Look, there’s just always going to be a Very Good Reason for me to stay home. And the biggest one is that it’s warmer in here. And I really hate being cold.

Not cold while I’m out and about and living life or anything like that, no. Cold when I’m inside. Cold between shower and pyjamas. Cold dripping from the tip of my nose and shaking the tips of my fingers. It doesn’t even have to be bone deep. Just, uncomfortable. And inside. Where one is mean to go to escape from the cold.

I would never have made it as a medieval peasant.

Buy a peasant a coffee

Recently, the temperatures in the middle of England have been rising, the sun’s been out, and the rain has been light (but not nonexistent. It’s springtime, not the apocalypse), and the flowers are pretty.

Seems like a good time to go for a Very Long Walk, right? I mean, it’s a nice day out there, after all.

Except it’s deceptive. Because England in the spring. Sure, it was 21 and sunny, but that was Wednesday. Today is Sunday, and it’s 13 out there—but feels like 8. EIGHT! With an overnight low of 4.

FOUR!!!

And okay, 4 degrees Celsius isn’t as cold as 4 Fahrenheit (I’m from the US and still can figure out temperatures in Bald Eagles), but it is still Quite Unnecessary for the first week in May.

I dissent.

Anyway, I’m not going for a walk through the bush - or the countryside, or what passes for hikes in the UK - and I’m definitely not going “hill walking”, which is a greater euphemism than any other, as hill walkers are just understated mountain climbers with a penchant for long hours of mild discomfort and struggle and nettles - while it’s 13 out there. And certainly not while it’s FIVE.

But I am going. I am. And I think I’m going on Friday.

Two Saints, get ready!

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The Two Saints Way follows the path(s) of St Chad, my favourite patron saint of JV quarterbacks and John Hughes movie Popular Guy teenage heartthrobs, and St Werburgh of whom I know quite little BUT who has a tiny Camino de Santiago link. Her pilgrimage path is marked with a goose, which brought immediately to mind the fabulous Beebe Bahrami’s most excellent Way of the Wild Goose, which is a Camino book after a fashion. I mean, not after a fashion. It’s just not exactly a guidebook. It’s a book book, and I love it.

And so I thought I’d quite like to follow St Werburgh so I could follow her goose signs, but if I follow St Chad’s path I can just, well, walk home. And I still get to see the goose signs, as they’re just on the other side of the way, so it’s all good.

And that’s for Friday. I hope. I very much do not promise, because I’ve been talking about doing this walk since I first discovered St Chad’s Cathedral in Birmingham last year and was then told by a friend in Pakistan (because of course) about the British Pilgrimage Trust and about the pilgrimage trail for St Chad that his friend just happens to be the modern architect of (that is totally a reasonable sentence, shut up)…and now it’s May 2025 and here I (shiveringly) sit.

Nonetheless, plans are one again in motion. So it may be time to explore again the purpose of pilgrimage for the faithless (like me!) I mean, what is it, really, that keeps drawing me to pilgrimages great and less great? (I’m not super drawn to a one-day pilgrimage. I feel like that’s just a walk. But that might be the faithlessness talking.)

Why do I feel the most me when I’m going for a very long walk to touch old walls and stones, look at trees and flowers and grass, huff and puff up and down hill sand mountains?

Maybe I would have been an okay medieval peasant. But just in the summertime.

What is the pull of pilgrimage for the person who has no intention of venerating saints or doing penance? Because it’s more than just a Very Long Walk. I have no interest in the Appalachian Trail, for example. And, stated previously, I am in awe of hill walkers and ramblers, but I’m not powerful enough to count myself among that hardy tribe of outdoorspeople. No, it’s’ the pilgrimage I like. The journey of the faithful, the penitent, the seeker. And if it’s at least a mostly solitary journey? So much the better. And finding a Warm shower and comfortable bed at the end of each day? Actual bliss.

So why, after the Whatever Camino, am I even considering this? Why make another pilgrimage, even if only for a week? I don’t want to venerate St Chad. I’m not super keen on countryside hiking (rather than the lovely wide clear paths and roads of the Camino…is now the right time to wax poetic about cobblestones again?), because sometimes I still have flashbacks to farm mud puddles up to my shins in Galicia last year. Sometimes I still think with mild horror of putting a warm dry foot into a cold wet squelching shoe. Sometimes I think of the past year of just always being a little bit cold (except for those few days around Los Arcos and Logroño), even sometimes-but-not-always this winter in Pakistan! And I just pull on the merino wool hiking socks, the oversized scarf that is actually a dupatta, and another grey cardigan (hey, I only have two, thank you…but I’m sure I could do with another one. Because yes, grey cardigans are at least ⅓ of my whole personality) and curl up on the couch or at the counter where my “desk” is, and think “Well, maybe next week.”

So……..yeah. All the maybe next weeks have gone. I’m pretty sure I’m heading out on Friday for a wholly English pilgrimage between the the shrines of two really quite minor (to my limited saint knowledge, which tends to skew Celtic, Irish, or feminine) saints who just happen to be relatively close by.

You know, if Saint Chad is the tipping point for bringing me back to the Church, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to admit it, even in confession. I mean, not only will I have to join a convent, I’ll probably have to become a proper penitent and join a cloister.

Please ignore my tears. They definitely don’t indicate deep joy at such a prospect.

Now let’s go for a walk.