WALKING THE ST PHILOMENA WAY 

Escaping the Town

Upon setting off my first object was to escape the town - something easier said than done on the Liverpool-facing side of the Wirral Peninsula. Here, stretching from New Brighton right round to Ellesmere Port, the towns and villages that might, a hundred years ago, have had much to separate them have been strung together, the gaps filled in with industrial estates, tenement housing and shopping centres. Great public parks like that in Birkenhead, Eastham Woods, Higher Bebington and Brotherton stand almost as an oasis amidst this great mass. Of course

there remains much that divides these places, and locals rightly resist the seemingly inexorable advance of the ‘areas’ of Prenton and Birkenhead, which an indiscriminate onlooker might now happily assign to any such place between Bebington and Wallasey, but I must confess that I did rather look forward to getting away from the endless streets, out past Ellesmere Port and into the countryside proper. It did not take me long to fully realise just how slow a method of transportation walking is. With my full pack, which within minutes of setting off had already begun to weigh me down, I could not have been doing more than four miles and hour, and this in the place that was most familiar to me, where shortcuts were most easily found and indeed where the streets seemed to bring me most directly from one goal to the next. Patience, as I swiftly realised, was going to be a vital virtue on my journey. It could not simply be a cause of rushing through the places I did not want to be in so as to more swiftly reach the ‘real’ attractions. If I was going to do that then I may as well have taken the bus. The route of the pilgrimage sent me straight through down the Mersey coast for a reason: it is here that all the churches of the Wirral were reared, and they could form something of a roadmap for me now as I weaved my way towards Ellesmere Port. Here were churches with which I had little to no association but which did, nevertheless, represent the faithful communities most local and proximate to my own. There, leaving Oxton, was St Saviours, where Wilfred Owen had gone in his boyhood - and further on I came to St Joseph’s, where I had been confirmed. How little I knew of these places, standing inside a mile of my own home. The point was hammered home when I came to St Anne’s of Rockferry, which I never before had clapped eyes upon. It was after passing St Anne’s that I vowed to stop and appreciate every church, no matter its denomination, that I came upon along my way. It is with great respect that I record the names of St Mary of the Angels and St Pauls, of Hooton and Childer Thornton respectively. Both were great aids in what I might call the first moment of contemplation within my Pilgrimage. St Mary’s sits at a well-known fork, where the New Chester Road can be taken either into Ellesmere Port or towards the Welsh border. Its physical setting sparked certain ruminations which, I must confess, are not new to me. The Church sits at a crossroads, and it has been sitting there for some time. I am pertinently, and painfully aware that my views of the Church are not shared in common by my generation, and nor indeed are they prolific amongst those now middle-aged. My parish, to put things bluntly, is the preserve of older people. Their lives are intimately connected to the Mass, to the church hall, its charitable endeavours in the community. Yet their numbers dwindle and are not replenished. Perhaps Christianity in England might forge on for another ten or twenty years in its present state, with just enough numbers to hold itself together and fulfil its official obligations, and just enough parishioners to keep the buildings open. Such shall be the continued way of things if something is not done; we shall sit at that crossroads and deny, or at least diminish, the spectre of doom that beckons us down one of those roads. Even now the mental block is at play, for even I myself, having re-read that word ‘doom,’ have almost dismissed it as being a little dramatic and over-the-top. Yet truly that is what awaits us. There are no young people, that is a simple fact: the method by which Catholics and Protestants in this country have renewed and revitalised themselves in every past generation has all but departed. There is nobody to pass this all down to, and this fact will become apparent when those who are meant to be ‘doing the passing’ as it were have themselves gone beyond the mortal veil. The road of death beckons to us, who do nothing and deny reality, and sooner than we think it will be the only road available. The road of life, the road of immense struggle and heartache, but of life nevertheless, grows more rugged and overgrown and impassible with each passing year. All of this came into my mind as I sat and rested my shoulders in the cool quiet of St Paul’s, whose open door had beckoned me inside. My thoughts were further sharpened in this regard by the War Memorials that could be found outside St Paul’s and then, further on, at St Mary’s Church in Eastham Village. A statue of Christ stands at the centre of the Village, visible from where the road enters it from Bromborough. He is depicted placing the immortal crown upon an invisible head; the head of a soldier, now conspicuously absent from the world, who had given his life, his all, in the defence of his country in the last century. Being so near to the commemoration dates of the D-Day landings, I found it difficult to walk past even the smallest war memorial without stopping to pay my respects. “They sought the Glory of their Country, They see the Glory of their God” read the inscription. How interesting it was, I thought, that many would smile at such reserved stoicism now. A simple mantra, a young person might say, to disguise the personal anguish and horror of the real war. Yet they forget that this monument was erected by those who fought in that real war. Those words were considered a worthy tribute to the dead in that time, and they were considered thus by those who had just shared in their suffering. This monument and its message, they thought, best commended their sacrifice, and their principles, to those now living. 

Somewhere on the Shropshire-Union Canal

It took me far longer than I had anticipated to reach the canal in Ellesmere Port, and I was not particularly glad to see that I had a further eight miles to the outskirts of Chester. It was past twelve, but I was determined to at least make some progress along this stretch before stopping for lunch. After a few miles or so I called a halt. There are many bridges that span the canal, some of them are used by cars, some are parts of popular public footpaths. Some are all but abandoned, choked with weeds and almost impassable. I was consciously searching for some happy medium; a lesser used bridge that would still permit my entry. I found just what I was looking for in Bridge 138, where I unbuckled my bag for the first time since leaving home and sat for near half an hour in perfect, uninterrupted stillness. The sun was up, and it warmed the stone beneath me. I rested by back against the wall and looked out on the still serene of the midday, feeling deeply content. I sank for a time into self-congratulation, happy that I had made a start to this journey which, though modest by the standards of most walkers I’m sure, was still nevertheless the first real caper that I had embarked upon. And I had done it, I thought: I had done the hardest part, which is stepping out your front door. The Christian metaphor that arose then was what awoke me to my silly self-satisfaction. “Yes, sir, you have gotten yourself out of the door, but the reason why that was so hard is because you had mentally pictured all these tough miles and bruised shoulders. Now you must actually deal with them, or else give up and return home a failure.” How well did this state-of-affairs fit my own life in faith; the hardest part in everything is getting started. It is all very well to sit and think and imagine wonderful things, but their attainment is a process of struggle; a spiritual struggle that is, even now through this pilgrimage, being translated into and expressed by a physical one. Shrewsbury Cathedral represents far more than a physical place: it is the promise of renewal and re-commitment and enlightenment. Having decided to reach it, now you must reach it. Having investigated my motives and not found them wanting, I found myself more determined than ever. I settled once again on the bridge and basked in the sunshine of the early afternoon, and found that my every thought and concern soon melted; my head itself seem to fill with a warm glow, and all I could do was smile at the birds flitting to and fro in the trees, and the long grass swaying in the fields. Seeking to in someway crystallise this moment, I sketched out a few short lines, which I have transcribed below:

Has heaven to offer a sight more fair?

What crumbling, mortared brick has given;

In their lofty heights the clouds must stare,

At one content with weeds and heather.

Yet happily is this bridge adorned,

Wild English flowers hide her flaws,

And from her mound the gaze is borne,

Far, far away - where no great cause

Nor any force of worldly mind,

Nor thought can reign; cleverness and such kind…

Just quiet, waving fields of light,

A haughty hedge - a wandering Kite.

Chester Cathedral

There is little that I can personally say that would do justice to the glories of Chester Cathedral. My only regret on visiting was that I could not stay as long as I should have liked. The canal path finally brought me right up through the walls of the city, and from there it was the work of but a few minutes to progress through the marketplace and on up the hill, where sat the Town Hall and the Church on either side of the main square. It was the town hall that I had spotted from the Canal path. That in itself was a fascinating new experience: to travel into a city and not be

alerted to the fact by road signs or junctions, but rather to approach on foot, the view obscured by trees, aiming for the sole visible tower. That, of course, is how it would always have been done once. Now here I sat, seeing all around me the splendid tombs and transepts for which I set off for some eight hours ago. It had been a long time since I had gone to Chester, and I was glad to return in such a way. The nature of the journey, of the great purpose that I had attached to it, seemed to make me take some extra-fascination in what the people around me were up to. I saw families, one of which I immediately identified as American, walking to and fro, each of them acting with commendable reverence. There I saw a man with, I presumed, his elderly father, praying. And off to one side was a woman my age, sketching in her notepad. Each of them had come here for a reason: they had all been drawn towards Chester Cathedral by a shared impulse. They desired to walk its ancient ways, to feel stirred within themselves this place that seemed beyond understanding; far surpassing the thrills and pleasures and distractions of the world outside, far exceeding the other ‘attractions’ of this old town. How many pilgrims, wondered I, had passed through this place? I was just one of a countless multitude, a crowd of witnesses, who had felt like me the majesty and grace inherent to this hallowed space. After a period of sitting I became conscious of time, and pressed on to the campsite. It was on my way there that I came across the fascinating monument to George Marsh, a Protestant martyr who was burnt to death in the city of Chester under the reign of Bloody Mary, and whose name is recorded in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Gone are the times when the Christian denominations of this country could command such positions in the population from which they could afford to persecute one another. Our joint peril has, now, demonstrated our broader unity better than any ecumenical council. Perhaps indeed it was that factiousness - not necessarily the disagreements themselves, some of which pertain to deeply vital questions, but rather the wasted energy and hateful violence that so often accompanied them - that has contributed somewhat to speeding the downfall of the Christian religion in this country.

Making Camp on the First Evening

The struggle had been a hard one; the stretch from Chester Cathedral to my campsite much longer than I had expected. I think it would be fair to say, when at last that little green sign of Birch Farm came into view, that something of the mornings bright lustre had been lost; overshadowed by aching legs, by the unappetizing prospect of a night’s camping, and indeed by the seemingly endless corners that had filled those last miles. Yet when the tent was up and dinner was eaten things once again assumed a brighter aspect. Sitting alone, surrounded on all sides by unbroken miles of rural Cheshire, and with the evening sun just beginning to darken the sky over westward, I recalled to mind those many times when, labouring over a long paper in the library, or trapped in the midst of one of those minor misfortunes that can so quickly leave us hopeless and despondent, scenes such as this had arisen in my mind. Now, at last, thought I - at last all the glories of England lie before my eyes. No longer a cathartic image or consolation, but true, real, touchable. Those endless fields of golden yellow: May pouring out her final riches as she yields to the coming of June. Above the setting sun still gave some heat to the dwindling day, breathing, it seemed to me, far more than light into this landscape, but enriching it, softening it, perfecting it for my own personal enjoyment. The woodland over yonder seem dim, mysterious, returned almost to an island of primaeval power, resting amidst the great heartlands of an ancient county, signalling a time before men had first come here to till the soil and forge those little fields and footpaths through which my wandering feet had just lately carried me. Invisible birds sang the sun to its slumber. Over a thick line of hedge a herd walk to and fro, gently lowing. A great peace entered into the land and I, now part of the land, could not resist its movement. How long, I wondered, how long, in those solemn and lonely moments on far-off shores, had I considered and anticipated such a moment as this? And how fitting it was that those words of Scott should now enter into my mind, as if for the first time;

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!

Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,

As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,

From wandering on a foreign strand!

Well here, sir, here is your native land, in all her simple splendour. What good fortune is yours, to have made an honest march along her ways, so as to witness, nay take part in, this merry scene, which has in some strange, unchanging form graced the senses of your countrymen for centuries untold. Repent and forget all that ingratitude which had risen up in you during those final miles of sore shoulders and protesting feet. Your spirit is undaunted, for you are acting out, in loyal and earnest tradition, such a journey as Chaucer once considered worthy of his attentions - a pilgrimage, a quest of adventure and discovery. “Bound for Shrewsbury!” I said it out loud, though there were none to hear, and thought myself to be quite like Dick Whittington.

Climbing Bulkeley Hill

I arose early in the morning to steal a march on the day. Things went very smoothly in the first few hours - so smoothly in fact that, as I shall relate later, I was perhaps tempted into an overconfident disposition. There came a point, something around halfway through the day, when I came to a spot called Bulkeley Hill. That description does, I feel, rather understate the laborious nature of this part of the walk, which I shall account in short order now. The sun was at its zenith, and, given how overcast the morning had been, was producing a level of heat that was both unexpected and deeply inconvenient at that given moment. Having taken a series of paths, some of them entirely overgrown, I had steadily advanced across southern Cheshire, all the time expecting some angry farmer to appear at any moment and declare my claimed right-of-way had been made extinct by lack-of-use some time shortly before the First World War. Having escaped such a fate, I now came to my first proper climb of the journey. The Wirral is famously flat of course, and things continue in a similar vein quite far into Cheshire. It was only as Chester receded far behind me and the prospect of entering Shropshire became more immediate that the gently rolling hills and hide-away farms gave way to this wooded ridge that I now began to ascend. I made decent progress, and Shropshire seemed to be beckoning until, turning a corner, I happened to glance backwards and beheld, with some surprise, the entire course of my pilgrimage so far, laid out before me like a General's map. Bulkeley Hill, though not very high, was nevertheless able to afford me a view that was only limited to the left by the Clwydian Range that rose above the Welsh Marches, and to the right by the simple fact that the land ran on further than the eye could hope to follow. Over a sea of emerald green lay the city of Chester, much as she had done since ancient days; a brownish patch from which little could be distinguished. Yet further on, marching towards the Irish Sea, which melded fuzzily with the far reaches of the Wirral Peninsula, there could be glimpsed the faint outline of the Anglican Cathedral of Liverpool. That mighty edifice, not nearly as old as is often imagined, finished but in the last century, when still there lived a strength of Christian feeling in Liverpool that now, a handful of decades on, seems not merely antiquated, but entirely absurd. Its Catholic counterpart is even more modern, and I recalled then some of the graven words that hang in one of its many corners, which describe how its walls were reared by the donations, the savings and the hard work of the city's faithful. They were the great-grandfathers of those young Liverpudlians now living: the poor, the world-worn Catholics of Liverpool, who strove for nothing more than to erect a fitting, living monument, which might commend their strong and simple faith unto posterity. A great sadness overcame me at such thoughts, on which I did not wish to dwell too long. Yet that feeling and sense of some great, ungrateful betrayal still lingers, and it tinges the image of those mighty buildings, which are now all too often put to uses far below that for which they were built. From them my gaze drifted, settling eventually into a straight line that seemed to pass, with annoying ease, straight over all those places where I had been lost and tired, connecting me immaterially with far-off Birkenhead. The peaked roof of the family home reared up high in my mind's eye, almost physically present it seemed to me. The reverie was broken by Frost, who quietly reminded me that I had many “Miles to go, before I sleep.” Rest must be found at the top, rather than near the bottom thought I, thinking myself quite Socratic for saying so. On up the hill then - up to a sight that surpassed even that which I have just described. To the back of me the realms of Cheshire, but now, to the fore, there at last lay Shropshire, almost uninterrupted in its expanse of fields and woodland, running on until the southern end of the Pennines sweeps down into Staffordshire. The whole landscape might have been laid down by some ingenious gardener, with its great stencilled hedges and flowing lanes, which seemed to mould themselves into the natural curves of the land. Here is where I took a proper rest, it being high time for lunch. It was at the end of my sitting and eating and watching that things took an unexpected turn in a mental sense (thankfully I had kept decently well on my maps course so far). I had always expected some appropriate words of Housmann to drift across my countenance when first I sighted his celebrated county, but I think I was still in something of a melancholy state of mind after my sighting of Liverpool. Nay it was Milton who filled my thoughts when at last I tore myself away from that splendid view and crept on towards Whitchurch;

The World was all before them, where to choose

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide -

They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,

Through Eden they took their solitary way.

Roaming

It was from Bulkeley that things began to go awry. There was a space, after leaving a little place called Bickerton and setting out for another, even littler place called Egerton, where I became seriously lost in a great mass of farmland, criss-crossed with a myriad of lanes marked “no through road.” Footpaths led into dead-ends, and it was almost impossible to gain any sense of direction. The sense of being lost on a long walk is compounded by an acute awareness that each wrong step is only adding further distance on an already daunting task. Every wrong way is a wasted effort; a pain to the shoulders that will never be gotten back. It was here that I discovered, plainly and as if for the first time, just how terribly stubborn I can be. This is something that people have often remarked to me, and indeed I feel as though it may be a trait shared in common with all Kearneys to some extent. I would always answer that “I’m being stubborn because I think I’m right, and if you can show me that I’m not then I will happily concede.” It all sounds very reasonable when it is purely in the realm of rhetoric, and of course, such is the confused nature of an unstructured argument, even if I began to suspect that I was in fact wrong then there would likely be some avenue of escape or confusion through which I could avoid admitting as much. Here there was no such escape: at multiple times in these few hours of confusion I chose and then stubbornly pursued a wrongful course, reasoning that, even if it was the wrong one, then the time for admitting as much had long passed - and indeed admitting it now would only add on more time to that which had already been wasted. I demonstrated an almost impressive degree of toleration for my own blind stupidity; finally bringing myself back on course after one misstep, only then to almost immediately embark upon another, thinking that, if only this time I could get it right, then I would make up for all the time that had been lost through my previous errors. It is the mindset of a desperate gambler: doubling down to try and recover losses, and in the process only making those losses so much worse. At last, after berating myself outloud for my latest imbecility, I at last swallowed my pride, which is the ultimate root of all of this, approached a farmhouse and, knocking, asked a rather bemused farmer for directions, which I duly received. The lesson, in the context of the walk itself, was quite plain: I was not some great adventurer with an innate sense of direction and an instinct or path finding, rather I was an amateurish novice, whose gut feelings on these matters could not be solely relied upon. In terms of my flaws as a man, one was made deeply apparent to me. I am hopelessly stubborn, with a pride that almost positively refuses to admit its faults, until it has been worn down and so overwhelmed with evidence that it must do so. Even here, where I was the only person who could have known, even here it took me the best part of two hours (and untold miles) before I could bring myself to acknowledge it. What might this mean, in the line of faith? The Christian religion extols the examination of conscience, the confession of sin, as a central pillar in religious life and growth. There is something profound here, as I discovered. For well I might lament the problems in the Church, and subsequent failings in broader society, but it can only do much if I remain blind to what lies, malignant, within my own self. “Physician, Heal Thyself” thought I, and truly I think I understood its meaning, in my own life, for the first time. The unnecessary crisis over, I found Egerton and stumbled on to Bickley. It was near here, still some way from Whitchurch, and tired both mentally and physically, I took a seat on a near-forgotten crossroads, and sought to exorcise the dark spirit of the last few hours:

Nothing - there’s nothing in sight.

The hedge stands tall to every side,

The lane scuttles behind its corner;

The grass shoots wild, the sky looks sombre.

Solitary is the sign that points me on,

“Half a Mile, Half a Mile” - and then?

“And then you’ll do another ten.”

The Grindley Brook Locks

Onwards I went, at a slower pace than I’d care to admit. But at last I came back to the Canal, which I knew meant I did not have far to go. I can’t say that I am very well acquainted with the life and happenings of England’s canals, though they have always been a great source of fascination to me. Each of my days walking has included stretches upon the Shropshire-Union and then, closing in on Shrewsbury, on the Llangollen waterways. These places seem at times almost like a secret world, filled with denizens who are happily, definitely divorced from the present century, continuing to pursue lives almost beyond the comprehension of most. They are nomads, travellers, people of no-fixed abode, constantly striking out for some place new, never quite knowing where they will next pitch up. Deep in the countryside, hidden in most places by great avenues of trees, they carve paths across England, unknown and unnoticed by none but a knowledgeable few. I was, for a few days, privy to that life. It is truly remarkable how quiet those stretches of canal can be. I had expected to be in the constant company of dog walkers, runners and cyclists, but, after only about a mile's walk from where these waterways pass through the towns, it is almost entirely absent from human life. Only the great white swans, the royalty of these domains, together with their subjects, the ducks and mallards and moorhens, can be seen. But then every so often along comes one of those bright painted curiosities; a wooden floating vessel replete with all the amenities and comforts of home-life, chugging along at a few miles an hour, and always with a contented captain who smiles as I wave. The canal paths are not most of them very well-maintained; the concrete of town centres gives way to muddy trails very quickly, and the vegetation that has steadily grown up on the banks serves to almost entirely hide any trace of human artificiality. There is something profoundly natural with these canals: they have been adopted into the landscape, made at one with it, and put almost into its service. And these ways, if one is willing, might be followed right through the heart of the countryside, and thence into the most densely populated and peopled portions of the great towns and cities. A canal is a single, unbroken line that connects all these areas of the country, whilst going largely unnoticed as it does so. More than I could count I passed beneath main roads and motorways, busy and slow and oftentimes choked with traffic, marching on foot through the great walls of Chester and sweeping around Whitchurch. It was as I came to the campsite on the second day, just outside Whitchurch, that I happened upon the Grindley Brook Locks. I was already in a fine mood, because I knew I had but a mile left on the day, but the sight of this waterway oddity left me beaming. Here the machinery and mechanisms of the nineteenth century, the inventions of those great engineers of the industrial age, were still being put to constant use by the narrow boaters. I arrived just in time to see one such vessel emerge from the bottom of the great ‘staircase,’ having passed five great water traps, which had effectively lowered the boat down a hillside. It was a source of strange comfort to me, to think that these locks had not yet been overtaken by the demands of the tourist industry, which generates an almost incessant need to  fabricate or else artificially maintain, and thus hollow out and cheapen, the fixtures of our inheritance and culture. Here the Canal locks worked for their own sake, not for the sake of any onlooker, and they did so because people still needed them to work: people who still relied upon them directly for their way of life. Even though I had only a few minutes left in my days walking, I still felt moved enough to sit myself down by the locks and compose a short ‘Ode to the Narrowboats.’

Between Valley and Vale your highway runs,

The slow, unnoticed miles tick on.

A rambler there smiles at your name,

And a town offers an unheeded berth.

They do not know what passes by,

Cross five great Counties, quite beyond sight.

Stout Chester is breached within her walls,

Free flows the road where others stall,

Liverpool, unknowing, still sends her sons,

Floating where Manchester's greatness first sprung.

On down into Shropshire and on further still;

England lies open to a patient till.

It’s very difficult to sleep in a tent past seven o'clock, the walls just aren't thick enough to keep the sunlight out. I had little cause for complaint of course, since I’d found over the previous two days that starting at eight would ensure I arrived at my campsite by around five. The tent down and everything packed away, I set off. Once again I had slept through a rainless night - indeed I had not suffered a single summer shower during my entire expedition so far, even during the day.. I paid special attention to the sun this morning, because it had turned a peculiar shade of orange the previous night, and had seemed to be swallowed up by the clouds long before it had set. Now it stood out in the early morning, lightning up the paths where I began my day, sparkling on the thick dew that had settled there. At last some words of Housmann came to me: 

How clear, how lovely bright,

How beautiful to sight

Those beams of morning play;

How heaven laughs out with glee

Where, like a bird set free,

Up from the eastern sea

Soars the delightful day.

I tried to take as much pleasure in this morning as I could, because in truth I was seriously beginning to tire. Sitting down afterwards, I could see that what was, in theory, a series of three twenty-five miles had turned into something far more laborious. Those projections ignored the circuitous route that I was following, and it did not account for the times when I got lost. I am loath to actually calculate the true distances I was covering - and all of it carrying this great big pack. Lessons had been learnt which, if ever I was to undertake something like this again, will definitely be applied: there’s always weight that can be lost, even if you think you’ve packed light. One should also bear in mind that, as simple as a thing might look on paper, in practice it will usually be more difficult and arduous, especially when a tired mind and body becomes increasingly prone to making mistakes. Still, whilst I was not in those same good spirits which I had known at the start of my previous two days, I was still able to enjoy this excellent morning, reminding myself of the next words in Housmann’s poem: “Today I shall be strong, no more shall yield to wrong.” I was determined to try and avoid that internal anger and stress which had so marred yesterday afternoon, when I had blundered to and fro across the countryside, with every decision creating an ever worsening situation. “Even if I get lost today” I said, “I will learn from yesterday and be better off for it.” I had told myself a little white lie yesterday morning which, whilst it had been proved wrong, did not prevent me from repeating it again now. “Today is the shortest leg, I said; the hardest work is behind you.” In truth, as long as that first day to Chester had seemed, it is now clear that it was the shortest day. Little did I know that this day now beginning was to be the longest. Still, I was resolved to make it to Shrewsbury, and tried to call up in my mind, as often I do in difficult circumstances, cases where individuals were in far worse positions than me. Strangely enough it was the sorry lot of King Harold that I thought of then: fresh from defeating the Vikings the English King marched near on the entire length of the country to get shot in the eye at Hastings. He would have killed to be my position I’m sure, on this pleasant country jaunt, with the promise of a bed in Shrewsbury at the end of it. 

The War Memorial at Edstaston

I have commented some on the war memorials that I encountered on the first day, and to that list I might add the magnificent monument seen at Port Sunlight, the small tributes I noted around Ellesmere Port, the Regimental Chapel at Chester Cathedral, and a well-maintained stone tribute at Bickerton. Every village, every hamlet, it seemed, had some sort of memorial, small or large, dedicated as always to “The Men of this Parish” who did not return from the France and Flanders, or the deserts of North Africa, the jungles of Burma, the icy waters of the Atlantic - nor a hundred other places where they were sent in the last century. All of these monuments I found to be well maintained and adorned with fresh flowers - sure signs that these brave men had not yet been forgotten by the British people. For some reason, as I came into the tiny place of Edstaston, and took some time to inspect its Church, St Marys, I found myself moved by its own particular monument even more so. I recorded the words I found on it there, taken as I discovered from a hymn by one Francis Pott:

The strife is o'er, the battle done;

Now is the Victor's triumph won;

O let the song of praise be sung.

I was again reminded, though in a less humorous tone, of those individuals who would have loved to have been in my position; to whom the thought of aching feet and shoulders would have been joyous signs of life, to be treasured and enjoyed. The words of Wlfired Owen came to me then, from his Strange Meeting; “Whatever hope is yours, Was my life also; I went hunting wild, After the wildest beauty in the world, Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair, But mocks the steady running of the hour, And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here. For by my glee might many men have laughed, And of my weeping something had been left, Which must die now.” I counted thirteen names on the plaque there - thirteen lads who, in two world wars, that the little parish of Edstaston had sent to answer the nation's call, and who never returned. Yet they had won me my liberty, and my life as I knew it. I felt as though, in my journey, I was hunting wild for something beautiful. Hunting for a renewal of commitment in faith, and doing so through the most achingly beautiful landscape I could hope to lay eyes upon. Hunting in the gentle lanes and hills of England, marking my progress with these marvellous churches. It was then that some words of another war poet came to mind - those of Rupert Brooke, so often misunderstood, who loved his country not for what she could give him, but for what she was and always would be. Here I could glimpse and know the truth of things quite plain, seeing and hearing almost through his senses, romantic as they were;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Yet, as I shall now attest, faith is far more than fine feelings. Indeed, as, to my knowledge, CS Lewis puts best of all, faith that solely exists for such high and lofty moments is in fact deeply weak and liable to topple over. True faith is confirmed when one is entirely spent and without hope - but still somehow, by duty alone it seems, sticking doggedly to obedience of God. Such faith is necessary, Lewis explains, because man has moods which swing wildly between highs and lows, between moments of the most exquisite insight and the most depressing hopelessness and nihilism. I have recounted how my grim resolution of the morning was rewarded by a great moment of elation and insight at Edstaston - now allow me, through this physical journey, to demonstrate how swiftly things can turn. I found that this pilgrimage, because it took me so far out of my ordinary life, seemed to give added potency to those twin imposters, Triumph and Disaster, and heighten my sensitivity and susceptibility to both. Faith was tossed between the two like a ship in a storm, but I think it has strengthened ultimately as a result.

Wem and Clive

By the time I came to Wem I had probably reached the lowest point on the journey. Wem was the halfway marker, and yet I had quite spent my strength to reach it, coming to the point where I was finding it difficult to lift my feet. Water was also becoming a problem: the heat of the day had quickly drained by bottle, and now I was thirsty, hungry, tired and in a thoroughly bad mood all round. I have spoken a little, translating this physical journey into a spiritual reflection, of the determination that I quickly realised would be central to this endeavour - a determination that is founded upon trusting faith, that I would not be permitted to fail, and would be upheld by God who, I believe, both aided me in conceiving of this journey and blessed its undertaking. It was between Wem and Clive that great temptations came upon me; assuming those great, reasonable, specious demeanours that can be so appealing in those moments of hardship when the spirit flags and seems to be overcome by physical conditions. I sat at Wem for a long time, on a bench outside St Peter and St Paul’s which, I am sorry to say, I gave very little attention to, which was out of keeping with my first day's resolve to give any and all religious houses the appreciation they deserved. At last I arose and set off on my way, and it was here that I encountered a bus stop. It was a local line, promising a safe berth to Shrewsbury in a matter of minutes. Whilst I did not stop there, the thought became implanted in my brain. Instead of using it as evidence of how little of my walk actually remained, instead my sophistic brain began to put forward the idea that, having come so far, surely finishing off the trip on a bus would scarcely matter. Covering the final few miles, the hardest and most arduous miles, in a vehicle would be a just reward indeed for all those unsung hours spent in fields and byways. These temptations continued in spite of my body telling me that it was well able to complete this journey by itself, and they thrived as I entered into a second great period of frustration, as I had experienced the previous afternoon. 

Leaving Wem, I sought out the village of Clive. A funny name, Clive, I thought, wondering if it had any association with the famous man, Clive of India, who hailed from Market Drayton - a thought I promptly dismissed upon reflection, given that the village far predates the period in question. My fixation on Clive only grew as I struggled to reach it. Though only a few miles down the road from Wem, it took very a number of hours to reach it, after a single wrong turn saw me onto some farmer's land. Thinking I had found a route out, I only ventured further in, until I was, to put in bluntly, plain trespassing. What seems comical in hindsight was actually quite desperate in the moment; I was assailed constantly by the sounds of tractors and barking dogs and, through a simple desire to get off his poor man's land as quickly as I could, seemed to find myself more and more surrounded by it. Close to giving up hope, it was now only the thought of boarding the bus that sustained me. This is quite a perilous state of mind to be in, when your short-term hope is sourced from something that, in the long-run, can do you no good at all. “As soon as I get to Clive” I said, “I’m finding the nearest bus stop.” Indeed, in justifying this new objective I begin to twist, quite ingeniously, the purposes of my pilgrimage. This abandonment of the walk was actually a good thing, I reasoned: God was demonstrating my own shortcomings, and displaying, in a spiritual sense, that I ‘couldn’t do it all on my own.’ The bus, in my tired and malleable mind, was now the grace that would bring me at last to safe harbour at Shrewsbury. Gone was my original conception of the journey; that however tired and despondent I might be, my faith would be the thing that saw me through to the end - and in its place arose a subtly twisted story, which sought to make me abandon my quest just as it neared its end, depicting the failure of faith and the abandonment of the trial as some ultimate triumph, rendered such via clever convolutedness. I was ultimately saved by the fact that I was so thoroughly lost: I could not make good on my attempts to reach Clive, and instead finally popped out onto some lane leading into a hamlet called Grinshill. The locals had turned out for a game of cricket, and I stopped to watch for a while. It was here that I recovered my senses, thinking back to how resolved and animated I had been in Edstaston, which now felt like a lifetime ago. Rather than turn back to Clive, I put my best foot forward, and set off over the fields for a wood marked New Plantation. Whilst I could not describe myself as being in good spirits, with each step away from Clive I realised more clearly that I would be finishing this journey on my own two feet, come hell or highwater.

Sighting St Mary's Spire

Plodding onwards towards the old Shrewsbury Canal path, which would finally take me into the centre of Shrewsbury, I glimpsed, at long last, a sight which I had been looking forward to throughout the entire journey. It was not the spire of the Cathedral, as one might imagine, but of St Mary’s Church, which, ahead of St Alkmunds, has the tallest and most clearly distinguishable point in the city. I was a long way away still, but I knew then that I could not fail - even though I had come very close. Duty had seen me through, and I had overcome the nadir of my spiritual enthusiasm, to at last come within sight of my final destination. I had a great sense that these last few hours had been greatly vital to the entire escapade, and so, removing my pack but still standing so that I could glance up and see St Mary’s, I tried to encapsulate my transitioning feelings at that precise moment in time:

The hopeful first day was worn away,

Yesterday’s resolve turned to decay,

This mornings grim duty, a wishful dream;

Inexplicable optimism - so naive!

This weighty load shows reality plain:

Reason at last overpowers the insane.

How undignified it is, to have come so far,

Now to bribe each footfall and beg every yard -

But what, dull vision, is that up ahead?

Something glimpsed above the path where I tread,

A Spire, accusing points fast to the sky;

“How, mortal man, did your hope so swiftly die?”

Buoyed onwards, with strength that had lain quite hidden all day, I came into Shrewsbury, winding down her old streets, seeing where Darwin had been schooled, noting with awe how well preserved and intact the old town had been kept. These final miles passed almost as a dream; I felt as fresh as the morning I had first set out, knowing that my walk was over, that all the hard work had been fulfilled. Coming to the Cathedral I had the strangest feeling that I could turn right around and walk on home again, through the night perhaps. It became abundantly clear then that this feeling of life and vitality, of faith fulfilled at least for a moment, could not have been captured or conceived without those grave low moments, in which the knowledge of one's shortcomings, so vital to forcing a true reliance on heaven, was gained in spadefuls. It remained only, as was the Pilgrim’s role, to give thanks to God. I was greeted by the men of the Cathedral discernment house, who made me feel extremely welcome. The evening was spent in restful company, and the night in well deserved sleep.

I awoke to the most glorious of sounds: the bells of St Chads ringing in the morning through my open window. I had not realised that it was open, but St Chads lies just along the way, and the peals filled my room. I sat in bed just listening to them for a time, before getting up to finish off the letters and postcards I had been faithfully writing during my previous few evenings. My arrival at Mass had been greeted by a further providential glint; my arrival at Shrewsbury happened to coincide with the Corpus Christi celebrations, in which a procession was planned for the first time in a long stretch of years. I was honoured to partake in a revival of this tradition, and walked with a large congregation out in the Cathedral grounds following mass. The sun bathed the courtyard with light, glimmering on the burnished candles and clearly communicating, it seemed, the approval of heaven in this fresh undertaking. Following the Benediction of the Eucharist I had sufficient time to ponder the celebration in the light of my own experience - and it is these thoughts that have shaped the style of my narrative account. I have long admired the views of St Aquinas on the True Presence; he baptises the musings of Aristotle, who held that a thing could change in its essence, whilst remaining constant in it’s substance. Whilst the Eucharist is recognizably bread, its essence is Christ, his body, broken for us, whilst retaining unto itself a profound holy mystery, such as men shall never truly understand, not until all that is physical itself dissolves and each man truly knows himself at last to be “such stuff as dreams are made on.” Yet for now we have this mortal veil, in which the plainest truths remain almost entirely obscured. We survive off faint glimmers, praising those whose wisdom has proved sufficient that they might hold a mirror up to that broken light, and so reflect some of its immortal charms upon the great mass of humanity. Yet this is the fate given us - we are physical beings, and our bodies are not something that can be dispensed with, nor ignored or belittled, for they are just as part of us as anything else. Herein, reaching the point at last, I at last found a frame for my introspection. All of this was a physical journey; the long days of walking across Merseyside, Cheshire and Shropshire, but then also this short procession from the Cathedral hall to the Altar outside. Here was the destination to it all; the Eucharist at which we held our Benediction. Here I might contemplate, or rather marvel in blind wonderment, at a union of the physical and the spiritual, of the manner in which the substance of a thing sheers from its essence and the mortal veil is momentarily torn for eternity's gently imploring eyes to peer through. My own physical journey was likewise divided, between the movements of feet, the aching of limbs, the delights to the sense and the navigations of the brain - but beyond these, and working indeed towards its exposition, lies the spiritual life, which was the place where I desired renewal and recommitment. It was almost as though, as I stood there, the purpose of my labours became crystal clear: each mile had been wearing away at my physical attachments, each step along the meadows and lanes of England had borne me further into the heart of the matter, carrying me beyond and steadily breaking down the pride, the vanity, the feeble obsessions, the odd fixations, that fill up each minute and turn each hour to waste, leaving each regretful day wanting for something more. The concerns of the spirit have their symbols, their physical representations, in the physical world: the signposts that point to feelings deeper and more profound, that whisper in tones of duty, sacrifice, honour, charity, forbearance, hinting that something lies beyond - an eternal moral universe into which man might ever more deeply sink. In my experience and my estimations these symbols are the venerable features and qualities of England - the bells of St Chads, the War Memorial at Estaston, the Canals and irregular fields and country churches. Here is a way to live, to thrive, to preserve: a particular way of life that religion has built, and that religion alone can maintain. Herein, breaking into my consciousness, came that melancholy strain of thought, which I have touched upon a little. I dread not what is to become of individuals, of congregations, of parishes, but rather what is to become of England without the vitality and solidity of faith that once she knew. What is to sustain her, to see her through hard times, to continue breathing life into these institutions, these traditions, the culture, that is Christian to its very bones? Such are the great questions that face those generations now living. It is very easy to be overcome by the seeming hopelessness of it all, and for a time I confess that I was, recalling that same poem of Housman’s, the opening verse of which I have already quoted. The closing stanza is much more solemn, speaking not of the hope of morning, but the listless sadness of evening Does the sun now set at last upon the Christian Age, upon the testament of twenty centuries; does this faith of our fathers now slip at last “past touch and sight and sound, not further to be found,” or does their remain some life, some spirit, which might yet fight on? That is what we must trust in, and place all the weight of our faith and hope behind. It was with this weighing on my mind that I absconded from the Cathedral in the afternoon to explore the city, the fine old market town of Shrewsbury with its Anglo-Saxon roots and its Norman embellishments. Naturally I was drawn into the Churches, and to St Chads primarily, from which I had heard the bells this morning. Then onto St Mary’s, now defunct, and the Old Abbey, built to mark the new rule of William the Conqueror nigh on a thousand years ago. Returning back to my room from evening prayer, which suitably rounded out my short stay, I wrote a short tribute to these sights, which stand like rocks amidst the great stream of humanity, which might ignore them for a time, but shall never truly succeed in wearing them away.

Down, down through the Old Town,

Where the Severn runs at New St Chads,

And hang the colours of long renown,

Once borne to war by Shropshire lads.

And on, the Cathedral on Belmont Lane,

Where in common and latin verse,

An earnest faith enshrined remains,

Which working men reared from the earth.

But of humble starts there can be no claim,

A mile on from the place;

The Abbey built to proclaim a reign

Now a thousand years displaced.

And back to Alkmunds, that unremarked case,

Set in cobble, weed and stone,

And though but simple on its face,

With the city it has lived and grown.

But then St Mary’s breaks the reverie,

There is little to be praised,

For the the silent pews stand empty,

Of people for which she was raised.