Skip to main content
Read page text
page 34
E T H I C A L L I V I NG S L OW T R AV E L The Pilgrim’s Way Adam Weymouth walks a fraction of the Mary/Michael Pilgrim’s Way – a new 500-mile path that links sacred sites from Land’s End to Norfolk a large stained glass of St Michael shining down on me. Outside, to the north-east, was the summit of Widgery Cross and the way I would be heading. Iwas due to meet Hamish Miller the month in which he died. It was 2010, and I was preparing to leave to walk across Europe when I discovered a book he had co-authored with Paul Broadhurst, The Dance of the Dragon, detailing a 2,500-mile current of energy he had dowsed through many religious sites on a path from Ireland to Israel. My own journey was going to cross this line several times, and I was curious about a concept that I found both poetically compelling and rationally awkward. I have been intrigued ever since, and hearing recently that a new footpath was being developed to follow lines Miller had dowsed across the south of England, which he had written about in The Sun and the Serpent (also co-authored with Broadhurst), I was interested to walk it. I set out in April, when the only waymarked section was the 140 miles between Brentor in Devon and Glastonbury. Brentor is the site of one of England’s smallest, most isolated churches, set by itself on a craggy outcrop 1,100 feet above sea level. I arrived after dark and slept outside before rain drove me indoors. I woke to a bright spring morning and The idea of ley lines had already been around for some time when, in the 1960s, writer John Michell began to draw people’s attention to a curious alignment of sacred sites that stretched across southern Britain: an alignment on a bearing of the shadows thrown by the May Day sunrise. In the 1980s Miller and Broadhurst walked this line, dowsing what they believed to be two intertwining terrestrial energies that snaked about this central thread. They named them the St Michael and the Mary. Eventually the new footpath will run 500 miles from Carn Lês Boel near Land’s End to Hopton on the east coast of Norfolk, following the lines through such well-known sites as St Michael’s Mount and Avebury and those less familiar like Menacuddle Well and Royston Cave. The authors see a path that has been important since antiquity, the sites on it reappropriated and rededicated many times through a succession of invasions and religions. Whether for the lighting of fire beacons as a Celtic May Day rite, or for a pilgrimage to St Michael’s Mount for medieval Christian penitents, these lines have always drawn people, and the ancient paths that follow them – the Ridgeway and the Icknield Way – attest to this. Whether or not one finds the reality of the lines persuasive, there is certainly something appealing about walking a way that many others have walked before. My path traced the tumbling waters of Lydford Gorge before heading up onto 32 Resurgence & Ecologist The Mary/Michael Pilgrim’s Way © Simon Prince November/December 2012
page 35
There is something very appealing about walking a way that many others have walked before Cosdon stone row on Dartmoor, near to Shilley Pool © Adam Weymouth the moor. Richard Long, the artist and walker, once said: “A walk is just one more layer, a mark, laid upon the thousands of other layers of human and geographic history on the surface of the land.” there is a place for a path closer to home that traces our own spiritual heritage. “You don’t have to travel so far,” he says. And if nothing else, he hopes the new walk may cause people to stop and think about that small pilgrimage from where they live to a local church or a local holy well. Dartmoor is one of the few places in England where wild camping is permitted, and I slept that night at Cullever Steps. It rained all night, and I woke to half-hearted sunshine. The moor was empty but for the occasional group of Duke of Edinburgh’s Award youths stomping through the wet, and the high staccato bursts of skylarks. I followed beautiful wooded valleys and green lanes, small churches and stone rows. By the time I reached Throwleigh, the rain had become persistent, so I spent the night in a friend’s house there. The next morning I left in sunshine for Chagford to meet Richard Dealler, the man responsible for setting up the walk. “A walk is just one more layer, a mark, laid upon the thousands of other layers of human and geographic histor y on the surface of the land” – Richard Long, artist It has certainly done that for me. At the end of The Sun and the Serpent Miller writes: “Following the energy of the St Michael current had in some way caused deep shifts in our understanding and the way we looked at the Earth.” I cannot quite claim that, but in the few days I have been walking I have come to appreciate a little more the rich network of sacred sites Having walked the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage, Dealler has seen for himself the changes that walking can bring about in people. Pilgrimages like the one to Santiago are increasingly popular (180,000 walked it in 2011), but Dealler believes that exist across southern England, and to remember once again the importance of occasionally taking time to see our country at a walking pace. Adam Weymouth is a freelance writer with a particular interest in walking. www.adamweymouth.com www.marymichaelpilgrimsway.org Issue 275 Resurgence & Ecologist 33

Page Text

View plaintext

E T H I C A L L I V I NG S L OW T R AV E L

The Pilgrim’s Way Adam Weymouth walks a fraction of the Mary/Michael Pilgrim’s Way – a new 500-mile path that links sacred sites from Land’s End to Norfolk a large stained glass of St Michael shining down on me. Outside, to the north-east, was the summit of Widgery Cross and the way I would be heading.

Iwas due to meet Hamish Miller the month in which he died. It was 2010, and I was preparing to leave to walk across Europe when I discovered a book he had co-authored with Paul Broadhurst, The Dance of the Dragon, detailing a 2,500-mile current of energy he had dowsed through many religious sites on a path from Ireland to Israel. My own journey was going to cross this line several times, and I was curious about a concept that I found both poetically compelling and rationally awkward. I have been intrigued ever since, and hearing recently that a new footpath was being developed to follow lines Miller had dowsed across the south of England, which he had written about in The Sun and the Serpent (also co-authored with Broadhurst), I was interested to walk it.

I set out in April, when the only waymarked section was the 140 miles between Brentor in Devon and Glastonbury. Brentor is the site of one of England’s smallest, most isolated churches, set by itself on a craggy outcrop 1,100 feet above sea level. I arrived after dark and slept outside before rain drove me indoors. I woke to a bright spring morning and

The idea of ley lines had already been around for some time when, in the 1960s, writer John Michell began to draw people’s attention to a curious alignment of sacred sites that stretched across southern Britain: an alignment on a bearing of the shadows thrown by the May Day sunrise. In the 1980s Miller and Broadhurst walked this line, dowsing what they believed to be two intertwining terrestrial energies that snaked about this central thread. They named them the St Michael and the Mary.

Eventually the new footpath will run 500 miles from Carn Lês Boel near Land’s End to Hopton on the east coast of Norfolk, following the lines through such well-known sites as St Michael’s Mount and Avebury and those less familiar like Menacuddle Well and Royston Cave. The authors see a path that has been important since antiquity, the sites on it reappropriated and rededicated many times through a succession of invasions and religions. Whether for the lighting of fire beacons as a Celtic May Day rite, or for a pilgrimage to St Michael’s Mount for medieval Christian penitents, these lines have always drawn people, and the ancient paths that follow them – the Ridgeway and the Icknield Way – attest to this. Whether or not one finds the reality of the lines persuasive, there is certainly something appealing about walking a way that many others have walked before. My path traced the tumbling waters of Lydford Gorge before heading up onto

32

Resurgence & Ecologist

The Mary/Michael Pilgrim’s Way

© Simon Prince

November/December 2012

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content