In the hot summer of 2022 I’m reblogging the cooler summer of 2019, especially the churches I visited on my End to End. We take up the route at Truro Cathedral, where this sign urged me onwards.
Sign at Truro Cathedral.
Probus Parish Church was not far further on and you can see my boots reflected in the figures of the Remembrance Campaign for 2018: There but not there. The thing we most remember about Probus is the fish and chip shop (of course). They gave a generous donation to Hannah’s walk ten years ago when we walked through in the rain. The chips are also good.
Reflecting in Probus Parish Church
St Mewan Parish church, the next day, was also very welcoming with free drinks and chocolate biscuits. It’s not far from the great cathedral-like bio-domes of the Eden Project. You do get a reduction on the entrance price at the Eden Project for arriving on foot.
Welcome!
Next it was up and over Bodmin Moor. The Doniert Stone is worth a look. Thought to date from the 9th century it commemorates Doniert, the last king of Cornwall. There are many stone monuments, from the Neolithic onwards, on Bodmin Moor.
Doniert’s Stone, 9th century.
Walking onto Launceston where the Parish Church is quite large and dedicated to Mary Magdalene, seen here sleeping on the back wall. She is remembered in a poem by Charles Causley, Cornish poet from the town. He recalls an old custom of flipping a penny onto her back as you pass by.
Mary Magdalene sleeping at Launceston.
On the way out of Launceston, this well house is one of several I visited on the End to End. Water holds a special place in our lives and is often celebrated in our landscape. This is to be particularly remembered in times of drought like the current one in 2022.
Old Cornish well house near St Stephen’s.
That’s it from Cornwall – next episode I get to Devon!
From my remembered bible: Look for the road that leads to life.
Mary, Mary Magdalene lying on the wall, I throw a pebble on your back, Will it lie or fall?
Welcome to a bit of a summer blog about the churches I visited on my End to End in 2019 that was inspired by a recent conversation on Twitter. The actual blog on the 2019 End to End started in April of that year and took 117 days for a distance of 1110 miles. At that time most Parish churches in England were open, though I can’t say what you will find now. Some other churches were open from to time time, depending on local conditions and events, like flower festivals and the like. There will be several parts to this blog because there were a lot of churches and because I started at Land’s End we have the South West up first. In part 1 I’ll cover Land’s End to Truro.
St Sennen, founded 520AD
St Sennen church under blue sky, April 2019
Founded before Columba landed on Iona or Augustine made it to Kent, the early date of this foundation is probably accounted for by missionaries between West Ireland and Brittany. There are a lot of unusual saints names in Western Cornwall for this reason. The church yard and surrounding path include several early stone slab crosses.
Early stone slab cross near St Sennen
2. Borah Chapel, 1878
West Cornwall is also full of chapels, often in very small villages. not all of these survive as places of worship but, like this one at Borah, have been converted to other, often domestic use. Interesting because many of the nonconformist denominations began as worshipping communities in people’s homes. The tradition has come full circle in some places, like Borah.
Borah Chapel, now a house.
3. St Michael’s Mount
Not actually visited in 2019, I have crossed the causeway several times over the years. Named for the Archangel himself (rather than a brand of underwear), it’s an interesting spot, under the care of the National Trust.
Across the bay to St Micheal’s Mount
4. Marazion Methodist Church
This village is on the SW Coast path opposite St Michael’s Mount. The church has a history of of hospitality and shelter. We once left our tandem there and they kindly kept an eye on it.
Marazion
5. St Hilary Parish Church
This is a fascinating place, with early stone slab crosses in the churchyard and inside the remains of a Roman stone inscription. The interior is also decorated with painting by local people of the early Cornish Saints.
St Hilary Parish Church
6. Gwennap Pit
Associated with early Methodism, this is an open air place of worship, visit by John Wesley. There is also a small Methodist Chapel on the site. Wesley is said to have preached at Gwennap Pit 18 times between 1762 and 1789.
Gwennap Pit
6. St Kea Parish Church
Another delightful Parish Church named for a local Cornish Saint, the small village of St Kea is just off the A39 on the way to Truro. We had a picnic in the churchyard.
St Kea Parish Church
7. Truro Cathedral
The first Cathedral on my LEJOG route was at Truro. It has a small pigrim chapel inside the main door, otherwise you’ll need to pay the entrance fee for the main part of the building. The style is Victorian Gothic and it was built between 1880 and 1910.
Truro Anglican Cathedral
From my remembered bible: Come and be a living stone!
One more step along the world I go……
Janet Lees, one time End to Ender, now living in Longdendale.
Back from our long Spring/Summer Walk I think I better get back to writing to you, about your Rule and living with it in the 21st century. Two human beings many centuries apart, I wonder what we would make of each others lives? You a monastic, me a lay Benedictine in a very different world, both of us wondering about how to be human in community.
Human?
At the moment our society is going through a very divisive phase. There are many different attempts to glorify ‘us’ and demonise ‘them’ when in fact of course we’re all members of one race: the human race. Such attempts have been ongoing throughout history. Each Empire has given rise to folks who think they are in some ways superior to another set of people. Within each set rules have developed that segregate, exclude and disadvantage some on the grounds of specific characteristics: for example sex, race, ability, sexuality, gender and income.
Walking seems like a simple thing. The majority of the population can do it and it’s a form of movement seen us defining human evolution, until of course you can’t do it or not very well when all sort of obstacles and challenges appear and you are no longer in the mainstream. At that point discrimination steps in and all the ‘non-walkers’ or ‘poor-walkers’ are excluded from quite large parts of life because of their lack of bipedal motion or their difficulty with it. It’s just one example. One that from a position of current privilege (I can walk) I have experienced the world recently having walked to London and back.
A Camino: walking to London and back….
Along the way I meet many other folks and interacting with them found of course that I had more in common with some than others. It was ever thus. Religion is one thing that currently gets bad press. ‘I’m not religious’ countless people tell me. Some add a story of having fallen out of the church or feeling they got pushed out. Mostly religion comes out of it poorly. It was experienced as a set of dogmatic rules and a straight jacket to behaviour that was applied without care or concern by a hierarchy of leaders who were later found, too often, to be suspect at least and dangerous at worst. So much for religion then.
But religious or not, many people share stories and embedded in most of these is a thorny issue of identity. ‘I used to be…’ is a commonly encountered beginning. The one thing we still are, and cannot relegate to the past, is human. So what is it to be human and be united by our attempts to find identity in humanity?
Your Rule offers a group of human who want to live in community a way of living together to discover more about this. But it wouldn’t suit everyone of the humans I know. The idea of rules is coming into question everyday. What is legal or illegal? Can a person legally be illegal? I wonder what it is we don’t like about ourselves that means we want to define people like this.
In a week of weeks this business of being human came up in many forms. A small group of people, whether legal or not, were to be put on a plane, whether they wanted to be on it or not, and taken to another country, whether they wanted to go there or not because another group of people, human like them but not subject to the same rules, had decided, without asking even more people, that it was a good idea, whether legal or not.
Some of the other people who said they didn’t support it were religious leaders. It lead to a further ramping up of the debate about whether being religious and political was tenable or not. Now you need to know that some significant aspects of my faith formation happened in South Africa between 1984 and 1994, a time when the religious and political things was a major issue in that country. Religious leaders had said that discrimination on the grounds of race (and more specifically a way of governing called Apartheid) was morally repugnant and could not be defended on religious grounds. That it had been so defended by a white minority for a long time is a matter of record. It was, to some extent, down to the way people interpreted the bible, a religious things, but it was mostly about being human.
Earlier in the year, one of the leading opponents of that struggle against Apartheid died (I wrote about him then). ‘The Arch’, Desmond Tutu was quite a human but as a religious man he didn’t shy away from the link between religion and politics, and neither do I. ‘When White people came to Africa’, he, a Black African, used to say, ‘They had the Bible and we had the land. They said “Let us pray” and when we opened our eyes, we had the Bible and they had the land’.
More walking…
It was my time in South Africa that influenced my interpretation of the bible the most. It has been living in Britain in the 21st century that has challenged me to use those interpretative skills the most, including amongst my religious siblings in an out of community. Our shared humanity is not negotiable when it comes to being religious. At the centre of it is One Human who I choose to follow. On the walk someone asked me about that.
A fellow traveller, he described himself as a Pagan and told me he’d been very moved by the companionship and community he’d experienced when taking part in the Camino, that 800 kms centuries old walk across the north of Spain known as the Way of St James. I was walking a few hundred kms on a route of canal towpaths and disused railways in England at the time, but it was my Camino. He asked me what I thought the essence of Christian faith was. For me that comes from me remembered bible: Jesus said ‘Love one another’. He also ‘Follow me’.
He told me he could understand the first but he wasn’t sure about the second point. Why follow? On a towpath or disused railway line this may seem redundant advice. The path has one direction and away we go. But life is not all canal towpaths or disused railway lines, as this week has amply illustrated. How we will decide our direction? What will be our moral compass?
Will it be the further accumulation of wealth and status? Will it be how to bend to rules to suit ourselves and disadvantage some other people? How could it be arranged that my direction is inclusive and encouraging to others such that we travel as fellow humans, thriving in each others company whoever we are.
Wobbly walking…
Some say it’s like that on the Camino. I’ve never been so I can’t comment. But I have been End to End and on a lot of other paths. I have considered how to stop planes from taking off and what to do about food poverty in a rich country. I have though about other human beings, both known and unknown and whilst I’ve not always made the right decision I’m still following the Human One. I’m grateful to all those who keep me company, religious or not.
From my remembered gospel: Jesus said ‘Follow me’.
I journey this day in the name of the Human One
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
I doubt you are familiar with the Pirate Song. I was thinking about it in relation to the New Year and reading your Rule, which starts again at the beginning of the Prologue on New Year’s Day. As I have been reading this Rule backwards for the last few months, starting forwards again reminded me of the Pirate Song: ‘this way, that way, forwards, backwards over the Irish Sea’.
From the words of the song we get the idea that life as a member of a pirate community was full of fun and rum, even for the children. And the first rule of Pirating was going backwards and forwards. I suspect, on those grounds, I make a better pirate than a Lay Benedictine.
Going ‘this way, that way, forwards, backwards’…
It’s good to start again and the Rule repeats several times a year which means we become familiar at least with the first bit: Listen, my child. As I walk in the valley on winter days there are quite a few sounds, not least the migrating birds making their way down from north to south, and sometimes west to east calling to each other ‘this way, that way, forwards, backwards’, trying to keep together, like a community.
Landing in Longdendale
In 2021 our walking plan was ‘joining up the dots’: linking the walks we had done over the years to each other in a countrywide network. I managed 1017 miles like that in 2021. This year I’m hoping for some more ‘this way, that way, forwards, backwards’ though I’m not planning on crossing any seas or taking up rum. But I will keep trying to read the Rule in the context of ordinary life in Britain in the 21st century, some 15 centuries after you wrote it. I will not be alone. Many others will attempt the same thing. There’s no test at the end of the year and sometimes it can be hard to tell whether one is travelling forwards to backwards, but I will trust the Rule to show me some direction, offer me some support and encouragement and something to get my teeth into.
A Nursery Rhyme….
When I was one, I sucked my thumb, The day I went to sea. I climbed aboard a pirate ship And the Captain said to me: ‘We’re going this way, that way, Forwards backwards, Over the Irish Sea. A bottle of rum to fill my tum A Pirates’ life for me’.
From my remembered gospel: Jesus said ‘Follow me’
This way, that way, forwards or backwards, a Lay Benedictines life for me, please.
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
When I last wrote to you about your Rule I started at the beginning, as indeed most folks might. This time I thought I’d start at the end, which is more like me.
A sign on the Trans Pennine Trail that suggests East and West are not very far apart
I’ve been trying to find out about you, but apart from your Rule no one seems to have that much to say about the real you. Every thing I read suggests you were a good chap, which in itself makes me a bit suspicious. Something I read suggested you left school at 14, probably right and proper to your time and class but no something to be congratulated on these days, unless you eventually become a rich entrepreneur. At 14 you had religious aspirations, wanted to know about your place in the universe, to learn stuff, to pray and worship God. It’s not as uncommon as you might think these days either. A recent survey found 51% of young adults said they prayed regularly. Indeed younger adults were more likely to pray than those over 55.
The article didn’t take into account the ways in which prayer changes during our lifetimes, but change it does. I’m now 62 and I do not pray in the same way as I did 40 years ago. As I put my feet on the earth, one after the other, heel to toe as I walk through the landscape, so I pray, breathing gently and carefully all the while. Forty years ago I was in too much of a hurry to pray like that.
Altitude or attitude?
Your final chapter is really an encouragement to keep at it; something we all need. There are many things I have neglected over lock down. I’ve not played so much music, for example and consequently my efforts to get all the right notes in the right order are hampered. I still play, mostly with headphones on so as not to inconvenience others.
But the Rule is something that can only really be practised with others, which bring me back to you writing it down. History says you wrote it down near the end of your life, and maybe you borrowed some of the ideas from a few other rules. So for about 40 years or so perhaps you were thinking about it, planning it, starting a draft or two, working it out. I wish we had your works in progress, your odd notes on the Rule. I wonder what happened to those?
Did you share your thoughts with others, ask Scholastica or other monastics what you should leave out or put in? It seems to me that a Rule like this has to be a corporate effort. So it might more rightly be called the Rule of St Benedict and the Community he was part of.
Even with the last full stop on the page, this Rule is a work in progress in as much as it is not meant to remain a document but become part of the way we live, making daily life our pilgrim path. And so I will try to put my best foot forward in faith, even if this time, I’m walking backwards.
Song (by the Goons)
I’m walking backwards for Christmas, Across the Irish Sea, I’m walking backwards for Christmas, It’s the only thing for me.
All at sea….
Walk with me!
From A Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
In the book Winnie the Pooh, Piglet tells us his grandfather’s name was Trespassers Will. By doing so, Piglet was celebrating his ancestors and our trespassers.
Christians may be forgiven for getting muddled here, as we pray the prayer Jesus’ Tortoise: Forgive us our trespassers as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Actually trespass is a complex thing and it is worth a moment to celebrate our trespassers, without whom, in England at least, the Right to Roam would be much curtailed. I’m referring of course to the Kinder Mass Trespass in Derbyshire on 24th April 1932.
I followed some of that route this week (not all the way up to Kinder) and back to the village of Hayfield. There are various memorial markers on the route and it makes a worthwhile pilgrimage. I did not know that the Snake Path, which goes from Hayfield to the Snake Inn, was a much older route, from 1897. Some of the original iron gates remain in use.
Hayfield, Derbyshire, from the Snake Path
Remember also that those arrested for the Kinder Mass Trespass were young men: between 20-24 years old, arrested for riot and resisting arrest amongst other things, they served prison sentences for our right to roam.
Sign remembering the Mass Trespass
It interests me when we look historically of what was formerly a criminal offence but was later recognised as a public right. Things like women getting the vote for example. Remember these matters, they are important. Roaming and voting have this in common.
And as for a Mass Trespass….
Mighty Mountain Maker,
remembering those who have gone before to win the right to roam on these hills,
we call on you, Unsleeping One,
to fill us body, mind and spirit, as you fill us with bread and wine,
to make us a vigilant people
ready to defend the vulnerable and marginalised, to create safe spaces for all your creatures
as we take this pilgrimage, in the company of the Travelling One.
Janet Lees, Hayfield in Derbyshire (for a change) 28-30th June 2021.
Sister Thea Bowman,
F.S.P.A., once observed that “the quest for justice demands that I
walk in ways that I never walked before, that I talk and think and
pray and learn and grow in ways that are new to me.”(Quoted from Who
Shall be Welcome in God’s Tent, by Andrew Remick, 2019)
When I walk, I walk in Beauty,
Beauty, beauty everywhere.
When I walk I walk
in Beauty,
Beauty, beauty like a prayer.
This verse, that I
sometimes sing when walking, is based on a Native American saying.
This week in Canada,
more mass graves were found of First Nations People, buried
anonymously in land formerly occupied by a Christian school.
This week I visited
a Parish church in Derbyshire where a 15th century tomb displays
effigies of two people who may or may not be those for whom the tomb
is named.
That church itself
is dedicated to John the Baptist, memorable for loosing his head for
confronting an abuse of power.
Most of the time I walk in a green valley where the only memorials are in a small deserted graveyard where a few headstones remember those who laboured to build the system of reservoirs that were constructed in the 19th century to bring a cleaner water supply to the city of Manchester.
A view of Torrside, one of the reservoirs of Longdendale
In this small valley it is is usually easy to see beauty: it’s all around me.
St James church, Woodhead, where some of those who constructed the Longdendale reservoirs are remembered.
But what is beauty
and who says?
Is beauty more
easily found in over grazed pastures and moorland managed for
shooting imported game birds or in the withering branches of a tree
dying slowly from an imported disease?
Since walking the
End to End in 2019, a feat that is to me both incredible and
credible, I’ve had a lot of questions about walking through the
world around me, much of which has happened during a lockdown due to
a global pandemic. Walking is also the basis of my daily worship, the
rhythm of my prayer and the means of processing my thoughts.
I was glad to find
the words of Sister Bowman. I am committed to walking in ways that
are new to me, in ways I’ve never walked before as I learn, think
and pray in these new ways.
From my remembered
bible: It is the narrow way that leads to life.
Walk with me.
Janet Lees 25.06.2021, in Longdendale, Derbyshire.
We’ve had a week walking in East Yorkshire with some lovely weather. We were based at the lovely oasis that is Acorn Glade.
A small wildlife haven and people restorer that is a home from home, with lovely, welcoming hosts, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s also handy for many fine walks and COVID secure.
We were picking up on some of our previous East Yorkshire routes.
Starting at Selby on day 1 I walked to Riccall on the TPT. We were last at Selby on 24th August 2020. Riccall has a great deli for picnic items which are an essential accompaniment to a hot summer.
Day 2 saw me start again in Beverley, where we left off on 11th September 2020. Unfortunately in the mean time the corner Co-op has closed. Good thing we got those picnic items the previous day. My first visit was to Beverley Minister where John of Beverley is remembered by a skilful piece of embroidery. After leaving Beverley I was on the Rail Trail route of the old railway line to Market Weighton.
Day 3 saw me start that again at Kiplingcoates and while I ambled along to the Kiplingcoates Nature Reserve in a disused chalk pit, Bob began to other side of Market Weighton and came towards me. There were many common blue out, or uncommon common blue as I called them: the first I’d seen this year. We eventually met at St Helen’s Well, which was a cool shady spot on what had by now become a very hot day.
Day 4 began at the A163, where Bob had been the day before, and I took the Bubwith Rail Trail to Bubwith. This one won the award for Route of the Week, it’s quiet, green, well maintained straightness made it an ideal walking route for us. We also saw a partial eclipse of the sun on the way. At Bubwith, ice cream can be had at the Jug and Bottle in the High Street.
Day 5 began at Bubwith, with the last section of the line through what the locals called Dingle Dell, a beautiful green path to where the bridge runs out over the Derwent. From there it was down the riverside path and small roads. I met Bob at Wressle at the Parish Church of St John of Beverley. A more modern building, John’s reputation has survived locally for more than a thousand years. It’s Bede who recalls him in his Ecclesiastical History and may have known him as a young man. What came across to me from the various accounts was his humility and peacemaking. May such gifts of leadership be valued and promoted by us all.
Our week ended at Bamby Barrage where freshwater Derwent meet salty Ouse. We were last here on 25th August 2020 when I was walking east on the TPT. We had one of our picnics in the car park. It was a lovely week to ‘join up some dots’ in East Yorkshire and we plan another visit in September when we shall return to see Acorn Glade in Autumn glory.
From my remembered bible: Show me your ways, O God. May my path be straight.
Walk on
Janet Lees, in East Yorkshire, 7th to 11th June 2021. I hope to add photographs over the next few days.
When Julian of Norwich sees a Hazelnut, it appears that she did not immediately crack it and eat it (although she may have done so later). She looked at it. It was very small.
We’ve been out walking in Derbyshire again this week. The Peak District National Park is 70 years old this year: Britain’s oldest national park. Small is relative. The National Park is a lot bigger than a hazelnut but small on the surface of the earth. It’s very beautiful.
I recently heard about a project to map the lost temperate rain forests of England (here). This fascinates me as Woodland is one of my favourite habitats. Local walking for over a year due to the pandemic has opened me to many smaller and small things and I’ve begun identifying stuff I’d not previously given much consideration. I have a fungi book and thanks to the lost rain forests website I’ve also downloaded resources for identifying mosses and lichens.
Moss and lichen in Longdendale
Things get smaller and small. As I look at these tiny species I see a new world. Julian of Norwich remarked that the hazelnut was ‘All that is made’. That’s how the world is. A complex interweaving of smaller and small things, all that is made.
smaller and smaller worlds
So as I walk a bit further afield over the next few months continuing our ‘Joining the Dots’ project (an attempt with @therevbobw to link all our various walks together) I shall continue to use my new knowledge of small things as I make my pilgrimage and gaze at all that is made.
From the remembered gospel: Jesus showed them a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds.
Thanks for the small!
JAL: in Derbyshire, 8th May being the Feast of St Julian of Norwich
I’m writing this on the eve of the second anniversary of my End to End walk in 2019. I started at Land’s End on 2nd April and finished at John O’Groats on 12th August of that year: 1110 miles in 117 days. It is the anniversary of my full profession as a walker.
At Land’s End on 2nd April 2019
It had taken me 60 years as a novice to fully embrace the walking way. My End to End (also called LEJOG) had been proceeded by many other walks both long and short, some alone, some in company. I’d been working up to it for sometime. I’d supported Bob and Hannah when they walked their LEJOGs, in 2003 and 2012. A sort of mini walking community: The Community of the Good Traveller.
Let this be a sign to you…..
Holy Week is a good time to remember that travelling community, it’s origins and experiences. As we remember, this is my body, I remember what it feels like to walk more than you think you can. For others ‘This is my body’ will recall other physical experiences. None of us are disembodied cells and neither was Jesus.
bread….
From tomorrow I’m going to leave off writing to you for a while, but I couldn’t go without remembering this anniversary of profession. Not quite what monastics mean, I know, but I think of you and your embodied lay community (Rowan Williams reminded us about them being a lay community in his recent talk) and all the different professions that contributed to it. So too our Lay Community has discovered many different gifts and skills during this lock down year.
During my adult lifetime I’ve discovered many gifts myself and my contribution to the Community of the Good Traveller has changed over time, and will change again I’m sure. At the moment I’m an admirer of nature, recording my local wildlife sightings, making every step count.
If I don’t write for a while, I’ll not have forgotten you. I’ll take my remembered Rule with me and reflect on it. As a result of our correspondence there’s more I remember this year than last. There’s also those bits I’ve left out so far, still pondering them, particularly those sections on leadership. I’m not alone in still wondering what kind of leaders we need now. Ones of truth and integrity maybe obvious, but it’s clearly not as straightforward as that.
When thinking about leadership, too often we look to the Great Men, and now even occasionally to the Great Women of the faith. It’s good to know they’re there, members of the Community of the Good Traveller. But I’m looking for the more ordinary, dusty road traveller, hot cross bun eater.
bun…
I remember Margaret and Brian with love: their hospitality, affection, creativity and friendship. When we returned from South Africa in 1994, Margaret gently said, in response to our enthusiasm, ‘Not everyone can go so far, you know’, and six month later they were staffing the library of a theological college in Zimbabwe. It was a change from Twickenham High Street, but just as hot and holy.
But she was right, stay local if you can. We’ve stayed local all through the winter lock down, and hope to begin some further journeys later this month. But local is good, even in Royston Vasey (which, in case you’re not sure is the alternative name for the village where we live).
Recalling the opening titles of a certain ‘League of Gentlemen’
Meanwhile, I’ll ‘Walk on‘ and hopefully ‘Be back soon‘ (two travelling songs I sometimes sing).
From the remembered bible: Jesus said ‘Follow me’.
LEJOG Anniversary Declaration
I inhabit a space made by the Creator, lived in by the Son and animated by the Spirit.
That space is around
me and within me.
I commit myself anew to The Community of the Good Traveller,
staying local where I can, treading gently on the earth, making each step count, ready to salute the species around me, and celebrate our place in the universe.
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
