EDDIE GILMORE 

About Eddie Gilmore

I grew up in an Irish family in Coventry and later moved to Canterbury where I was part of the L’Arche Kent community for twenty-eight years. It’s where I met my wife Yim Soon and we have three grown up children. I spent the next seven years as CEO of a wonderful London-based charity called the Irish Chaplaincy whose main areas of work are with prisoners, Travellers and seniors.

Feeling that the time was right for another new challenge, I applied for and was selected as Leader/CEO of L’Arche Ireland, which involved moving to Kilkenny in November 2023. It seemed like a marriage made in heaven but it was not to be and I left in August 2024. Yim Soon and I took it as an opportunity to walk! In October we will walk the whole of the 800 km of the Camino Frances in Spain. I did this in three stages over three years from 2015, the final stage being with Yim Soon, and in 2023 we did the Portuguese Coastal Camino. In February 2025 we will walk the 520 km of the Lycian Way along the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. Then in April and May we be in Italy to walk the Via Francigena from Florence to Assisi and Rome. I don’t even know how long it is, but at least we won’t be starting in Canterbury as some do, including Phil!

As well as being a walker I am a writer and a musician and have been most fortunate that in all my areas of work I have been able to share my love of walking, writing and singing! I have had the privilege of playing guitar to groups of Travellers in prison, to older Irish in care homes and to always-appreciative members of L’Arche communities. I’ve even played in an Alpine cave on top of a waterfall! I enjoy doing regular reflections for BBC Radio 2’s ‘Pause for Thought,’ and a recent one is: Such listening can save a life

I have been lucky to have had three books published, the third of which is about pilgrimage. I discovered pilgrimage in my first year at L’Arche, when a motley group of fifty people walked over five days from Rochester to Canterbury. We ‘slept’ in church halls en route and were offered the warmest of hospitality by the locals. It was an experience that was both exhausting and utterly joyous.

Yim Soon and I will return to Canterbury in June 2025 and I plan to start leading organised pilgrimages on some of the Pilgrim Ways that Phil has helpfully and kindly created. There is sure to be story-telling and music involved! I look forward to walking with you…

Books by Eddie 

Another Day in Paradise 

Eddie takes us with him as he walks the ancient Camino to Santiago de Compostela and to other popular pilgrimage destinations: Canterbury, Rome, Jerusalem, Lourdes, Walsingham and Croagh Patrick.

He introduces us to a range of colourful and international fellow-travellers, whose reasons for walking are as diverse as are their characters. As has been the case for centuries, there is something about the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other for long distances that brings people into relationship and draws out their story. 

This is a book of stories, both his own and those of the incredible people he has met on the way. The book also offers a view of a kinder and more inclusive world; one where, through the simple act of walking, we come to see that world and those around us with an altered perspective and to undergo a process of mutual transformation. 

Come and take a walk and listen to some uplifting, inspiring and life-changing pilgrim tales…

Looking ahead with hope

Looking Ahead with Hope is a collection of short and distinct yet inter-connected pieces written over a three-year period in the course of my work for the Irish Chaplaincy.

The book is a weaving together of visits to such places as prisons, care homes and monasteries with travels further afield: pilgrimage on the Camino in Spain, walking retreats in the French Alps, and meetings and events in Ireland. There are various ascents: of Ireland’s holy mountain; of Korean mountains to visit remote Buddhist temples; and, by bike, of the steepest road in the world.

At the heart of the book are the encounters with a host of characters, which touch and transform and which reveal our deep connections with one another. The natural world features prominently; so too the part that food and music can play in the sharing and celebration of our common humanity. These are stories of wonder, reflections on faith and on the human condition, and a frequent refrain of gratitude, and of hope.

The Universe Provides

The Universe Provides collects more stories of hope, miracles and uplifting personal encounters from my travels around a global community rediscovering itself following the isolations of Covid. Following the course of a calendar year, gently guided by the waymarkers of the natural and liturgical seasons, I record countless moments of friendship, kindness and connection, often accompanied by laughter, tears and music. Some of those moments are planned, others arrive unexpectedly: gifts from the universe, which truly provides when we open our hearts.