said, there are a few things you can do to ensure that whether you are on a multi-week trip to your homeland or just spending an afternoon walking along a local river, your walk will have even more meaning. Listen up.

Speaker 5:

First up, consider setting an intention. A pilgrimage of any kind is, in its purest definition, a journey with purpose. So consider what yours might be. You might be trying to get over someone, a relationship or a loss. Maybe you need to reconcile something from your past. Perhaps you simply want to mark time and celebrate a major event, or think something through with the time and space to walk. Whatever it is, and it can be as simple as I want to find a purpose. I like to pick something up at the start, from the ground, environmentally friendly, obviously, like a pebble, a leaf, a shell. And then I carry this as a symbol of what I am bringing with me on my journey. The idea is that when you finish, no matter where that is, you let it go, both figuratively and literally. Whether that's taking a scarf to a football stadium and tying it around a railing, or dramatically throwing a rock into the sea like you're in a TV drama. Along the way, you can keep it in your pocket as a physical reminder of why you are there and what you are bringing with you. But do remember, whatever the intention, always manage your expectations. A pilgrimage is a process, not a solution. It can take a while for things to become clear. It took me multiple pilgrimages to start the process.

Speaker 5:

Next, be open-minded. Meeting people along the way is what pilgrimage is all about. Back when it was allowed in Britain, Henry VIII actually banned it and it still remains so, though granted no one's getting arrested. It gave people the opportunity from all walks of life, the poorest to the richest, to take the time to speak to one another, not to shout or enforce their own views or beliefs, but to listen and try and understand one another, even if you don't agree on something. Communion, not in the religious sense, and friendship, is often the biggest takeaway from any pilgrimage, as it was in medieval times. Just cast your schooling memory back to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, ask questions, make connections, don't compare. Everyone has a story, and something can be learned from everyone. Related is learning about other people's places, whether that's from the next county or halfway across the world. What are their traditions? Where do they come from? What is their journey? Don't cry if they don't want to share, but do listen. A pilgrimage also offers precious time away from the distractions of modern life. That's why you're here, to wholeheartedly devote yourself to something that isn't a deadline or a school run. That means no phones, no selfies, and besides, the reception will be rubbish anyway. This is the time to slow down, walk slower, take a seat. It's not about distance. There will be times of discomfort, blisters, rain, and most unexpectedly boredom, but notice all of it. Finally, one of the most valuable rituals that I hear most people talk about is keep a diary or a journal. Even if it's just a few lines every night. It helps you digest the day, process your emotions, and maybe one day you'll write a book, and this is the source material. Then simply go, make the journey. No one ever regretted it.

Speaker 5:

That was my Wander Woman travel hack, the regular advice I give you each episode to help ensure that you appreciate the journey as much as the destination. Speaking of which, my next guest, co-founder of the British Pilgrimage Trust Guy Hayward, found himself on a mission to take a song back to its origins. And that very secular journey became the start of a grand plan to try and bring back pilgrimages, regardless of beliefs or lack thereof.

Speaker 1:

I was doing a PhD, I was being an academic, doing lots of library work, not meeting many people, not being out in nature, being very much in my head. And I was kind of really ready to go into life. And I think there was something about the kind of ivory tower research-dominated way of life that was kind of disconnecting, and I felt that true knowledge, true wisdom, stuff that's really worth imparting to myself and to others and to the world comes from actually being in the land and being using your body and living like a sort of healthy human. So when when I was when I met this wandering minstrel, Will Parsons, and we we've we went on our first walk together, taking a song back to where it came from. I suddenly felt I this whole way of being out and in in nature, bathing in the rivers, foraging for herbs, um cooking by the campfire, sleeping in the woods, sleeping in the homes of strangers that you meet, singing as you go. It felt like a real old way of life and something I really needed as a kind of antidote to everything I've been through.

Speaker 5:

Had you done anything like that before, or was that all new to you?

Speaker 1:

No, it's all new, and I and I hadn't my parents had always taken me out walking as a child, but wasn't that into it, always always asking, you know, when's lunch? And um and then suddenly this walk happened, and I lived this life and for a week, and it awoken it awoke something in me. I mean, there was this magical coincidence when we got to the monument. Uh so we were taking this song back to where it came from, and it was about this tragedy, the Heartlake Bridge tragedy. And when we got to the monument, there was a couple standing there, and they were only there for five minutes. They tried to find the place ten years before they hadn't got there, and then we got we got through that and through the through the churchyard to meet them there, meet them there, but we didn't know we were meeting them. It was just complete random chance encounter, and we said, What are you doing here? And they said, Well, three of my ancestors died in the tragedy, which was extraordinary. And then, and have you heard the song? And they hadn't heard the song, so we got to return the song to the bloodline and not just the place, and that was a magical coincidence or synchronicity, as some people call it. And um, I think as we walked away from that moment, I felt in my body, and it was very much a kind of visceral intuition thing of like this is a really important moment in your life, it means something, and and when then we started talking about what was that? It wasn't just a walk, it was something more than a walk. Well, maybe it was a pilgrimage, we we'd gone into a few churches, we were really we were really nude, we didn't really know what we were doing. It was not like we come with a kind of pre plan of what pilgrimage was, yeah, and we were trying to impose that onto the land. It was like more, it was a sort of discovery as we went along, and then we discovered that Henry VIII had banned it in 1538, and and we thought, well, there's an opportunity here to kind of blank slate, we can write a new tradition that's very inclusive. We we then used the slogan. Bring your own beliefs. BYOB. BYOB. And then and what we needed was meaning, I think. Meaning I needed more meaning in my own life. Um walking itself, the practice of walking needed more meaning. And connection. I mean people use this word nature connection, and I was in a gathering a couple of weeks ago with a couple of witches who said they absolutely despise the term nature connection. And I sort of get what they mean because it sort of makes it really abstract. But what I mean, really, it's the sort of bathing in the rivers, hugging trees, looking into the petals of flowers, and um listening to the birds and watching them fly around. I mean, you've got to put add colour to the word nature connection. What does it actually mean? And is it just you consuming nature, you just sort of taking the joy and the beauty from it and and realizing how lovely the world is, or is it actually something about giving back how much do you have to give back, or do you do you even have to? And I think yeah, there's another thing I've developed that's developed in me over time is it starts to you start to realise you kind of you're sort of like treating nature or the footpath as an asset that you just kind of take from, you kind of extract healing from or you extract transformation from, and and actually I think that needs to change as well, you know, that there should be an equal and opposite um connection with activism in whatever form that is of actually doing something.

Speaker 5:

So is religion a part of your life?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but but um but not in a I mean there's so many different ways it can be. I like I like connecting with the seasonal rituals of the year, the seasonal sort of sarwin's coming, and you can call that all saints day, you can call that all souls day, you can call it Sawin, you can call it Day of the Dead, you can call it Halloween, whatever you want to call it, it's still this powerful time. It's marking time. I think I think religion is marking time, and especially if it can connect you to the land as well, and how the nate how um the seasons are changing and how that how that affects our souls and how we're changing as we go along, and just that the idea of cycles within our lives, and so there's that side of it. I think religion's good at humbling people as a group, of saying we don't have all the answers and there's a mystery out there. And I think the more we can latch on to or sort of just open up to the mystery, the better, because I think so much of the world right now seems to know, seems to be certain about how things are.

Speaker 5:

Yeah. And the I mean you're not allowed to change your mind about anything.

Speaker 1:

No, and actually, we're living in a very uncertain time. There's a lot of chaos, there's a lot of volatility, and a lot of rule books are being ripped up into kind of every sphere of life right now, at the top level, at the global level, at the kind of governmental level, everywhere. The rule books are being ripped up, and it's a time of uncertainty, and I think pilgrimage is perfect for that because pilgrims are drawn to the unknown.

Speaker 5:

That was Guy Hayward, co-founder of the British Pilgrimage Trust, who is helping to bring back pilgrimage right here in Britain and beyond, by ensuring that we all feel inspired to bring our own beliefs, or not at all. I urge you to check out their website, Britishpilgrimage.org, for access to their free database of pilgrimages across the country. Staying on the theme, but with a twist, we come to our top ten. And this episode we're looking at non-religious pilgrimages. You know, the type that excite your passion and get you out walking with a purpose, which in the end is what a pilgrimage is all about. From something for your love of music or sport or literature, there's a pilgrimage inside all of us. What is yours? Here's a starter for 10 for inspiration.

Speaker 5:

At 10, it's an ancestral homecoming. When the Ghanaian government launched a year of return campaign in 2019 to attract the diaspora and descendants of families, including those moved after Ghana when they were enslaved, it attracted an 18% increase in visitors. So why not trace your family and go and visit wherever they're from, be it Ghana, Hungary, Scotland, or uh Scunthorpe?

Speaker 5:

At nine, try a remembrance walk, such as a World War trail in France and Belgium. Whether you had ancestors who fought in a battle or the children are studying one at school, a contemplative walk through memorial landscapes and a visit to some of the many evocative museums posits it firmly in the memory for another generation.

Speaker 5:

At eight, we're distinctly non-religious. If anything, we're meeting the devil at the crossroads for a musical pilgrimage such as the blues and Americana trip along the mighty Route 66 in the USA. Its diners, blues bars, motels haven't changed since the 1950s, presenting the prime opportunity for a journey into the history of rock and roll.

Speaker 5:

At seven, try a sporting pilgrimage. Visit Lambomanera in Buenos Aires, the home of Boca Juniors, and one of the greatest sporting spectacles anywhere on earth. To see the Bocker fans in full tilt is to see the most passionate fans in the world. So about Boca for any sporting team. Real Madrid at the Bernabeu, England rugby at Twickenham, or Yankee Stadium for baseball.

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At six, take a historical pilgrimage by walking one of the twenty national trails in the UK. Follow the River Thames from the source to the sea, from a Gloucestershire Meadow to the industrial Thames estuary and Thames barrier. The story of the Thames is the story of London. Passing all the great buildings of the capital, as well as some of the bucolic countryside, or choose a river close to you to explore from start to finish.

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In At five, we're undertaking a mountain pilgrimage. Visit one of the most spectacular places on earth, Everest. There's nothing like being confronted by the highest peak in the world to inspire some humility. And it's not just the scenery. Going on an Everest base camp trek means you'll encounter the Nepalese who share this beautiful place with us and give us access into Buddhist tea ceremonies for some contemplative meditation on just how small we are in this big, beautiful world.

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For 4 we're doing a borderland pilgrimage by tracing country lines on foot. Remember the conflicts of the Balkans while focusing on the shared natural beauty of the Via Dinarica. It's incredible to believe now, but this trail crosses borders once divided by war and now takes the best of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia in among its footsteps.

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At three, we're doing a thankful pilgrimage, giving a nod to those who fought for our rights to explore our own backyard. A pilgrimage along the Pennine Way, for instance, England's first national trail, which leads from the Peak District, the scene of the mass kind of trespass, which began the Right to Row movement in Britain way back in 1932.

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At two, it's a pilgrimage into the wilderness. I have learned from personal experiences that the Antarctic Peninsula Voyage is a pilgrimage. Scientists, artists, adventurers, and dreamers are called to do. This place, at the end of the planet, is the ultimate place to reflect on the isolation, fragility, and the raw power of nature.

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At one, it's an indigenous pilgrimage to understand a place with the traditional custodians of some of our world's most famous landscapes. With local guides and permissions, discover Aboriginal songline tracks in Australia. Walking ancient routes here allows modern travellers to understand the landscape as a story, a spiritual but not religious connection to the country, learning respect for a land that is a living ancestor.

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Well, I don't know about you, but I feel I am now officially prepared to go and hit the trail on a very unreligious pilgrimage of my own. Again. Now, tell me, have you ever undertaken a pilgrimage religious or otherwise? I want you to contact Wander Woman on this podcast page. I cannot wait to hear from you. Now, when I did a section of the St. Francis Way with Sloways, it was my first time properly trekking Italy, and I hit an intense heat wave. As with any hilly environment, this is never out of the question. So I wanted to make sure that when you go, you're prepared for whatever conditions the trail throws at you. So here's my monthly gear chat, this time with advice for walking and really doing any energetic activity in unexpected heat.

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Let's start at the top. You need a hat. I used to be a fan of caps, but recently I discovered the joy of a wide brim number instead. Not only does it keep the sun off the top of your head, but also off your neck and face too. Just make sure you get one with vents to allow some of the heat to escape. Moving down to your neck, and may I suggest a perennial favourite on the Wander Woman podcast, the humble buff, or neck gaitor. The night before you can wet it and freeze it, or keep it in the fridge in your room, and the following day put it on to keep you cool for several miles, before topping up again at one of the many water fountains and wells in the small villages you pass through. Then for your top, go for something with at least short sleeves rather than, say, a vest. It sounds counterintuitive, but if it's really hot, it will protect you from burning as you hike, cycle, or insert activity here under the intense sun. For shorts, go for loose fitting, lightweight and above all, comfortable ones, preferably UPF rated. Sunscreen is a must, and avoid cotton socks, as they will get wet with sweat and saturated very, very quickly, which means prone to rubbing and of course the dreaded blisters. Finally, when it comes to water, always take more than you think. I carried multiple water bottles with me so that I could enjoy every step of my journey, and so should you.

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So he's now uh 52, and when he was 17, he on his motorbike he hit a car and with his knee he hit the car, and it damaged severely his leg, and the doctors couldn't manage to um save his leg so they had to amputate it.

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And what do you hope people seeing this adventure, seeing what you do now, what do you hope they take from seeing you achieve this?

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His profound belief is that from uh a huge challenge you can always uh find um a reason and uh a reason to continue and to move forward. And him as a as a coach, that is what he tries to to do, to have people really dig into themselves, believe in themselves, and to constantly try to improve themselves until the end of their lives. You know, searching and reaching for that for that interior strength that keeps you going.

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That was this episode's Hidden Hero, the personal people making a difference to others in travel destinations around the world. It was so inspiring talking to Andrea through Tullia and learning that despite a huge life-changing trauma, he has not only proved that anything is possible, but he's out there inspiring others to do the same. Do check out his adventures at AndreaDevincenzi.it and see one of the epic pilgrimage themed challenges he is planning next.

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And just like that, it's near the end of the episode. So nearly time for me to reveal my Wander Woman of the month. I hope you've enjoyed what you've heard. Please do subscribe so you never miss an episode, and please do leave a review. It means so very much. You can follow me on Instagram at Phoebe R Smith, find me on Blue Sky, or go to my website, phoebe-smith.com, where you can sign up for my occasional newsletter and of course send me a message.

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Now, this episode we're headed to Spain and the cathedral that marks the end of one of Western Europe's most famous pilgrimages.

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Betwixt the winding streets of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, there is a woman crying. Standing tall, she is dressed all in white from head to toe. But she is not a bride, nor a nun, but actually a pilgrim who has just completed the Camino de Santiago. She begins to sob, quietly at first, and then it becomes louder and eventually a wail. She has not lost someone, but rather she is having a terrifying vision, one of demons spitting fire. It sounds like the end of a dramatic biblical Hollywood epic, but this is only halfway through the almost unbelievable life of the woman who wrote the first autobiography in English literature.

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Born Margery Burnham in Bishops Lynn, now Kingslynn, West Norfolk, in 1373, she was a daughter to a wealthy family of merchants who made their money from trading in the Hanseatic League, a network of merchant guilds and market towns in Europe. We know not much about her childhood, but we do know that age around 20, she married another merchant, John Kempe, and together they had 14 children. However, after the birth of her first child, she experienced some most intense visions, saying that devils and demons were attacking her and even enticing her to suicide. She says she conversed with Jesus, Mary, and God, and professed to have witnessed both the birth and crucifixion of Christ. There's no escaping that from modern eyes, she was likely suffering from mental health problems, as the symptoms she describes are consistent with postpartum psychosis. But during this period, it was instead have been consistent with mysticism.

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So she turned to religion and undertook a vow of chastity and took to wearing a white robe over a hair shirt. She was a controversial figure, arrested several times for preaching, often about things at odds with the traditional church, for wearing white, even though she was married, so forbidden, and not a nun. She also got pregnant several times after her vow of celibacy and was also, most dangerously at the time, arrested for heresy. Despite all this, Margery became a well-known mystic, someone who continually aimed to gain a deeper understanding of spiritual life through prayer and pilgrimage. She became a traveller, going to Venice and spending several months there in 1413. From there she journeyed onwards to Jerusalem before travelling to Rome and then back to England. In 1417 and 1418, she went on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, and then in 1433, she travelled to Gdansk and Prussia, Norway and Germany.

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Even in the 21st century, it would be quite the journey for anyone, but back then for a woman alone, it was extraordinary. She was a controversial figure on her journeys. Her displays of wailing both scared people and annoyed them too. She said she had such intense conversations with God that she once ripped the flesh on her wrist, leaving her with a lifelong scar. Her persistence in telling her version of religion rocked the power and role of the church, as well as the norms of society at the time.

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The more you delve into the life of Margery Kempe, the more astonishing the story becomes. She was threatened with being burned at the stake for being a heretic, not just once, but several times. She met all the important religious leaders of the day. She had 14 pregnancies and at one point believed that she was married to Jesus Christ. But how many times have we heard her name?

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The reason I was able to find out so much is because between 1432 and 1436, she dictated her story to clerks, who wrote it in the Book of Margery Kempe, the earliest known memoir ever penned. The book was lost, however, for centuries, until it was found in the library of an English country estate in 1934, when guests who were staying there were looking for a wayward ping pong ball and happened upon it.

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And it's important that she did, because Margery Kempe gives us not only a glimpse into life in the medieval period, but also Europe's relationship with mysticism and the religious ideas of the time. Yet there is another school of thought among theorists, that her book was actually designed as a spiritual and social commentary. I guess, in a fitting way for Margery, that remains the ultimate mystery. Her voice, her travels, despite society's disdain and threats to her at the time of great unrest, and her foresight in understanding that hers was a story that needed to be written down and remembered, make her one of the most important Wander Women we've ever featured. And that's why Marjorie Kemp is this episode's Wander Woman of the Month.

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That was my Wander Woman of the Month, the traveller whose name is lost in the history books purely because of her gender. I hope when you pick up a memoir in the future, you remember this incredibly brave and bold woman, no matter whether you believe in religion, mysticism, or nothing at all.

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In the next episode of the Wander Woman Podcast, I go in search of bears on the Finnish-Russia border and find that they have their very own spirit bear right there in the forest. A year on from the wildfires that ravaged through the town of Jasper in Canada, I speak to a local tour leader to discover how they are embracing the fallout of this natural disaster to showcase the necessary role of fire on the landscape. And I sit down with Race Across the World contestant and TV presenter Anita Rani. And as always, I'll be revealing my inspirational Wander Woman of the Month. See you next time, Wander Woman out.

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The Wander Woman podcast is written and produced by me, Phoebe Smith. The editor and writer of additional material is Daniel Nielson. The logo was designed by John Summerton. A huge thanks to Sloways who made my journey so memorable. Do check out their self-guided St Francis Way trip at www.slowways.eu/wanderwoman. I highly recommend it. And lastly, a final shout out to all the people I met on my journey and were willing to talk to me, many through Tullia. It's because of you that this episode was able to happen at all.