My pilgrim companion William Parsons and I did not call our first journey a pilgrimage. Rather, it was a song walk: a walk with a purpose of taking a song, ‘The Hartlake Bridge Tragedy’, back to where it came from. It was also an attempt to reclaim my place in the world, after too much time spent in front of my computer. Stepping out and walking with intention.
It did the trick. When we arrived at the monument that commemorates those who had drowned, we were met by chance by a couple who had three ancestors who had died in the Medway tragedy but did not know the song. Thus we returned the song to its bloodline, not just its place. We also met scenes of beauty along the way, including the chapel at Tudeley, full of Marc Chagall’s stained glass masterpieces dedicated to the river’s victims.
In Pevensey’s porch I witnessed a storm filling the whole sky with lightning bolts
It wasn’t long before I felt the itch to make pilgrimage again. Within a few months, I was on the path from London to Walsingham, recording a folk or sacred song a day for two weeks. Getting out of London took a few days of walking – the urban centre stretches a long way. One highlight was a night sleeping in the Covert Way Local Nature Reserve in late spring, waking up to the loudest possible alarm clock: thousands of birds singing their dawn chorus.
Another was the Royston Cave, with its hundreds of mysterious chalk carvings underneath a busy road. Why were they there, and why did the place feel so powerful? Places like that seem to exist in order to make us aware of forces we don’t understand.
We slept by the forest-enclosed holy well at Santon Downham, just outside Thetford, awaking to the sight of Duke of Edinburgh walkers (complete with their huge backpacks), looking down at their maps and walking straight past us.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in