Episode 1 Pilgrimage with Simon Reeve

For centuries, pilgrimage was one of the greatest adventures.

Epic journeys around the country.

You're going the wrong way! This is the Pilgrims' Way to Canterbury.

And across the world!

I'll be retracing the steps of our ancestors.

HE GROANS

This is the spot where...Jesus is said to have been born.

Exploring the hidden...

-KNOCKING

-Some people might think this is quite macabre.

..and the darker side of pilgrimage.

What this gives a sense of is the scale of prostitution.

And discovering why so many modern pilgrims are taking to the road.

-ALL CHANT

-Come on, now, that was incredible!

My journey takes me from the north of England to Canterbury,

then through France into northern Spain,

across the Alps to Italy and on to the Eternal City.

Rome!

I travel East into Turkey, across the Mediterranean,

into the Holy Land, and on to my final destination...Jerusalem.

It's a gob-smacker. It's a breath-taker-awayer.

My starting point was the beautiful and wild coast of Northumberland.

From here I would head south on a 400-mile journey

learning about the history of pilgrimage

and visiting spectacular sights along the way.

So how do we define a pilgrimage?

One of the best definitions I've seen

is that it's a journey away from home

in search of spiritual well-being.

And it's part of every major faith.

I'm...not a religious person, although I wish I was.

I was brought up as a Methodist, but that faith lapsed long ago.

I think the main reason I'm doing this is because I'm a traveller.

I'm fascinated by how our ancestors travelled

and what inspires people today to go on pilgrimage.

It seemed right to begin my journey at one of the earliest sights

of Christian pilgrimage in Britain, the mystical island of Lindisfarne.

Just look at the sea out here!

It's like molten silver.

The island is three miles off the coast.

I followed a line of posts that mark out the pilgrims' crossing

which emerged from the North Sea twice a day at low tide.

HE SIGHS

It's a bit muddy...but then every journey needs a bit of jeopardy.

It helps you to feel alive.

Oh, goodness!

Look, you can just make out the top of somebody's welly...

which didn't quite make it.

The sensible thing, of course, is to go round.

Ahh!

HE LAUGHS

Well, at least I kept my boots on!

Medieval Britons were told that journeys of endurance, suffering and sacrifice

to a holy site could help them to find a place in heaven.

Back then, pilgrimage was an integral part of their lives.

Look at all these...cars! I'm blown away by this.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

Clearly there are easier ways of getting to Holy Island,

but...not as much fun as walking.

Some of the country's first pioneering Christians

went to Holy Island during the Dark Ages more than 1,300 years ago.

Now more than half a million visitors make the crossing every year,

drawn largely by history and wild nature.

It is absolutely beautiful here.

In coming here, I am travelling in the footsteps

of two monks turned saints called Aidan and Cuthbert,

who respectively founded and then ran a monastery here.

They became legends. They helped to spread Christianity throughout Britain...

and their story stills draws pilgrims to the island now.

Aidan arrived here in the year 635.

Choosing this dramatic but windswept haven in the North Sea

as a place for prayer and a base from which to convert the pagan mainland.

I'm sure the...remoteness of this island

will have helped the monks to lead a life of contemplation.

Part of the reason they chose the island

was because, actually, it's very connected.

In early medieval times, people will have travelled by sea because it was easier

and it was safer than travelling by land or on foot or on horseback.

So rather than being isolated, this island was actually a transport hub.

It was one of Aidan's followers, Cuthbert,

whose saintly deeds on Holy Island really captured the imagination of Dark Age Britons.

Tales about him spread around the country

and pilgrims were soon arriving here, hoping for miracles and healing.

Cuthbert's now regarded as the patron saint of the north.

GULL SCREECHES

Oh, it's beautiful!

It's just got that simple wildness.

Reverend Graham Booth came here as a pilgrim 11 years ago.

He now runs a retreat on the island.

What do you think were the elements of Cuthbert's life

that would have been interesting and, I suppose, inspiring really

to our ancestors more than 1,000 years ago?

You can see this water and you know what it's like here,

-it's pretty chilly.

-Hmm. Even on a sunny day?

-Even on a sunny day.

To go and stand in that and to pray takes a level of devotion that most people don't have,

and that becomes something that people look up to.

There's a story associated with him

about the night when he spent a lot of time praying up to his chest in the water,

and came back up the beach and it was witnessed

that some otters came and warmed and dried his feet.

-Otter foot-warmers!

-Otter foot-warmers, yes.

I wanted to understand pilgrimage.

I wasn't trying to be a pilgrim, but I was still keen to get any hints and advice from Graham

about how a modern pilgrim should be travelling.

For me, there's a clear sense that the exterior, the landscape,

is something that helps us to begin to identify what our inner landscape is actually like

and what that tells us.

So should I be looking for my inner landscape on this journey?

Well, perhaps you should.

-I'd love to know if I've got one.

-Well, I'm sure you have got one.

During medieval times, huge numbers of Britons went on pilgrimage.

Some local, some long distance.

In the UK now, religious pilgrimage is no longer the mass movement it once was,

but people are still drawn to Lindisfarne,

whether for religious reasons or just for its sheer beauty.

People were coming here as visitors and pilgrims 1,300 years ago!

It is an astonishing sweep of human history.

And I suppose being here now I feel like another tiny link in the chain

that connects me back with distant ancestors.

Perhaps that's part of what draws us to places like this,

to have a connection with the past, be part of something meaningful.

I think it certainly does for me.

Lindisfarne was one of the first,

but by the 1300s there were shrines to saints across the entire country.

I was heading south to visit the star attraction of the time,

the shrine of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury in Kent.

Becket was the archbishop whose murder by Henry II's knights,

because he refused to submit to the King,

captured the imagination of the Christian world.

Canterbury became THE major British pilgrimage site.

Up to an astonishing 200,000 medieval pilgrims

would travel there each year.

That's almost one in ten of a national population

of just two and a half million.

Pilgrimage...got Britain on the move.

I still try and get a nice cuppa in of an afternoon

wherever I am on my travels.

Perfect! A refreshing brew...to keep the weary pilgrim on the road.

There would have been many reasons why our ancestors went on pilgrimage.

Some of them would have been devoted Christians, of course,

they would have been pious.

Others would have gone more for reasons of punishment

or for penance for their sins.

Some would have been hoping for a better life or for healing.

And then there would have been some, I'm sure,

who would have gone because it was a chance for adventure.

Remember, they were tied often to the land,

and pilgrimage could have been their one opportunity in life

to see what was over the hill.

The pilgrimage journeys of medieval Britons

could vary from a trip to a shrine in the next parish

to a long trek across the country and even beyond into foreign lands.

The offerings pilgrims took with them

financed some of our most treasured religious buildings.

The legacy of their journeys

are the network of holy sites peppered throughout the country.

Any medieval pilgrim heading south from Holy Island in the North East

would have the option of stopping at dozens of shrines along the way.

They could have gone to the cathedral at Durham,

that great statement of Norman power.

They could have visited the city of York,

the second holiest in the country.

But they wouldn't have wanted to miss the building I headed to next

in the city of Lincoln.

CHURCH BELLS CHIME

700 years ago, Lincoln was one of the largest cities in Britain.

It was also a major centre of pilgrimage

with travellers coming from across the land

to visit one of the great wonders of the age.

HE GASPS

It's...spectacular!

Just imagine the holy shock a medieval pilgrim would have felt

arriving here for the first time

and seeing a building of this...size!

Of this scale!

From the early 1300s right up until the Tudor period,

this was the tallest building on the planet.

HE GASPS

It does take the veneration of the Almighty

to inspire and to justify the creation of this building.

There's a depth and a meaning

that is completely lacking...from modern life.

Through patterns and codes the architecture of the cathedral

reveals a pathway through life and into heaven.

The building itself spoke to our ancestors

in a language they could understand.

John Campbell, the dean's verger,

was on hand to translate the building for me as a modern visitor.

You're on a journey, you've been walking a long way,

and those medieval pilgrims

might have thought the journey was at an end, but they were just starting,

because the journey from that end of the cathedral to the east end of the cathedral is a journey through life.

We're in the nave of the cathedral, comes from the Latin "navus",

the navy has its ships that take you on a journey,

we have the navus ship, the vessel,

to take you on a journey from this world.

When you looked up at the cathedral there was a lot of symbolism.

Look at the ribs of the vaults going up there.

Turn it upside down and you've got the hull of a ship,

the vessel to help you on that journey through life.

And then gave you a foretaste of heaven even more so

as you go further east...in what I call the God spots,

some people call it the church within a church.

-Can we see the God spots?

-Let's go to the God spot.

Because this is what we're about here, we're walking through the body and through this pilgrimage

and here we're coming to the outstretched arms of the cross.

Christ opening his arms to welcome people in

and inviting them to go further and to give them a foretaste of heaven.

Now you get heavily carved areas.

You get richness, you get fragments of medieval paint,

blue, red and maybe even gold.

Most medieval pilgrims arriving here and seeing this for the first time

would never have seen a sight like this.

Beautifully painted, vivid, dramatic colours,

drawing you in, it's advertising almost,

"If you're good enough, come through."

-It's almost saying the best is yet to come.

-Yeah.

So here's the church within a church.

All of a sudden it becomes ecclesiastical, it becomes ordered.

This is the brains, this is the intellect,

this is where the preaching and the teaching

has gone on for years and years and years.

We're now going to go to the mystery, into the unknown,

into heaven itself.

You're arriving at that new Jerusalem.

This is that which lies beyond.

And when you look up here, you can see a lot of clear glass to let light in.

Medieval pilgrims arriving here in the 1300s

would have sought salvation and healing at the shrine of St Hugh,

a former Bishop of Lincoln.

In life, he oversaw the building of the cathedral.

In death, he was held responsible for miracles.

Although if you wanted his blessings,

it helped if you gave generously to his church.

For my family and friends and...and for travellers.

Pilgrims of all types.

The desperation and donations of pilgrims

once helped to make this cathedral rich.

Lincoln still draws in the visitors but not the crowds of the past,

and most today seem to marvel more at the architecture

than at the message it once conveyed.

With church attendance on the slide and donations from pilgrims falling,

I wonder what the future holds for these monumental buildings.

The cathedral is already on the English Heritage At Risk list.

What's really surprised me about coming to the cathedral

is just how few people there are here.

They get thousands of visitors, of course they do,

but they don't get tens of thousands like other attractions in the country,

who would provide the money to keep the place going,

It's a crying shame. This is...this is Britain.

Britain rendered into stone.

Our passion, our history, our beliefs!

This for me is also...one of the finest buildings in the world.

I feel like I'm learning a lot about pilgrimage,

but I'm not meeting many pilgrims.

And there's an event at a remote village in Norfolk

that I really want to get to,

so I've hired a car and I'm heading there.

I've just got time for one stop along the way.

My fascination with pilgrimage

isn't just about what past travellers believed,

but also how they travelled and what they ate.

Ohh! Caroline? I stopped off at a transport cafe

to meet medieval food historian Caroline Yeldham.

Simon Reeve. Hello.

As a medieval pilgrim, it wouldn't have been uncommon for strangers to take me in and feed me.

Monasteries considered it their Christian duty

to offer at least a meal.

And there were a growing number of inns springing up along highways feeding merchants and pilgrims.

Now to me, that looks...like there's a certain medieval quality to it,

big hunks of meat there.

Is this the sort of thing that would have been eaten in the medieval times?

If you're of the right social status or in the right household,

on days when you're allowed to eat meat,

which excludes Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

And at Lent and Advent and Pentecost there are dietary limitations as well.

-And as a pilgrim?

-You should be eating fish.

There is a Latin pun between carne, which means meat, and carnality.

And they discouraged anybody

who was dedicated in a religious way particularly from eating...from eating meat.

Because it was in some way associated with or seen

as an encouragement to sin.

-Absolutely.

-In other meaty, fleshy ways, shall we say?

Whereas fish, which are watery in nature,

are much less likely to entice you to sin.

-They do look good though.

-SHE LAUGHS

That's part of the point, you're resisting temptation,

it's good for your soul.

Caroline had graciously agreed to cook me up a taste of the past.

We travel further and we travel faster now,

but...it's lost some of its allure, I feel, and certainly romance as we've speeded up.

There was a time when cars pottered along slowly,

and obviously a time before that when horses cantered,

and people would...they would take in the journey.

Perhaps that's part of the pilgrimage for me

is just a chance and an opportunity to just take it a bit slower and reflect a bit more.

And, of course, then eat.

Ohh!

-That's a full tray.

-SHE LAUGHS

Thank you so much.

What have we got?

We have a vegetable potage,

some fried perch served with a green sauce...and apple fritters.

-Apple fritters?!

-Yes.

Oh, fantastic! Pud.

So we start with the potage.

The potage is made from broad beans and mixed herbs and vegetables.

-Leeks and carrots and onions.

-OK.

-It's very good!

-Thank you.

Medieval food has quite a bad reputation, I think.

-You don't...

-It does and it's completely undeserved.

I think the dishes are delicious and healthy

and more people should try them.

I think I'm just hungry, I'm just greedy.

SHE LAUGHS

Many medieval workers consumed up to 5,000 calories per day.

that's almost twice our recommended intake.

But experts think the low-fat vegetable rich medieval diet

was often better for the heart than modern starchy diets.

OK.

It's delicious!

Apple fritters, when does the recipe for these come from?

It's late 14th century.

All that time. Is this sugar?

There is a little sugar on there.

Probably ought to have used honey for a pilgrim,

but I thought I'd treat you.

HE LAUGHS

Thank you. That was absolutely delicious.

A real joy to eat and fantastic to learn about.

I'm just hoping I can sneak this away.

Well, that was fascinating and I loved the food.

Now on to Walsingham.

Some religious sites around the world attract millions of pilgrims.

I was heading to a small Norfolk town

which is one of the few places in Britain

where pilgrims still go in large numbers,

some 300,000 every year.

These pilgrims are part of a tradition

dating back almost 1,000 years.

A shrine was established here by a Saxon noblewoman.

In the year 1061, she had a vision.

The Virgin Mary asked her to build a replica of the house in Nazareth

-where the Angel Gabriel announced she would give birth to Jesus.

-ALL SING

By Tudor times, hundreds of thousands of Britons

were trekking here from across the country.

-So you come here regularly every year?

-Every year.

-Gives us a chance to catch up.

-We catch up with people.

Is it an opportunity also for you

-to recharge your spiritual batteries?

-Recharge, yeah.

-Yes. Yeah.

-Ever so.

-Can I slot in with you?

-Yes.

-Why are you here today, can we ask?

-This is my first time.

-First time? Is it going OK so far?

-Yep, lovely.

-There are worse ways to spend a bank holiday, aren't there?

-That's it, yeah.

ALL SING

In the places I've visited so far,

I've often felt that many of the people there were visitors and tourists rather than pilgrims,

but here now, this feels as close as I've really got to an encounter with genuine real pilgrims.

-ALL SING

-But for centuries, pilgrimage was a rare sight here.

500 years ago, Henry VIII

split the Church of England from Catholicism

and turned the country into a Protestant nation.

It was the time of the Reformation.

Shrines, the idolatry of saints, and many pilgrimages like this,

all seen as rituals of the Catholic church, were banned.

And some Protestants think they should be today.

"The invocation of saints..."

"..is vainly invented... Repugnant to the word of God."

And you're protesting that the Church of England,

the Anglicans here are behaving like Catholics.

They are. We want them to return to what their church professes to believe.

Have you ever had a situation when you've been here

when people who've been on the march have actually said, "No, you're right,

"I'm going to cross the barrier, as it were, and not do this again?"

We know people who have come out of it. And...

Come out of it? You make it sound like a cult.

Well, it is a cult. It's occult. It is occult.

The biggest occult system in this world is the Church of Rome,

because they actually worship the dead.

Even at the height of its popularity before the Reformation,

Walsingham and other pilgrimage sites had their critics.

Visitors to shrines were often sold holy souvenirs of dubious origin.

Walsingham was once branded Falsingham.

There was a period where there were claims that salesmen

were lining up on the side of the road

to sell the Virgin Mary's breast milk!

Corruption and the exploitation of the beliefs of ordinary pilgrims

encouraged Henry's dramatic break from Rome

and his assault on the old Church.

This is really powerful.

These bits of stone have come from buildings from cathedrals

from churches that were attacked

and in many cases destroyed during the Reformation.

So we've got...from Chester here,

some of them have got writing on them,

from Beeston, Rosedale, Lincoln.

It's a graphic illustration

of just how damaging and destructive the Reformation was

to the religious infrastructure of Britain.

Also, of course, it represents the destruction of shrines

and thus the end of the golden age of pilgrimage in Britain.

Catholics built a new shrine in Walsingham in 1897.

And a new Church of England shrine was constructed in 1922.

So after such a long time, what sparked a revival in pilgrimage?

I met up with Bishop Lindsay Urwin,

who took me to see the restyled Anglican shrine.

One of the things I love about this house

is the sort of the darkness of it and the walls, because that's all caused by the smoke of candles.

You receive hundreds of thousands of pilgrims here every year,

is that evidence of a revival of interest in pilgrimage?

I think it's interesting that in a society

that probably doesn't quite know where it's going...

..the notion of people making pilgrimages,

of making intentional journeys...is sort of resurfacing.

The crucial element there is the notion of the journey.

Looking, seeking a destination, finding one here,

of finding purpose and meaning in life as a result?

When people come on a pilgrimage to a holy place, it's a staging post.

People come to the holy house

and it's the end of this particular pilgrimage journey,

but it's only to be a reminder to them of the great hope

that actually at life's end...there is a resting place.

There is more.

-Life is a pilgrimage.

-Life is a pilgrimage.

The decline of pilgrimage was a real loss for many ordinary Britons.

Not only did many believe in the power of shrines to absolve sins and provide healing,

but pilgrimage was a chance to have a real adventure.

And for some it was an excuse to do a little sinning away from home.

And where better to do that than in the country's capital city.

Medieval London was the gateway for pilgrims heading to Canterbury.

A place that provoked fear and promised excitement.

Can you imagine the wide-eyed astonishment of a medieval traveller

arriving in London for the first time?

It wouldn't have been a big city then by comparison with today, of course,

but in the Middle Ages it would have felt like a mega-city.

Arriving here 700 years ago,

I would have entered a walled city built north of the Thames.

40,000 residents were joined by merchants, pilgrims and travellers.

The gates of the city were locked at night,

so anyone wanting an early start to Canterbury

would have crossed London Bridge

to spend an evening surrounded by danger and temptation.

For more than 1,000 years,

this area over here, the area around Southwark and Borough,

has had a reputation for being a bit edgy, shall we say?

Actually, that's probably putting it rather politely,

in medieval times it was positively sleazy!

South of the river was where London dumped many of its unwanted.

It was a home to pickpockets, tricksters and highway robbers.

Not an ideal place for pious pilgrims,

but an eye-opener for the more adventurous.

This was an area of inns and ale houses

and, by the early 1500s, around 18 brothels.

Ironically, rent from the brothels

was paid to the landowner, who was the Bishop of Winchester!

Prostitutes around here actually became known as Winchester geese.

Today, Southwark is up and coming,

but I was looking for a spot

that offers a glimpse of the area's murkier past.

And this is it.

It's quite eerie at night.

There are thought to be up to 15,000 people buried in here.

Among them are countless prostitutes and illegitimate children

who the Church didn't want buried on consecrated ground.

It's now a hugely valuable piece of real estate in the centre of London,

but local people, when they found out about it, have gathered together

and turned it into something of a shrine to try and stop it from being

developed without consideration given to the long-term residents.

It's really moving, actually.

I think what this wall and the graveyard gives a sense of

is the scale of prostitution that was under way

on this side of the Thames as travellers would have crossed from London.

It wasn't just a couple of girls on the corner, this was an industry.

And it was there to tempt pilgrims, of course,

but I suspect it was also there

partly because that's what some of the pilgrims wanted.

They didn't just come for reasons of piety,

they came because they were away from their communities

and it was an opportunity to sin.

Pilgrims would have left their communities with pious intentions,

but been sucked into the world of vice after running out of money.

There was a medieval saying about pilgrimage for women,

"Go a pilgrim, return a whore."

The precise number of pilgrims

who passed through London on their way to St Thomas Becket's shrine is uncertain,

but strong evidence that Southwark was once a gateway to and from Canterbury

is being found along the banks of the Thames.

Archaeologists have dug up an extraordinary range

of pilgrim badges dating back over 500 years.

These badges were sold to pilgrims at shrines.

A nice little earner for the Church.

Mary Olgeeter is a curator from the Museum of London.

They're probably my favourite objects in the museum's collection.

-Really?

-I find them incredibly evocative.

And you just sort of think about the people's very fervent beliefs at the time

-kind of embodied in these objects.

-Hm.

These are touch relics, cos they have been physically touched

against a saint's shrine or their remains.

So a pilgrim will have got their badge or their souvenir,

I suppose,

from a shrine or somewhere and will have just pressed it

against the bones of a saintly... a saintly relic.

Yes. Yeah.

So these aren't really a kind of "I Heart New York" kind of souvenir.

HE LAUGHS This is proper religious stuff.

So, St Thomas Becket.

It would have had a pin on the back. You can't really see it,

that's the top of the pin, so that has snapped off.

So that would be attached to your cloak or your hat.

And why would people have pinned it to their clothing?

Was it really just to say, "Look where I've been?"

It's look where I've been, you know,

if you've had time off work and you can prove to your boss or your spouse

when you've got home,

"Look, I did go and do that important pious act."

By touching them, you can sort of have some of the saint's virtue

and you can be cured of illnesses and things like that.

It is...astonishing to think of the meaning, the power,

-that's imbued in these relatively simple souvenirs.

-Hmm.

-What's this one here?

-This depicts the martyrdom of Thomas Becket.

-And this was a badge?!

-Yes.

Look at the...the work involved in this!

I know and they're so delicate. It's amazing that they have survived.

These are the four knights who went to attack Thomas Becket.

This is the murder scene, isn't it?

The murder scene, yeah.

One of their heads is missing but there are four people here.

And there's poor Becket,

who's fallen to his knees in front of the altar having been struck.

It says "Thomas MA," meaning martyr...at the bottom.

Shrines around Britain had enormous power of course,

but I hadn't realised before now

just how mobile that power could become.

The badges were a real connection with the holiest of holies

that a pilgrim could take back to their village in any part of the country.

I think there wouldn't have been any part of Britain that couldn't have felt, through those badges,

a connection with a relic or a saint.

Medieval pilgrims would have followed...well-worn tracks.

They would have asked directions.

And that's what would have taken them from community to community,

village to village.

Now, of course, we've all got smartphones.

What is great about this, of course, it means I don't have to ask anyone where I'm going,

a very un-male thing to do.

It's this way.

Careful now.

Heading out of London from Southwark,

I was following in the footsteps of some of our most famous pilgrims.

Their tales were told in one of the first and greatest works of literature in the English language.

Here we are.

"Geoffrey Chaucer, 1342 to 1400.

"England's greatest medieval poet

"and author of the Canterbury Tales. The Tabard Inn.

"Site from which Chaucer's pilgrims set off in April 1386."

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote,

the droughte of March hath perced to the roote...

Henry Eliot takes groups of Chaucer enthusiasts on the 65-mile trek

along the same route used by the fictional pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales.

..that slepen al the nyght with open ye,

so priketh hem nature in hir corages.

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.

Fantastic! Excellent. With the prologue from the Canterbury Tales

whetting our appetite for pilgrimage,

I set off with Henry and his merry band on the journey out of London.

We're treading in the exact footsteps of medieval pilgrims.

I find that really exciting, even though so much has changed today.

This... Borough High Street, the buildings may have changed but this route is the same.

We were using roads that once formed Watling Street, the Roman road used by Chaucer's pilgrims.

It runs all the way to Canterbury and onwards to Dover.

What does Chaucer tell us about...

Or teach us, in fact, about the medieval time and particularly pilgrimage?

Sure. Well, I suppose the main thing

is how many different types of people were going on pilgrimage.

Everyone from the knights down to the ploughman.

Pilgrimage was a situation

in which people from every level of society could meet.

Would come together and that was quite rare.

In Chaucer's time, much of the route between London and Canterbury was through thick forest.

Pilgrims from all classes stuck together, carried weapons

and kept to the road.

We're just approaching the place

where Chaucer's pilgrims stopped for their first tale.

Are we?! This crossroad?

Chaucer described it as "the watering of St Thomas."

-Right.

-Which was a little stream with a holy well attached to it,

dedicated to St Thomas Becket, which was just here.

Hear now, the Knight's Tale for friends.

-The chivalry of this tale will make you cheer.

-ALL CHEER

-The bravery of this tale will make you gasp.

-ALL GASP

-And the sorrow of this tale will make you weep.

-ALL SOB

And because it is a knight's tale, friends, it is apt that it begins upon the battlefield.

So this is the tale of two princes locked in a tower together who crave the love of a fair maiden.

Step forward, Arcite. The other prince of royal blood, Palamon!

-Ah!

-Palamon.

-Called upon. Called upon.

-Pious, wise,

thoughtful, brooding, aloof. Perhaps slightly less handsome than Arcite.

It's completely mad! We're on a crossroad on the Old Kent Road.

Palamon cannot believe that Arcite has also fallen in love with Emily and he beats his chest.

Beats his chest.

-Howls at the moon.

-HE HOWLS

-LAUGHTER

-Shoves gravel down his...

I'll see how far you're going to go with this. No.

And the two set immediately to fighting!

So step forward. Step forward before me now and brace your...

It's certainly a novel take on The Knight's Tale.

I was loving it.

And as they say in these things - Allez!

Arcite puts his back...with all his force and pushes Palamon down!

Down! Down to the ground!

Yes! Arcite wins!

That was fantastic. There you go, on a crossroads in the middle of South East London.

What a ludicrous location, but absolutely fantastic.

-Bonkers but brilliant, eh?

-That's it. Yeah.

-All the best.

-ALL: Wah!

Before setting out on this journey,

I thought pilgrimage was something that had to be suffered.

A penance for sins.

Leaving London, following Chaucer's route,

I was beginning to see that for most travellers, past and present,

pilgrimage can be both pious and fun.

I've reached a real landmark on the journey.

The delights...of the M25!

I'm going to wait here and meet a bloke who should be turning up.

A man who does pilgrimage the hard way.

It's definitely him.

For the last 26 years, careworker Lindsay Hammond

has spent much of his spare time on a very unique kind of pilgrimage.

You...must definitely be Lindsay.

I am, Simon. HE CHUCKLES

Goodness me, Lindsay!

How far have you carried that?

Well, I think it's about 5,000-plus miles now.

-Why?

-Erm...I've received a lot from Jesus, you know,

I've received a new life, received forgiveness of sins, you know,

so I want to give it away. That's why I carry it,

I want to give away what I've received.

And what's the longest journey you've done with the cross?

Well, the longest one was... Berlin to Moscow.

CAR HORN That was...that was three months.

-Three months of walking with the cross?

-Yeah.

-With your kit?

-With my kit, yes.

Lindsay, do you think you're what's commonly known as...

a little bit of a nutter?

Yeah. HE LAUGHS

Yeah, I do, I think in some ways.

This is a large piece of timber to be lugging around, isn't it?

-I mean, even with the wheel on the back.

-The wheel.

Everybody wants to make a big thing and say Jesus didn't have a wheel on his cross.

-Is that what they say to you?

-I could be a millionaire

if I had a pound for every time somebody said that.

-Are you a pilgrim or are you a preacher?

-Both. Both, really.

I want to spend hours and hours and hours on the road with Jesus, that's what a pilgrim does, you know.

I want to travel from place to place doing it, that's what a pilgrim does.

The cross seems to break down barriers, they seem to trust me very quickly.

Er...and maybe my humour helps, you know.

-But the...

-It's your cheeky grin.

-It's the cheeky grin, yeah.

-Spreading the word.

-Spreading the word.

Because we're living in a time

where so few people are doing what you're doing,

is it sort of...? Hm. Now this is interesting.

-So...?

-Where are you off to? Canterbury?

Eventually. He's carrying his cross around Britain, around the world.

That's it. Well done.

What do you think when you look at him and you see him carrying the cross?

Christ.

-That's a good response.

-It all comes back to you.

-Isn't that brilliant?

-That's great.

-Does it worry you that he might start talking to you about...?

No, no, no. I'm a Catholic. I'll talk to him if he wants to talk to me.

-Is there anything you need? Any water? I'm

-fine, mate. Thanks.

That's lovely of you. Thank you. We appreciate that offer, kind sir.

No, that's all right.

I can't share the faith yet,

but I'm fascinated to know how much the cross weighs.

-Can I try it on the shoulders?

-Of course you can.

That's 25K but it's OK.

It's OK to do... Well, let's see.

I can imagine this will be OK for a short distance. Can we walk on?

Yeah.

-Across the road?

-Whoa, whoa. No. No, no, no.

-Reverse?

-Yeah.

Cross reversing.

Maybe not when the articulated lorry's going past.

You see...amateur driver there.

-I'll stop them. I'll stop the traffic for you.

-Safe to go out?

Yeah, come on then.

-It's already hurting my bony shoulder.

-LINDSAY LAUGHS

-So just pop up.

-Yeah, there you go.

I think your level of faith, Lindsay, frightens me a bit,

intimidates me, but I also... I'm also a bit jealous of you.

I don't really believe in much any more.

I don't feel worthy of carrying the cross.

I think it should be returned to the...the rightful owner.

It's back on the shoulder. Over to you, sir.

-LINDSAY LAUGHS

-I wish you...

This isn't light, I tell you.

-I wish you all the very best on your travels.

-Simon, thanks, mate.

You're doing it in a way I can barely imagine.

Good luck on the road, Lindsay.

Before all this TV travel started for me, I used to write books

and investigate terrorism. It made me very cynical,

and it made me somewhat frightened of people who believe too strongly

in anything.

Lindsay is one of those people,

but you spend a little bit of time with him

and you realise he's a lovely, lovely bloke.

And even just now as we were leaving and vans are going past,

I felt quite protective of him.

I didn't want anyone to lean out of the window and shout "nutter" or anything worse.

He's doing pilgrimage the hard way.

I've come slightly off track...

because this is the M2 up here.

This is the old Roman road that Chaucer's pilgrims were supposed to have taken, but I've come down here,

because I want to get onto this pathway, Pilgrims' Way.

It's Britain's most famous pilgrimage trail.

The 120-mile track

once bustled with thousands of medieval travellers heading to and from Canterbury.

Many enjoying a welcome break from the difficult life of a feudal peasant.

This really opens up now.

The track itself follows this low chalk ridge.

It runs all the way from Winchester, past Canterbury and on to Dover.

The history of Pilgrims' Way

has been documented by author Derek Bright.

It would be used for trade.

It would have been used by people coming in to the country.

Probably going back to after the last Ice Age receded.

-So this was a track for people long before Christianity came to this island.

-Sure.

This wasn't just a pilgrims' way, this is a peasants' way and a travellers' way

going back several thousand years.

More travellers on the way. Hello. Good morning to you.

You're going the wrong way. This is the Pilgrims' Way to Canterbury.

-It's this way! Oh, you've been?

-THEY LAUGH

Returning home.

Tens of thousands of medieval pilgrims

walked and rode to Canterbury each year.

Treasures from their adventures

have been unearthed all along Pilgrims' Way.

-So what is this?

-This is an ampulla.

If you feel it, Simon, it's made of lead, so it's fairly heavy.

Feel the...feel the weight.

What's the thinking? What would this have stored?

A little bit of holy water of some type or...?

It may have holy oil or holy water,

-but at Canterbury it would have been filled with the blood of Becket.

-Hm.

Because we know from reports from the monks

that were there at the time of his death,

that one was asked to actually shovel up

the brains and the blood of Becket.

They stored the blood in a lead cistern

-and topped this up every day with red ochre and water.

-Hm.

And for 200 years they were giving it to pilgrims...or maybe they were selling it to pilgrims.

More than that, though, because it would have carried

something that people believed was powerful, that had a healing ability.

Very much so, yeah. And also for Canterbury

a never-ending source of blood which they could top up every day.

Medieval pilgrims needed places to eat and rest on their journey.

In the valleys below Pilgrims' Way were the inns and monasteries

that would have accommodated them overnight.

I headed to Aylesford just 30 miles from Canterbury.

-I am Brendan.

-Brendan. Brother Brendan?

Just Brendan. We have a large guest house. It's not The Ritz.

I'd come to stay at a Catholic priory

which was taking in weary pilgrims more than 700 years ago.

Thank you.

And continues to do so today.

-Oh, my goodness!

-So it's very simple.

People pay huge sums for this sort of experience.

You shouldn't be marketing this as simple,

you should be marketing this as a journey back in time.

-Well...

-Look!

Once you've finished your journey, you can come back and give us some real concrete advice.

-BOTH LAUGH

-What, help with marketing?

-That's it.

-I don't know about that. I'm just going to look at the view this side.

Oh, I should have mentioned, there's a simple toilet and shower.

Brendan is one of eight Catholic Carmelite friars

who look after the 200,000 visitors who come here every year.

OK. Good evening, gentlemen. Thank you for letting us come in.

-Simon Reeve.

-I've seen you on the TV.

You've seen me on the TV. All right, may I join you?

-You may.

-Thank you very much indeed.

Apart from deep philosophical, spiritual questions,

what else do you discuss around the table at dinner?

It varies from opera to football,

-especially we know if Arsenal or Celtic have done badly.

-HE LAUGHS

What, by the looks on people's faces?

Yes. Arsenal are playing at this very moment.

No greater sacrifice could he make.

-THEY LAUGH

-I'll watch the highlights later on.

THEY LAUGH

After dinner, Brendan agreed to give me a rare glimpse of one of the priory's treasured relics.

We call it a reliquary, because it houses the relic of St Simon Stock.

Generally, a relic is a piece of something belonging to St Simon Stock or a piece of him?

In this case, we have his cranium, so...

-Really?

-..if we would like to, we can look inside.

This doesn't normally happen, but I've arranged for Father David

to come along and open up the reliquary for us, if you'd like?

Yes, please. Thank you.

St Simon Stock was a prior at Aylesford 700 years ago.

He's said to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary.

And there it is. Quite a large part of the skull.

The whole of the top half of the skull.

Is this the holiest...relic that you have?

We have a whole collection of various bits and pieces,

but none as large and spectacular as this.

Does it still have a place in Britain in the 21st century?

All religious traditions have relics, Buddhists and things.

First of all, simply as a memento.

And yet many people watching this

might think of a souvenir or a memory of somebody you treasure

-as being an item of their possession rather than part of their skull.

-Yes.

-Erm...

-Some people might think this is quite macabre.

Oh. I hadn't thought of it like that.

Every Catholic church has relics in it.

By definition, a permanent altar has to be contain

fragments of two saints.

Does it have some sort of supernatural power?

The relic actually has no power whatsoever.

The power comes from the faith of the believer...and the love of God.

But surely the reason so many pilgrims

go on long, arduous journeys,

and have done for hundreds of years, is because they want healing,

spiritual healing or physical healing,

that does suggest that the people, the masses, think of them as having an immense power.

There will always be those who will give to external objects

powers that they don't have,

whether it be religious objects or other objects.

The relic itself, it just gives us a way, if you like,

of connecting the faith of the believer with the faith of St Simon Stock...with the love of God.

Relics still play an important role in the Catholic faith.

They remain a potent draw for worshippers and pilgrims alike.

It's a faith I struggle to understand

and certainly not one I possess.

For me, as a traveller, wherever I am, whenever I go,

I of course get lonely, I take my own little shrine with me.

And I think these...

these two still provide me with my purpose and meaning,

my wife and my son.

Anyway, it's been a long day and we've got a long one tomorrow.

And a big day tomorrow, we're off to Canterbury.

And so, like millions of pilgrims before me,

I finally arrived at Britain's holiest city.

Before visiting the cathedral,

I dropped in at the East Bridge Hospital,

a 12th-century shelter for medieval pilgrims

who couldn't afford the city's more expensive inns.

So...there were wealthy pilgrims and there were poor pilgrims

and this is where many of them would have slept.

Very simple...but a refuge nonetheless.

There's a special atmosphere here.

One that comes from a building that's hardly changed in 800 years.

Up two flights of stairs is a small chapel where pilgrims could pray.

I really do feel... in some strange way

a sense of the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and prayers

that have passed through here.

Maybe I'm tuning in to them.

The chapel still draws pilgrims today.

Their hopes and despairs are captured in a simple prayer book.

One of the first ones I read, it's...

..almost unbelievably powerful.

It says the name of a baby..."that she will not need an operation."

HE SIGHS

There's a world of... pain and horror.

My goodness! They're all like it.

There's another one from America.

Please pray for somebody on death row in Ohio.

I'm not a person of faith, as I keep saying...

and I can of course understand why there are people who stand up now

and say there is no place for faith in the 21st century,

in a society of science and learning,

but it can be such a magnificent and marvellous support

in difficult times.

And how dare anyone take that away from people?

The thing that I've learnt that's most surprised me

is that pilgrimage didn't have to be an onerous and painful task

for our ancestors.

It could be a journey of adventure, of celebration and of wonder.

And that, quite frankly, is what all the best journeys should be.

Well, I do feel something of the expectation, I think,

that a pilgrim would have felt as they arrived here finally at the end of a long journey.

Quite probably tired, perhaps even exhausted,

possibly unwell...and really ready to experience something quite holy.

It's certainly an extraordinary building.

It was at Canterbury just over 1,400 years ago

that Saint Augustine, a monk sent from Rome,

set up a monastery to convert the locals to Christianity.

Since then, Canterbury's always been at the centre of Christian beliefs in Britain,

but it was the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket here in 1170,

after he stood up to King Henry II,

that transformed this cathedral into the greatest destination for pilgrims in the land.

Well, it's very graphic. This is the site of the murder.

And you can see here on the floor

"Thomas" in blood red.

Being here, I was reminded of the story of pilgrims

wanting to take away Becket's blood, believing it could heal them.

These are so graphic.

The wailing of the desperate and the dying

often rang through medieval cathedrals.

We're so fortunate to have the miracles of modern medicine,

when all our ancestors could do was drag themselves to shrines and pray and hope.

And here we are.

This is the spot where the shrine to Thomas Becket stood

that would have marked the end of the pilgrimage

for hundreds of thousands of people over hundreds of years.

By all accounts it was a shrine

of almost heavenly beauty encrusted in jewels.

It would have been an extraordinary end to their journey.

The shrine was destroyed during Henry VIII's Reformation,

along with Becket's body.

Becket was declared a traitor and stripped of his sainthood.

Now all that remains is this candle burning on the ground and lettering on the floor that reads,

"The shrine of Thomas Becket,

"Archbishop and Martyr,

"stood here from 1220 until 1538."

Now that date marks the end of the golden age of pilgrimage in Britain.

It's never been the same since.

But on the next leg of my journey, I'll be travelling through Catholic Europe,

visiting pilgrimage sites which are booming thanks to 21st-century pilgrims.

ALL CHANT

I'll be joining the hardy souls trekking across beautiful northern Spain to the city of Santiago

before I follow our ancestors into the Alps

and travel through Italy to the Eternal City.

Rome!

-APPLAUSE

-It's still a magnet for millions of visitors every year.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd