‘What I had not expected was the spiritual part of this journey.' Photo: by Mr. Autthaporn Pradidpong on Unsplash
When a walk becomes a pilgrimage: Neil Rushton takes it in his stride
‘Being a Quaker gives me some sort of insulation that is hard to describe.’
I wonder what the difference is between a long walk and a pilgrimage. I presume one has a spiritual connection and one is just a long walk.
I have found a repository for my soul in becoming a Quaker. In my ordinary life I am a GP. Several years ago in my surgery in Cullompton I met a homeless man and, much to my partner’s unease, took him home and gave him somewhere to stay while he got his life together again. He had lost his way through divorce and alcohol, and also lost his job as a plasterer. The next day he saw that some of my internal walls needed attention and set about replastering them. During the next few weeks he set about doing various jobs for me while I found him an emergency placement for accommodation. He never looked back and is a friend still today. I vowed then, eight years ago, that I would do something for homeless people in the future.
The perfect opportunity came up in January this year, both to have a bit of an adventure and to raise money for the homeless charity Shelter, by walking unsupported to London. My journey was delayed till April because of lockdown. So, with a full pack and a tent and a stove, I set off to London: 190 miles.
What I had not expected was the spiritual part of this journey. Not knowing where to lay my head each night, together with the freedom to walk wherever I wished, combined to give a special quality to my walk. Sometimes I would walk for hours along country paths (I tried to use few roads) and ponder on so many things. I had decided to finish at St George’s Hospital, where I qualified in 1976. As I got closer to my goal I felt a returning of my mind to the time I left London to be a GP in Devon. That recollection and reconnection somehow turned into some sort of pilgrimage or right of passage. It’s as if my whole career lay before me.
I lost my first wife to cancer and have remarried and am very happy. Being a Quaker gives me some sort of insulation that is hard to describe, but best summed up by the phrase I used earlier: ‘a repository for my soul.’
To walk across one’s country without a care in the world is a privilege denied to many. To feel the accompaniment of somebody travelling alongside you is certainly what I felt. My blisters tell another story. My journey’s end was in Tooting SW17, or was it a beginning?
In all I raised £11,000 for Shelter. Where shall I pilgrimage next?
