Pilgrim's Progress

On an ancient route in southwestern England, Catherine Fairweather meditates on one of our oldest forms of travel the spiritual journey

- Catherine Fairweather

IN THE CHILL of a 12th-century English church, a thirtysomething with a liquid baritone and a Harry Potter-ish gaze sang a medieval lament. We gathered tentatively around him, 23 nearstrangers who had come together over the summer solstice to trace an ancient pilgrimage trail through Marshwood Vale, a valley in West Dorset.

The baritone, Guy Hayward, is head of the British Pilgrimage Trust, a nonprofit that is spearheading a secular revival of these traditional journeys. No longer an exercise in deprivation, the pilgrimage that had brought us to Stoke Abbott church was about communing with nature, and with the heritage of the U.K.'s most sanctified places. The idea remains relevant, Hayward told us, "because it taps into the universal search for direction, identity, and holistic meaning."

Stoke Abbott, one of Dorset's prettiest villages, marked the start of our route; from there we would trace the river Char for around 10 miles as it wound through Marshwood Vale before joining the English Channel in the village of Charmouth, on Dorset's famously scenic Jurassic Coast.

After the burst of singing, some of us filled our water bottles and enjoyed a ceremonial head-dunking in the carved fountainhead outside. Hayward encouraged us to drop a pebble into the water while setting an intention for the next few days, a way of helping to remove the stumbling blocks in our lives. "Does losing my car keys daily count?" inquired one joker in the pack.