Online Pilgrimage Anyone?

2020 Year of Cathedrals, Year of Pilgrimage hasn’t gone away – it‘s just gone online.

To be a pilgrim….from the comfort of your own home

Online prayer, live streamed worship, virtual candle lighting, voice trials for choristers by Zoom, live choral and organ performances …..and now virtual pilgrimage.

Author and pilgrim, Victoria Preston had planned to walk a number of the one-day pilgrimages that lead to all the Church of England cathedrals (and some In Wales) that were launched in a joint initiative by the Association of English Cathedrals and The British Pilgrimage Trust to mark 2020 Year of Cathedrals, Year of Pilgrimage.

She had intended the pilgrimages to coincide with the launch of her latest book, We Are Pilgrims – published on 9 April – but with the UK in lockdown and our cathedral buildings closed for the next few months at least, Victoria has turned to technology and has just led her first virtual pilgrimage with a friend and colleague that explored the holy sights of Croyde Bay, Devon, Lundy Island and took them to Robbin Island and back.

You can read her blog post here.

Now she is offering to lead virtual pilgrimages for those that might want to take part – and all she asks is a phone line and the ability to let one’s imagination roam over a landscape they know well.

Read her blog post from her first virtual pilgrimage.

No newcomer to pilgrimage, Victoria has spent the last two years exploring this phenomenon to understand what drives this rich and varied human behaviour that is not bound by faith, time, or space, and why do each year, 200 million of us embark on a pilgrimage of some kind.

‘We are Pilgrims – Journeys in search of Ourselves’ published by Hurst, 9 April 2020