The North Wales Pilgrim’s Way will feature in the sixth series of Pilgrimage that returns to the BBC in March 2024, as seven public figures of differing faiths and beliefs tackle a modern-day pilgrimage.
Across three 60-minute episodes on BBC Two – also available on BBC iPlayer – Pilgrimage: The Road to Wild Wales will follow the seven pilgrims as they journey along a 220km route that embraces early Christian Celtic saints. Their final destination is Bardsey Island, the fabled “Island of 20,000 saints”, just off the western tip of the Llyn Peninsula, which extends 30 miles into the Irish Sea from North West Wales.
“They say that if you go on a pilgrimage, there’s a hope that by the end of it there will have been some sort of realisation, so I’m looking forward to finding mine,” says Amanda Lovett, 56, the only Catholic in the group, who catapulted to public attention in the first series of BBC’s The Traitors.
“I do have a strong Catholic faith. I still pray, and I believe there’s an afterlife, but I’m excited to explore other people’s faiths and religions and how they view life. I’ve always been the mum, the gran, the worker, and I sort of forgot about me. I’ve done school runs for 32 years, and I’ve found my time now.
She adds how she is “looking forward to learning about myself, digging deep and processing and seeing how I’ll evolve in the future”.
The North Wales Pilgrim’s Way, only recently created in 2011, is linked by ancient churches dedicated to sixth and seventh century saints, and encompasses areas of outstanding natural beauty in the mountain ranges of Snowdonia (also known as Eryri in Welsh), and along the North Wales coastal path.
Travelling for two weeks on foot and by bus, the seven celebrity pilgrims start their 220km adventure at Flint Castle on the bank of the Dee Estuary, then follow the coastal path to Greenfield Valley and the official start of the Pilgrim’s Way. They will traverse North Wales, tackling the foothills of spectacular mountain ranges, as well as taking on England and Wales’ highest peak, Mount Snowdon (Yr Wydffa in Welsh).
“These days we all tend to live busy, complicated lives, and what I love about walking, is all you’ve got to think about is putting one foot in front of the other,” says wild life presenter Michaela Strachan, 57, who, according to the BBC, places her faith in the natural world.
“I find it very cathartic, it’s my form of meditation. There’s a simplicity to just walking. Walking, thinking, taking time to connect with nature. I guess that’s my form of spiritual engagement.”
Carrying their own backpacks, the seven pilgrims will sleep in basic accommodation, ranging from a caravan to a climbers’ hut, as well as experience an eco-retreat in an ancient oak forest and a Buddhist meditation Centre.
Bardsey Island, or Ynys Enlli in Welsh, which means ‘isle of currents’, was a popular destination among early Christian monks and hermits, who believed Bardsey was the end of the world, the BBC notes, “a place where the distance between heaven and earth becomes intangible and so becomes a place of guaranteed resurrection”.
“I’ve always been interested by anybody with any thoughts as to what it is we are all doing here,” says 36-year-old Tom Rosenthal, star of Channel 4’s Friday Night Dinner, who describes himself as “areligious” in his approach. “It’s fairly confusing and if I spend all my time watching Arsenal and the The Traitors I’m never going to find out.”
He adds: “Dedicating myself to a pilgrimage for two weeks is a wonderful opportunity to reflect upon my spirituality and to make a TV show my grandmother will actually enjoy watching.”
And not just his grandmother. The series has proven popular with viewers and been critically acclaimed, becoming a firm fixture in the BBC Easter schedule.
Since 2014, the British Pilgrimage Trust (BPT) has played a significant part in promoting the UK’s pilgrimage heritage, which of course includes Wales.
Its director, Guy Hayward, tells the Catholic Herald that the organisation has been working with Phil McCarthy – a former GP who in 2008 walked alone from Canterbury to Rome and in 2015 walked on to Istanbul (both of which he has written about) – on a pilgrimage endeavour called “Catholic Cathedral and Shrine Ways“, which focuses on the country’s Catholic pilgrimage heritage.
The three year project will create 22 new Pilgrim Ways starting at the cathedral of each Catholic diocese in England & Wales and ending at a shrine within the same diocese.
Hayward, who is also co-author of Britain’s Pilgrim Places and features in this March’s edition of the Catholic Herald magazine in its “On Pilgrimage With” section, notes that so far McCarthy has finished 14 routes. Each corresponds to a different diocese, and can be viewed via the BPT website and via the project’s official website, which provides a “helpful” Outdooractive map, detailed PDF Guide and Passport for each route.
“The routes take in the Catholic parish churches along the Way and places of relevant historical interest,” McCarthy says. “They are off-road as much as possible and incorporate existing pilgrim routes and long-distance footpaths.”
The dioceses involved include: Westminster, Southwark, Lancaster, Middlesbrough, Northampton, Hallam, Leeds, Clifton, Arundel & Brighton (three more dioceses have been added but are not on the website as of writing).
“These pilgrim ways are an opportunity for Catholics and other Christians to deepen their faith, and for people of all faiths and none to share in the experience of walking a pilgrimage in a Catholic context,” McCarthy adds.
While the Caminos pilgrimages of the Iberian Peninsula tend to garner most attention, the fact remains that the UK – in large part due to its Catholic past – remains a land interwoven with myriad pilgrim routes, as the return of the BBC series attests to.
“Pilgrimage is a series like no other; getting into the heart and soul of who we are and what makes life meaningful,” says Daisy Scalchi, BBC’s Head of Religion and Ethics for television.
Photo: The island of Ynys Enlli, known as Bardsey Island in English, pictured off the west coast of Wales, south west of Pwllheli, 26 February 2023. As ‘night falls over Ynys Enlli, the remote Welsh island’s sky turns impossibly black. Planets rise and shooting stars streak overhead, while the Northern Lights send flares of green and red across the sea.’ (Photo by LAURIE CHURCHMAN/AFP via Getty Images.)
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