39: Where good things happened along the way

Episode 39: Eoin shares his experience of cycling from Canterbury to Rome following the Via Francigena pilgrimage route. Inspired by saints, by the welcome and kindness of others, he explains how he continues to be sustained by what happened - even while still processing it all.

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Hearts in Search of God: Diocesan pilgrim routes in England & Wales

National Jubilee Pilgrimage of Hope 2025

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Transcript

 You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro. My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of the ways, we're living our faith today. Pope Francis has used the image of a caravan. A diverse group of people travelling together, on a sometimes chaotic journey together. That's an image that has helped to shape this podcast. I hope you'll feel encouraged and affirmed and maybe challenged at times. I am too in these conversations.

 So listeners, I'm joined today by Eoin, and we're going to speak about pilgrimage. So in this year of jubilee, this is gonna be something interesting to talk about. So thank you for joining me, Eoin.

Thanks for having me, Theresa. 

Perhaps you'd explain to us how you came to do a pilgrimage last year, and it wasn't a walking pilgrimage. So I think listeners will be interested to hear about that too. 

Yeah. So the story starts sometime in the latter half of 2023 when I read an article, an account by an American lady, where she described that she had gone on a walking pilgrimage from Canterbury to Rome. It was quite an interesting story in itself. But I also noted that she had followed a trail called Via Francigena, which I had not heard of before then. And I was further intrigued to notice that as well as being a walking route, there was a possibility of cycling on the same route. I'm a pretty keen, what I describe as, a functional cyclist. So I like to use the bike for just ordinary journeys as much as I can. I haven't been on long trips, not in many years. Hadn't gone, like, cycle camping or cycle touring. But I was looking at this, and I thought that sounds, you know, really interesting. I've been to Rome a number of times and always found it a very good experience. And I was thinking, you know, I could go to Rome by bicycle following this. I thought I could combine, you know, the idea of going to Rome with cycling. From a purely temporal, corporal kind of basis, I'd realised that the best time to do it would be probably in the September, October 2024, and then I realised that I would have, quotes, a milestone birthday in October of 2024. And so there came the thought that I could actually cycle on a pilgrimage that would finish up in Rome at the time of my sixtieth birthday. I kinda developed that idea and basically did it. 

Sounds like a huge project to undertake to think about how you're gonna travel. Presumably, it took a few weeks to cover the route.

Altogether, I cycled for about thirty three or thirty four days, and then there were some kind of hiatus periods. I have to let you in on a secret that I did not cycle directly all of the way from Rheims in France to Lausanne. I took some trains and a boat as well as doing some cycling. So for various reasons, that happened. And I also took a break at one point, so I wasn't continuously in motion as it were. I left home on the August 30, and I arrived back on the October 31. 

Wow. And was there in the original article that you read, was there a spiritual element? 

There wasn't really. And one thing that I discovered along the way is Via Francigena, it's as much a cultural and historic route as it is a pilgrimage route. At various points along the way, though, people would do spot surveys about what the motivation was for undertaking the route. I think it's probably fair to say that a spiritual motivation was pretty much in the minority. But, well, I think it's an interesting thing to say: the people that I spoke with, I found some who had no avowed spiritual intention, but they actually found some spirituality there somewhat maybe unexpectedly. It's interesting that if you went back into the Middle Ages pre English reformation, at which point, by the way, I discovered that King Henry VIII actually outlawed pilgrimage. You were basically forbidden to do it. But maybe several hundred years before then, it was a big thing. People would go broadly along the route that I followed from England towards Rome. And not just, by the way, from England. As you go along, you find that there are collection points where people from other countries would be joining. People now might find it quite difficult to comprehend. There was actually a pilgrimage in the reverse direction. Thomas a Becket, who I discovered a lot more about doing the pilgrimage, he was a very venerated figure, not only in England, but across Europe. 

So people are interested in coming to Canterbury on pilgrimage? 

Yeah. People would be going in the opposite direction. It was not a one way street. And by the way, while I stopped at Rome, the actual Via Francigena goes all the way to close to Bari, at which point you would, in olden times, have taken a boat to bring you closer to Jerusalem. 

So you have a bit more to do next time. I'm interested that although you were cycling and therefore faster than a walking pace, but you did still encounter people to talk to along the way. Would that be when you were stopping in the evenings or for refreshments?

So the way I'd describe it is, up until Lausanne, you'll meet very few other pilgrims and have very little by way of pilgrim infrastructure. The whole way across France, you're not really meeting anyone. Things start to change from Lausanne onwards. Once you get into Italy, and especially once you're out of the Aosta Valley, you're then on a very much, a place where you're stopping at Ostello and similar kind of accommodation, and you're meeting people pretty much every day. The typical routine is that is that you share the evening meal together, have breakfast together in the morning, and then go on your way. So there was quite a lot of chance to talk with people. And that was, you know, really a big positive as the journey went on. 

And so are there conversations you had, you know, that have stayed with you. That you reflect on, come to your mind when you think back to the pilgrimage? 

Not maybe massively so much with fellow pilgrims as more just the people who would be hosting you. So there were all kinds of people and just the kind of kindness and generosity of the people running the accommodations in some places like Vercelli, which is a beautiful small city with a lovely cathedral. There, the hostel was in, like a  really ancient building going back, you know, hundreds of years, and it was run by some people from a confraternity of Saint Jacopo. So it's an actual church-led organisation. And so the people there, they were very structured. Further down the road in Lucca, which is kind of one of the main stopping points, there was a different, also church-led, organisation. And there, as the pilgrims collected in the evening, they actually did a foot washing ceremony to welcome people there before the evening meal. And then after breakfast the next morning, there was a specific prayer to send people on their way. So that kind of thing was lovely. But then in other places, you might just encounter lay people from community organisation or something like that. But they would equally be very welcoming. So, yeah, a lot of those were kinda like my good memories from time on the road.

And while you were cycling along in, hopefully, some good weather and beautiful countryside, but I know it's not always like that on a pilgrimage. Did you have time to reflect? You mentioned it was a milestone birthday. Were you thinking about your life, or were you just thinking about the routes and needing to get there and how hot it was? 

To be honest, more of the latter, really. You're thinking about all the things that you have to do today that maybe subconsciously gives you time to think about other things in a different kind of way. But it probably wouldn't be the best idea to be thinking about some wrong that you'd done twenty, twenty five years ago while you're going down a hill at high speed or whatever. What is accurate to say is I was mostly blessed with incredibly fine weather. It wasn't too hot nor too cold. It rained on me on a handful of occasions. The scenery that you see as you go on a trip like that, it's so varied. It's rich. It's full of life, and there are beautiful differences and contrasts. You know, starting out going across the plains in Northern France where a lot of the route takes you through World War I scenes. Lots and lots of very poignant memorials. Then you come down -  obviously, you go in through Switzerland. You've got the sheer grandeur of the alps, towering mountains with this incredible thought that people actually managed to live up there. You come down through the Val D'Aosta on the Italian side. That's just like this medieval kind of thing, heavily forested, forts, ancient towns. Then you're on the so called the plain of the Po. It's just very, very flat, grows lots and lots of rice. Vercelli that I mentioned earlier, it's known as the rice capital of Europe. Then you cross over the Po, which is a quite amazing experience because you can actually get a boat that brings you on a crossing of the Po, including with your bike. And then you're off into the Apennines.

 You cross over the Apennines at a thousand meters high. And then you briefly glimpse the Ligurian Sea, which is part of the Mediterranean. And then you're off again up into hills, and then you're into the Tuscan hills, which are just as amazing as anyone ever says. Before you know it, you've come down through all there, and you're into the province of Lazio. And then you're into Rome, which is like a whole separate thing. And then you come into, of course, the tiny little beautiful Vatican City. 

So you went all the way into the Vatican. Is there a passport to be stamped? 

Sure. Yeah. There's a pilgrim passport, a credential, which you get before. I got it at Canterbury Cathedral. And then as you go along the way, you get it stamped. Some of the accommodations are maybe more strict about it than others. Some would not let you in to the pilgrim accommodation without sight of the credential. Becomes a really beautiful memory of the time. And when you get to the Vatican in possession of a duly stamped passport, you get a fast track. You get to bypass the ordinary queue that's going into the Basilica. You get in, to get the one final stamp and you get a testimonial, a kind of graduation certificate. 

Oh, well, that's marking your achievement then. And you mentioned that you've been to Rome before. Did it feel like somebody who's a Catholic arriving in Rome having done this amazing pilgrimage, was there a feeling of achievement that connected you with your faith, or was it more about, phew, I finished cycling? 

So on the very first day that I left my house, I cycled across the fields to the next town over, Twyford, and I went to weekday Mass, which is something I normally wouldn't do. I'm normally at work. And to be honest, I'm not normally the kind of person that would go to an ordinary weekday Mass. But I went to Mass there in the tiny little church with, you know, not very many people, to ask Saint Thomas More, who's the patron saint of that church, to guide me well on the voyage. And then I went by train to London. I did a little mini tour of some places in London that are associated with Saint Thomas More. So his birthplace, the place where he lived in Chelsea, and the place where he met his end at the Tower Of London. And I headed down to Canterbury by the train. And I'm not sure if you know but the major relic of Saint Thomas More is actually in Saint Dunstan's church in Canterbury. And that's a little bit grisly, but actually his head was preserved there by his daughter who was Margaret Roper, who was living in Canterbury at the time. So I had that connection with Saint Thomas More from our tiny little church in my home parish. And then I went on the journey. Eventually, when I got to Rome, I checked in in the afternoon. I went in and got the testimonial, but I realised that there was a Mass there at 06:30 in the evening. So I had to cycle off to find the accommodation and it was pouring with rain, and then absolutely tipped it down. It was one of the rare times it did. I was pretty tired. I'm not going to lie. But I thought I should go back and go to Mass this evening. So I went back to the Basilica. It was basically just like a 06:30 vigil Mass on Saturday. And, of course, it was all in Italian, which I don't speak. But it was just a beautiful connection back to the point where I'd set out. I thought now my journey is done. I've gone from this tiny church here. Along the way, I've gone through various cathedrals and ordinary churches that I've Gone to Mass at, but now I was finishing at not quite the mother church because, obviously, it was not Saint John Lateran, but Saint Peter's Basilica is, like, pretty high up there. There was definitely a big loop that closed for me at that time. 

That's brilliant. Yeah. I was going to say you must have been to Mass in a range of different places as you were crossing Europe. 

It was pretty interesting. Obviously, the first day of my actual cycling was in Canterbury. And so I started by going to the morning service in Canterbury Cathedral. Obviously, Anglican - I didn't think that would necessarily be a problem. And it was just, again, typical of a 9AM service on a Saturday. There were not very many people. It was in a little side chapel. It was a beautiful short service. I think credit to our Anglican friends. I think they do that kind of service, beautifully. I left from there. Then I had Mass in France, Switzerland, Italy, Rome, which I count as separate from Italy, and the Vatican, which I count as separate from all of the above. Probably the most unusual Mass was the one that I was in in Switzerland where I was in the Abbey of Saint Maurice, where I was actually staying in the Abbey that evening. I had been told that I needed to arrive before 05:30 because after 05:30, I was told all of the congregation would be at the evening service. I put in an extra effort and got there in good time, and I was I was pretty tired. That was quite a long day's biking. To be honest, I did just want to kind of lie down and go to sleep, but I thought I’m gonna go and so I went in to this evening service at Saint Maurice. It was a Mass that was sung in some kind of old French, and it bore very little relation to the order of Mass as you or I might understand it. What I discovered is that the Abbey at Saint Maurice has had a service continuously, as in every day, since something like 450 AD. 

Just if I may, I know that because I've been to the Abbey Saint Maurice in Switzerland. A friend who was doing some travelling told us about it, and so my husband and me visited there. It is very interesting that they've got that perpetual prayer for all those hundreds of years. So it's really nice to hear that you were there too. 

Yeah. I think it's definitely one of those amazing places. I'd only found it, to be honest, because it was on my list of places that I could stay that were at an opportune breakpoint in the journey. I hadn't known the background about it beforehand. And I think, well, I wouldn't claim to be guided by the Holy Spirit or anything like that. I think you do -  things like that happen, and you think, well, that was a very interesting thing to happen to discover this amazing resource. And it was just there, and it's been there for eighteen hundred years or something. 

Well, some people might be more ready to think they're being guided by the Holy Spirit, Owen. But you're modestly not wanting to go there. 

Who can tell? I certainly felt guided and protected. I'd say at another point, I think I cycled something in the reach of 2,000 km. And in all that time, I had one mechanical mishap, which was for my brake, one of my brakes, to fail. On the very same day, I was headed towards a place that I was gonna stay in. It was called, Bed e Bike, which was a bicycle-oriented bed and breakfast. And I thought that was just a place that would have a nice place to put your bike. But in fact, they also had a very skilled bike mechanic. And when I arrived, he just took my bike, and an hour later, he'd fixed the faulty brake. And then the only other thing, the only time I had a puncture that I couldn't fix, the evening of that day, just as my tire kind of finally deflated and wouldn't pop up again, I found myself in a small town quite randomly, a little bit to the south of Sienna. And by coincidence or otherwise, I found a bike shop that it was, a) open, b) had a guy in there who was very friendly and fixed up the puncture in such a way that I went all the way on to Rome on some really rough roads. So I definitely felt like I was being looked after on the trip. 

On arriving in Rome, did you feel a sense of achievement? You mentioned this really nice book-ending with Mass at the beginning and the end of your journey. And then coming home from that Mass, did you feel a sense of, you know, having achieved something amazing for this milestone birthday, or was it just too tiring at that point? Did it take some time to sink in? 

Yeah. I mean, I think to an extent, I'm still even some months after, still kinda, like, processing the whole thing. I think what it feels like is an abundant blessing that's still present because I've got so many extra resources that I can call on now, not only about the physical achievement of cycling there, but of moments along the way where good things happened. You've got things that you can go back to later on and take sustenance from even though they're now in your past. That's kind of how I feel about it at the moment, but I feel like it isn't even still fully processed, and it may be that I reserve the right to think more things about it in future, I think, if that makes sense. 

I think that makes good sense. Yeah. I think you've explained that very well. Thank you. Before we began recording, you mentioned that the lives of saints are important to you, that there are some saints that you have found out more about. So you mentioned Saint Thomas More there at the beginning of your journey. 

Yeah. And Saint Thomas Becket, one of the other Saint Thomas', that was very interesting. Somewhere in Emilia-Romagna near Fidenza, I went a little bit out of the way because I noticed a church dedicated to Saint Thomas Becket. I discovered there was built in the 1400s or something. Sadly, now not in use, but it's still in perfectly good order. It's just a very interesting thing to find it there. You're now, at that point, something like 1,400 km from Canterbury. So it kinda just shows you how his influence had spread. In Switzerland, halfway up the Alps going towards the pass of Grand Saint Bernard, I stopped in a town I'd never heard of before the trip, which was Orsières. In that town, which was a very small little place, I discovered that there was a lot of mention of Bienheureux Maurice Tournay. He came from an even smaller village, way up on a mountain, and he was born somewhere around 1900. He ended up entering the monastery in Grand Saint Bernard, which is right up at the very top of the mountain over 2,000m altitude. But he went from there. This is the really interesting part for me. He went from there to Tibet. Basically, was establishing the Catholic church and structure in Tibet in the 1930s. I just thought it pretty astounding to think when you looked at how hard the terrain was just for everyday life. Everything's way up on a mountain. You think life there was pretty difficult, but he then went from there to a place that probably has quite a similar landscape, I guess, very mountainy. But on the other side of the world where the language and culture are completely different. He seemed to get on quite well there. But sadly, in the early 1940s, he was assassinated and is now regarded as a martyr in the church. And going into Italy where you'll find, in Lucca there's a St Gemma. I think she was active around 1900. The saints seem to be more visible there than they necessarily are in our everyday life. 

It sounds like something appeals to you about finding out the events of their lives and, in a way, marvelling at their ambition and achievement. They're feeling called to those challenges, I suppose, would be a better way of saying it. It's something to be inspired by along the way, I suppose. 

I think so. Yeah. I think it's like, obviously, we're not all going to achieve what these people did. But I think to find out about them is to be inspired, and to be inspired can't be a bad thing.

I was going to talk about this year of Jubilee and just see if you have any plans.

It was actually a little side effect of going on the journey, was that coming into Rome, as we're getting closer, people in the hostels, especially the more religious-minded ones would mention about that. I have to admit, it had somewhat passed me by. But once you get to Rome itself, the signs of the Jubilee are everywhere. Everywhere you go, you see the symbol, the lovely colourful symbol. I don't know if it counts as inspiration or not, but my wife and I do an advent window every year. We did for our advent window this year, we actually kind of recreated the Pilgrims of Hope logo, and it shone out of our window, our front window. I thought it was actually a way of bringing the message to people. 

Wind back a little bit there and tell us about that. You decorate a window every advent, and is that in your neighbourhood?

Yeah. It's a village trail of Advent windows. I mean, there are all kinds of everything. 

Some of it is Santa and reindeers and things? 

Let's say the probably the majority. But we always stick to some kind of nativity theme. So I think we have a nice one that's done in shadow, of the Annunciation in a slightly contemporary setting. And we have another one of the journey to Bethlehem. But this year, we changed it up a bit, and we've recreated the Pilgrim of Hope logo and slogan. 

Wow. 

I really like the logo, and I thought it was a good message to share with people. I don't know if anyone saw it in our window and was inspired to go and search up what pilgrims of hope would actually mean, but maybe they would, and maybe they would be inspired to think of doing something themselves. 

Wow. What a great idea. Well, you kicked off the jubilee year properly. That is very impressive. I mean, you've already peaked in a way by being in the Vatican. 

Your last guest who sponsored the creation of pilgrimage routes in every diocese. 

That's right, Phil. 

Yeah. I thought that was fantastic. I have not actually yet searched up what the Portsmouth one is. I will go and look and see if I can do maybe a bike oriented version of that. I would like to eventually go and go from Rome to Bari. Whether I would then get a boat towards the Holy Land, I don't know. 

It's something to think about doing, isn't it? Although, now's a hard time to go to the Holy Land, of course. 

Yeah. 

Now for people who may be wondering about the diocesan pilgrimage routes that Phil set up, I'll put a link in the episode notes to Phil's website again, Hearts in Search of God, so people can check on that. And this year, just to say, there's also an extra pilgrimage opportunity for people around England and Wales to follow pilgrimage routes and congregate in Nottingham in September, which Phil is also organising. So I'll put a link to that.

Pilgrimage can be all kinds of anything. I really think it's worthwhile. My kind of working definition is any journey that is nontrivial, that takes some effort, and that has some kind of spiritual purpose behind it. That can be done in a half day. It can be done in a day. It can be done over a weekend, or it can be done over a couple of months as in my trip. So  on Via Francigena. You don't have to think about doing all of it. You can do some of it, and you can do it by cycling. You can do it by walking. There are people who have done it by horse. At some of the Ostellos, they actually have a sign up saying, We welcome pilgrims on foot, by bicycle, on horse, or even on a mule. And so what I'd say is that there's huge opportunity on that one route. It's a huge resource if you've only got two days, five days. If you're not up to walking long distances, there are train and bus that you can use to help you. Many along the way, as I discovered, many amazing spiritual and human resources to tap into. 

That's really helpful. I like your working definition of pilgrimage. Thank you for sharing that, Owen, and thank you for giving some encouragement to people who might just need a little nudge to think about really doing something and making a journey that has some meaning to it, especially in this year of Jubilee. I think there's lots there that will resonate with people, whether they've done some sort of journey or are just thinking about it. So thanks very much for making the time, Owen.

You're welcome, Theresa, and thank you for having me. 

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic this time. I hope today's conversation has resonated with you. A new episode is released each Wednesday. Follow All Kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms.  Rate and review to help others find it. And follow our X, Twitter, and Facebook accounts @kindsofCatholic. You can comment on episodes and be part of the dialogue there. You can also text me if you're listening to the podcast on your phone, although I won't be able to reply to those texts. Until the next time.