Another day, another milestone. Not actually on the bike, but still a milestone…

If you enjoyed the Pilgrim Cello blog, then I hope you will enjoy the book! The official publication date isn’t until January, but by very special arrangement you can buy the book from Kennethwilsoncello.com in time to give it to everyone for Christmas. You can pre-order on the website, for delivery by the end of November.

I don’t know if you can tell that I’m making quite an effort not to fill this post with exclamation marks, because I’m really very excited about it. Somehow the production of a real book feels like a proper conclusion to all the earlier effort and exhaustion.

Of course, it doesn’t stop here. In a way, writing the book is the easy bit; now I have to go out there and sell it. That means endless brazen self-promotion – trying to get gigs at bookshops and literary festivals, art and music venues, and anywhere else that will have me. So if you’re connected with anywhere that might host a Pilgrim Cello performance, and where a few people might buy a book, please let me know!

In the meantime, please order all your Christmas presents from https://kennethwilsoncello.com/product/pilgrim-cello/

Here are a few short quotes designed to inspire your purchasing…

A modern pilgrimage of curiosity, gratitude, and grace.’
Dr. Shaun Cutler, Founder of the Cathedrals Cycle Route.

‘Part travelogue, part spiritual meditation – Kenneth Wilson has turned a very big adventure into a little gem of a book.’
Jack Jewers, author of The Lost Diary of Samuel Pepys and Seething Lane: A Samuel Pepys Novel.

‘Elegiac, thoughtful, and filled with warmth. I loved following his extraordinary journey.’
Ava Glass, author of Alias Emma and The Traitor.

‘Kenneth Wilson is a marvel. Read this book and be truly amazed.’ 
Larry Culliford, author of The Big Book of Wisdom, and Happy as Larry: A psychiatrist’s quest for mental health and wellbeing.

‘Britain excels in producing eccentrics; but as far as I know, this is the first case of an eccentric equipped with a bicycle, a cello and a map of cathedrals. Another mad and intriguing adventure for the most intrepid cellist-on-a-bicycle in history.’
Steven Isserlis, CBE, Cellist, Gramophone Hall of Fame, author of The Bach Cello Suites.

‘I found Pilgrim Cello even more enjoyable than Highway Cello – which is saying something. An honest, beautifully-woven narrative that’s a compelling mixture of travelogue, history, philosophy, cycle paths and human interactions, both comic and poignant.’
Louise Voss, author of His Other Woman, The Venus Trap, etc.

‘Pilgrim Cello is a love letter both to English sacred space and to the stubborn human urge to seek meaning on the move… a book that goes beyond words.’
The Revd Dan Tyndall, former Vicar of St Mary Redcliffe Bristol and Honorary Canon of Bristol Cathedral.

‘Delightful. Witty and multi-layered; a page-turning read.’
Dr. Farhad Emad.

‘So much more than just a bike ride…’
Bob Morrow, USA

‘This is a wonderful book, about a remarkable pilgrimage. As a fellow long-distance cyclist, I’m full of admiration for the physical achievement of cycling so far with a cello. Adding to those days in the saddle with musical performances is even more astonishing.  But then being able to share those experiences with such intimacy and humour is perhaps the biggest achievement of all. Thank you for writing this book and bringing us on the journey with you.’
Jonathan Mayes, CEO, Cathedral Music Trust.

Thank you very much!

The post Publication date! appeared first on Kenneth Wilson Cello.

Guess where I am? When I began this project, and started approaching the cathedrals to see if I could perform the Meditation, I didn’t dare hope that 40 out of the 42 would say yes.

St. Paul’s had been very positive at first. That’s a particularly busy day, they said, with wedding rehearsals and other important things, but we might be able to make it work. In the end they couldn’t, because they discovered an inviolable rule, that they weren’t allowed to put on any day-time performances.

So on the pilgrimage I passed by St. Paul’s without going in. It costs a lot to go in.

But some wheels were already in motion. A distinguished Canon of an earlier cathedral had been talking about Pilgrim Cello with a distinguished Canon of St. Paul’s. Why, the latter wanted to know, slightly indignantly, isn’t he playing at St. Paul’s?

So now here I am. It’s more than a month since the last cathedral performance, and the leg muscles are beginning to regain their normal dimensions. I came on the train.

St. Paul’s is having an open evening. Jen, the event manager, who met me at the NW door, is telling me there will be 3,000 people – mostly Londoners who don’t want to pay the normal entry fee. Fair enough, I’m thinking to myself, but not saying out loud.

It’s a terrible thing to say, but I don’t like St. Paul’s. It was England’s biggest cathedral for a couple of centuries, until Liverpool took that crown, and everything about it is just too big, too grand, too regal, too important, too gold, too military, too colonial. And far, far, too Baroque.

Everyone knows that Sir Christopher Wren built it, after the Great Fire of London destroyed an earlier cathedral in 1666. At first he was commissioned just to repair the old one, but eventually he persuaded them that wouldn’t work.

But the ecclesiasticals didn’t like his first design. Nor his second. Not his third either. What we see today is his fourth, or fifth (it depends how you count it) plan. Even that was significantly modified as he went along.

I’m to play in the military chapel, the chapel of St. Michael and St. George. I don’t like that. I’ve never been able to reconcile myself to this aspect of the established Church of England. Somehow it has to say God’s on our side; we prayed for victory, and God gave it to us.

So the cathedral seems to be full of outsized monuments, in marble and alabaster, to military men who spent their lives killing people, but who, in death, can be described as godly, compassionate, and practically saintly. It doesn’t add up. But perhaps that’s just one of my prejudices.

Anyway. Here we are. A 60-strong American choir sang Evensong for a congregation of hundreds, after which the cathedral was efficiently cleared, ready for the evening’s invasion. I’ve done a little bit of practice in the gloomy chapel, and asked if they could find me a light. The invasion begins.

The CFO, whom I met handing out leaflets, tells me that 2,000 people can be accommodated, seated. So 3,000 sounds to me like quite a full cathedral. It will be noisy.

The Meditation is one of two timed events in the evening’s leaflet, and rather more people want to enter the chapel than the 60 it will comfortably hold. And the noise from beyond the open screen requires me to shout, and to play this quiet music fortissimo.

But this is, after all, St. Paul’s, big, grand, regal, important, gold, military, colonial, and Baroque. And I should play my part.

So the Meditation has been performed in 41 of England’s 42 cathedrals. Is that really possible? Or am I just dreaming?

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I’m having to keep my wits about me. I’m at home, where I shouldn’t really be. It’s not that I don’t want anyone to know – I’m telling you, after all – but I mustn’t think of it as home. This is just a place to sleep tonight. There’s one more day to do.

So I’m resisting every temptation to open piles of post, to pick some fruit for dinner, to see what’s gone on while I’ve been away for seven weeks. That must wait until tomorrow night.

But I allow myself to make real porridge before I pack the bike for a last time, and set off – for Carlisle, the beginning of my old journey to Rome, and the end of this one.

It’s cold; it’s windy; it’s going to rain. Do your worst, I’m telling the weather; I’m well past caring.

I’m looking forward to Carlisle. I’ve met lots of people on the way who said they will be there for the finale. The cathedral got behind the venture, and plan to give me a proper welcome and ending.

So it’s a nice confirmation when the first thing I see outside the North door, as I arrive at the same time as the rain, is a proper poster. There’s another one inside, by the shop, advertising their “Book of the Month”. That’s a very special affirmation.

And it’s affirmation from beginning to end in Carlisle. Sheena introduces me to their new Canon Precentor, two weeks in post, who will take care of the formalities, including some nicely staged photos.

A big audience is gathering, under the high altar and the grand East window; lots of faces I know, and lots more, from far and wide, who greet me like an old friend, having followed my progress for the last 48 days. I must be careful not to be overwhelmed by it all.

One man, I later discover, who was a chorister in this cathedral 60 years ago, had invited a friend to the performance. But the friend had already promised to go to another concert. So the chorister reluctantly changed his plans accordingly – only to find they’re coming here, where he’d wanted to be in the first place.

There’s no hurry about the Meditation. There’s no feeling that it’s nearly over, and I want to get to the finish line. Every performance – I’ve been surprised to find – has absorbed me, and this one is no different. It settles into the place. It settles me into the place. There are some tears. The nearly-three-year-old in the audience goes quietly to sleep.

Afterwards there are books to sign, hands to shake, congratulations – and tea and cake – to be accepted. It’s overwhelming.

Thank you for reading these posts over the past seven weeks. Thank you for your encouragement, your advice, your prayers. I’ve been on a pilgrimage, and now I’m home again. I’m changed.

It is done, and I am finished.

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I liked the little Rafay Hotel in Blackburn. The industrial fans from the takeaway downstairs made aircraft noises outside my window until about 2am, but there was such a friendly feel to it all – an urban place where you just rub along with your neighbours, and don’t get too worked up about anything.

I pedal a short way to the Chaii Caffe – I like those double letters – for a proper Indian desi breakfast. As I sit looking out of the window, a large group of women – I’m guessing they’re students – goes by, all completely covered, and many of them in full burqas. A pair of police officers across the way are taking a long time questioning a young driver.

Like so many of the cathedrals in industrial cities, Blackburn’s is new. It didn’t become a cathedral until 1926. A 100 year old church was re-purposed, and new bits were added in 1938, 1950, 1961, 1969, 1998, and 2016. They claim, of course, that Christian worship on the site can be traced back to 596, the year before St. Augustine came to Canterbury.

On one side there’s a striking bench fashioned out of zombie knives surrendered to police in an amnesty. On the other there are 15th century misericords, brought from somewhere else, and not quite fitting in.

When I arrive, the cathedral is full of young children. I overhear an explanation of the Christ the Worker sculpture over the West door. Christ is risen, but you can also see echos of earlier days in a fishing boat.

The most recent development here is the garden. Big old tombstones have been repurposed to make a pavement, and in the sunshine the dates stand out starkly. 1849 seems to have been a bad year. Here is a family that lost a baby, and a toddler, and a teenager. The father died, aged 34, in 1850.

I’m approached by one of the school staff. Coincidentally, she says, the children learned something about the cello yesterday. Would I be prepared to play a little something for them before they go?

Unpacking it, while they have an early lunch, I’m dismayed to find that the earlier repair to the bow has failed. All that bumping around on rough roads. The hair has all come out of the tip, its wedge must be somewhere loose in the bag, and I don’t know how to fix it.

It takes me 20 minutes to get it somehow back together. It’s not very good, and there’s a lot of loose hair left over. I tape it up with sticking plaster, more in desperation than confidence.

The children file back in, still wearing their hi-vis vests, and raise their hands to indicate they’re silent and attentive. A later audience is gathering behind them.

This, I tell them, is the most famous piece written for a cello. It’s called The Swan – not because it sounds like one, but because it’s supposed to make you think of one. Yes, they say; it does.

Then lots of questions. Then a quick jig, which gets legs swinging, and a few heads bobbing, before they slip away and we segue smoothly into the Meditation. I’m not to be disappointed, says Dan, the cathedral’s chief officer, by the absence of clergy and staff; they’re all off elsewhere, on a long arranged eucharist and working lunch.

Annie is keen to introduce her husband Steve. Today is their 50th wedding anniversary, and when she saw my visit advertised in the Cathedral’s What’s On, she hid the booklet so she could bring him here as a surprise. They used to cycle 7,000 miles a year, mostly in South America. Steve is as excited as she knew he would be by the sight of such a bicycle as mine.

Annie had earlier rung the cathedral to ask if they could invite me to share their anniversary lunch in the cafe afterwards, but she’d been told I had further to go, and wouldn’t be able to stay.

As indeed I can’t. It’s 107 miles to Carlisle. Originally we’d planned an evening performance, which might just have been possible. But then we brought it forward, to lunchtime, to have a proper celebration of ending. So I’m going to take a celebratory ride on the wonderful Settle to Carlisle railway, and only cycle half way.

But that means I don’t have a lot of time to get 30 miles to Settle, and of course after my earlier experiences I’m nervous about trying to get on the train, so I want to be in good time.

Don’t tell anyone, but I can’t get over the footbridge. So I risk a £1,000 fine crossing the track to get to the north-bound platform. There are no staff here, so no-one sees the trespass, and then I’m safely on the train, and then safely off again, and with only 20 miles left to cycle to Carlisle in the morning. The dark red benches on the platform told me I should Settle Down. Perhaps I’ll do that.

The post Young and old appeared first on Kenneth Wilson Cello.

I was nicely reminded of the Mahatma (“Great Soul”) in Chester a day or two ago, you may remember. The young woman behind the counter told me her grandfather was born in Porbandar, where Gandhi also came from. I remembered my visit there, perhaps 30 years ago; I remember climbing the almost impossibly steep open stairs to the tiny upper floor of the Gandhi house; I remember the fleets of colourful fishing boats, and the huge and polluting industrial ship breaking.

In fact, I’ve thought of Gandhi more than once on this journey. On a bicycle I notice the things that are discarded by the roadside – lots of food packaging, of course, and also a surprising number of gloves. The gloves are mostly work wear, and almost never in pairs.

Gandhi lost a sandal out of an open train door once. He immediately threw the other after it, explaining to his bemused travel companions that then someone might find a useful pair of shoes. A single sandal is no use to anyone.

So when I see a discarded glove, I’m always (consciously or subconsciously) looking for its pair.

And here is the Mahatma, striding purposefully outside Manchester cathedral. It’s an emotional moment for me. Gandhi spent years walking the unpaved roads of the Indian countryside, visiting unknown and tiny places. India’s soul, he said, resided in its 700,000 villages, and he wanted to know that soul.

As I near the end of my journey, this darshan of India’s Great Soul is an overwhelming blessing. I touch his feet, and then my forehead.

Manchester’s cathedral is an oasis in the great city. Expensive, as well as less expensive, retail names stand out from the polished facades on one side, smart offices overlook the other. A bright yellow Metro cuts through. Everything sparkles with cleanliness and prosperity.

And in the middle of this celebration of modernity and success, the cathedral, dating from 1421.

The cathedral isn’t enormous, but it has the widest nave in England. It didn’t use to have; there was once an abundance of chantry chapels filling the side aisles; but they were demolished in Reformation days, and this big open space emerged.

Canon Ian, the Precentor, and Gareth, the Head Verger, are here to welcome me. Arrangements are straightforward; there’s a big Grammar School choir from Devon performing at 12.00, a eucharist at 1.00, and then it’s me. Not much time for warming up, then; but time instead to see the sights.

It’s a lovely place to play, looking at the postwar windows at the back, and a sizeable audience. But we rushed the sound check, and I have to switch the microphone off for cello, and on for voice, which is a fiddle, a distraction.

Jim, an orchestral director from California, is very impressed, he says. Clare introduces herself as the other member of the Extreme Cellists, and presents me with an orange Extreme Cello cap, which I feel an extreme honour. There’s book signing; there are bike questions; there’s tidying up; so I’m later than I meant to be setting off into the wind to ride 30 miles through Bolton, up onto the West Pennine Moors, and down into Blackburn.

The wind is tiring, and I make a sudden decision to stop – far too soon – for tea and cake. I’m admiring a flowery coffee pot, which Ols says is from Saudi Arabia. The other flowery pot, like himself, is from Istanbul, where he was a tattoo artist before his Manchester family persuaded him to come here, a year ago. I suspect he spends most of his time with that family, because he still speaks very little English. But he has an amazing skill in stringing words together to make sense, if not sentences. And he insists I need two pieces of cake, though he will only allow me to pay for one.

There are too many cobbled streets in Bolton; it’s too cold and windy on the moor; and there is too much unmaintained road and uncollected rubbish on the long run into Blackburn. But the welcome at the little Rafay hotel is warm, and the lengths they go to to find a safe space for the bike are impressive. I collapse in front of the tennis, eating takeaway out of a box.

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The colour of the wooden sculpture makes it hard to discern against the stone, and it’s tucked slightly out of the way, so you might miss it anyway. This is the Outraged Christ, by Charles Lutyens, great-nephew of Edwin, who left his mark so colonially on New Delhi.

Jesus was outraged in the temple, when he came to public attention driving out the moneylenders with an improvised whip. Some see that as the beginning of an inevitable end – you don’t live long when you defy such authority quite so openly.

Now he is outraged again, at the injustice, and the inhumanity, of his crucifixion. This isn’t the quiet acceptance of the necessary will of God; this is the human outrage that cries out against gratuitous killing.

I didn’t see it last time I was in Liverpool’s enormous cathedral, performing the Meditation on the Seven Last Words, in Lent. Today there are going to be 1,000 children assembled to sing here, and some of them have already arrived, excited. They’re all wearing industrial hi-vis covers, and making hi-decibel noises.

I weave my way through the soft privacy of back-street Liverpool. Here are quiet roads with oddly exuberant greenery growing through the pavements, old churches converted into student housing, and warehouses converted into new churches with aspirational names. There are little green spaces, fenced, and often locked. There are tight-knit houses, which remind me of where I used to live – not much, perhaps, to look at, but happy and safe community.

And then a much bigger, unfenced, green space, crossed by a wide road. The road is littered with learner drivers, lined up to practise their 3-point turns, or stranded in the middle of them.

John Lennon expresses stencilled hope from a roadside broadband cabinet. And here, on the edge of a wood, is an extravagant shrine to a departed Liverpool supporter.

Ten miles from the city centre I turn left onto a nice road – footballers’ (I’m guessing) houses on one side, and a waving field on the other.

Then ten fast but noisy miles on a good path beside the A580. There’s a limit to how long I can do that, so I divert to the Pennington Flash Nature Reserve, a mile or two in the wrong direction, where the noisiest thing is a duck outside the cafe.

It’s early for lunch, but this is the quietest place I’m likely to find today, and Deborah has packed me a second pork pie “just in case”. I think she was imagining I might not have been able to get to Liverpool at all last night, and she didn’t want to send me provisionless into the night.

A birdwatcher – I noted him earlier in one of the many hides facing the unpopulated parts of the reserve – shows me the amazing pictures of kingfishers he’s taken here. I revert to the main road, refreshed and ready to tackle the traffic noise for another hour or so.

Then, as the urban density increases again, a bit more canal – with a towpath more navigable than Birmingham’s – followed incongruously by the Trafford Centre, with its cycle paths weaving their way through acres and acres and acres of carpark. A primary school suddenly spilling out onto the road, and not quite controlled by its lollipop person. I wonder how the Big Sing went in Liverpool cathedral today?

The post A straight road, a meandering mind appeared first on Kenneth Wilson Cello.

There are no ups and downs on the road from Wrexham, and before I know it I’m riding into Chester, nice and early. There are two canal boats – they look as though they’re lining up for a race – coming down through the locks between the road and the railway. That’s worth stopping to watch – these locks have been moving boats up and down for 250 years. There are eels in the water.

Chester is a fabulous place, full of black and white buildings (many of them must be Victorian re-inventions) on pedestrian-thronged streets. There are buskers stationed every 100 yards or so, and a great choice of coffee shops in between. I choose a busker first, and then a nearby coffee. The busker plays lilting Irish songs on her violin, and in between she sings richly.

The cake is a good choice too, served by a young lady from Gujarat, whose grandfather had migrated from Mahatma Gandhi’s Porbandar to Ahmadabad, the big city. She prefers Chester, she says.

“Are you with the band?” The cathedral welcomer asks. I think it’s a joke, so I reply “I am the band.” “Well, everyone else is waiting for you; you’d better hurry up.”

That sounds as though a surprise is ahead of me. I wheel the bike round a lot of corners, and find myself facing the chaos of a big band, main stage, setting up – black T-shirts, clip boards, and purpose everywhere. They’re not going to want me among all that.

Alice comes over, escorted by her security detail – who bulges his tattoos at me, and tries to interpolate himself between us. He looks as though he’s been hired for the day, and wants to make sure they know he’s doing his job.

Suddenly I remember the correspondence with Alice. They’re going to put me in the Refectory, to entertain those who have come for sustenance. This is a “pop-up” that won’t be put in any notices: “the aim is to capture the attention of people already in the space”. No, they couldn’t provide a lapel mic. No, they wouldn’t send out the attached press release to the local media. And so on.

On this pilgrimage I’ve had some wonderful cathedral welcomes. I’ve also met with bemusement, and indifference; I’ve been ignored, and patronised; and although I’m determined to take the rough with the smooth, it doesn’t get easier. Of course they’ve got more important things today, and I’m grateful they’ve given me the space at all, but it can be hard work.

Simon, the Refectory Manager, can see that. He offers me a cup of tea, and tells me gently about the group of 40 Koreans coming in for a set lunch ten minutes before my scheduled time.

I ask Alice again about a microphone. They only have headset mics, she says, and they’re for the clergy. Would she ask if I could borrow one? The security tails her out of the Refectory, and back in again two minutes later. “They’re only for the clergy,” she says.

A member of the clergy comes in just before the performance, to give an announcement and a prayer. He asks me my name. There’s a stand mic here for his use, which I’m allowed to use “before and after”, so after he’s left I position it as best I can, and get on with it. You have to see the funny side.

Gradually, as the Koreans get back to their sightseeing, and the other lunchers disperse, I realise there’s an unusually attentive audience around the edges of the room. One of them buys me a restorative tea afterwards, and the volunteer from the shop comes in to tell me she’s had such lovely comments from all those who came to buy books and cards.

Even so, there’s a feeling of shaking the dust off my feet as I leave Chester. There are steps down to the riverside path, so I divert, and try further on. More steps. Divert. More steps. Divert. Impassable kissing gate. Divert. Steps. Divert. Give up – take the main road.

And then, after 15 miles or so, suddenly I find I’m passing Port Sunlight. I learned about Port Sunlight half a century ago at university – one of the pioneering Garden Cities, established by the Lever brothers, to house the workers at their soap factory. This doesn’t just merit a diversion; it requires one.

I’m cycling slowly round the calm streets, admiring houses and trees and roadside sculptures, when I spot a calm couple sitting on their calm and open lawn. James, retired, used to tour with the Rolling Stones. He was in charge of Ronnie Wood’s autocue. We talk about Port Sunlight, about the Rolling Stones, about the impossibility of getting to Liverpool from here, except by train, eating Deborah’s pork pies and pickled onions, and playing some calm notes on the cello.

No, says James, what Google tells you is a bridge is no such thing. It’s a tunnel. You can’t take a bike through it. The nearest bridge is in Runcorn, and you won’t get there tonight.

He’s lived here 20 years, so he’s probably right. I meander past the Lady Lever Art Gallery to the little station. The ticket office get out their mat to show me. The measurements are clearly marked, 70cm x 120cm. If your bike fits on here you can take it; if it doesn’t, you can’t, he says, looking at a machine that measures 260cm. He sells me a ticket anyway.

I run up the slope to the sound of the train doors closing. The train manager shouts at me to press the button, and the door opens again. It’s a good thing the train is nearly empty.

A couple on their way to tonight’s Diana Ross concert advise me to get off one stop before Lime Street, because James Street has bigger lifts. That’s where they’re getting off too, so they can show me.

Only there are three substantial flights of stairs before you reach the big lifts. No problem, he says; give me the bike. And he just carries it up the steps, while I watch in disbelief. He’s always like that, his partner explains with pride, as they head down the street to Diana Ross and the Halle Orchestra. Now, how shall I enjoy the nightlife of Liverpool?

The post Ups and downs appeared first on Kenneth Wilson Cello.

It’s hard to leave the warm embrace of one of the loveliest families I know, and I’m reminding myself this is a leisurely day, so altogether there’s a fair amount of prevarication.

Wth no performance today, and no deadline. I’m going to try to enjoy the ride, to allow diversion, and see what happens. This is a rare treat.

First I have to negotiate the cycle paths of Telford. Like all urban cycle paths they don’t exist for the benefit of cyclists. They’re there to stop bikes inconveniencing the motor traffic. Why else would you make cyclists go so far back from a junction in order to cross? Why put such long delays on the lights at crossings? Why have so many gratuitous right hand bends, so many silly barriers, so many places that necessitate dismounting? Imagine what would happen if cars were subject to such indignities.

Anyway, that only lasts a few miles, and after that it’s the open road. It’s not hilly; it’s not windy; it isn’t raining; the sun isn’t too hot – though it might be later. Blissful riding conditions.

Sundays, I’ve discovered, can be lonely days. Not much is open, except the pubs that do Sunday Lunches. Coffee is hard to come by. Sunday Lunch (always with initial capitals) is a family affair; no-one wants to sacrifice a table to a lone traveller. Apart from anything else, it lowers the tone.

Yes, there are other cyclists on the road, and there are friendly greetings to be exchanged, but the general closedness of houses, and the introversion involved in gardening and car-washing, seem emphasised.

Not today somehow. Last night’s warm embrace carries me forward. When I stop at Bolas Magna to look at a quintessential village church, I just feel gently at home. Bolas Magna has a complete set of box pews, which is very unusual – nice if you want privacy, but probably slightly uncomfortable,

Not much further on there’s another church, celebrating a 150th anniversary with flowers and a carefully prepared sermon.

And then it’s time for lunch, sitting in the shade in the big churchyard of another village. There’s pudding left over from last night (it was only left over because it started off truly enormous), homemade bread, and garden salad. The church itself looks locked, but it isn’t, and I surprise myself by kneeling briefly at the altar rail. Afterwards I might have slept in the sun; I’m not sure.

I’m in Wales by mistake. I’ve lost track of the number of people whose response to my account of myself – a pilgrimage around 42 English cathedrals – is St. David’s? No, I tell them; that’s not England. Usually they persist. Oh, so not Wales, then? How many cathedrals are there in Wales? Are you doing those next? And so on.

It’s the effect, I think, of modern navigation methods; they undermine our sense of geography. We don’t look at maps, and see this place in relation to other places. We just tell the machine where we want to be, and it tells us – in bite-sized chunks – how to get there.

So I don’t realise I’m in Wales until I pass a Slow Araf. I might even have forgotten that Wrexham, where I’m heading, is in Wales. My excuse is that it’s only a staging post, somewhere to stay on the way to Chester with its definitely English cathedral. The logistics are a bit complicated for these few days, and I might not have done all my homework properly.

Or I might just be exhausted, with five days left to go.

The post No hurry appeared first on Kenneth Wilson Cello.

Riding into the centre of Birmingham I’m assailed with complicated feelings, complicated memories. The cathedral sits in its own little green space. Overlooking that green space is the head office of a bank I once borrowed too much money from.

The first rule of banking is that you can borrow as much as you want, provided you can prove you don’t need it. So I used to go to that head office pretending a confidence I didn’t quite have. There’s a limit to how far a suit can disguise the heart. I always felt like an outsider, a chancer, without the qualification or right to be there.

And I feel the same now. I’m not going to perform the Meditation in Birmingham cathedral – they didn’t want it – but I feel the pilgrimage requires, for completeness, that I visit, quietly and inconspicuously

I had a long, if one-sided, correspondence with a senior person here. He didn’t always reply to emails in person. More often there was an automatic reply. The automatic replies emphasised that he was extremely busy, or that he was on retreat, or on jury service, or otherwise unavailable. The cathedral itself was also very busy, and when he did write it was to say that unfortunately it was too busy to accommodate my request.

In Coventry a lady bemoaned the fact she had to come there to hear my performance. Why aren’t you playing in Birmingham, she wanted to know? Nothing ever happens there – nothing. To my explanation that they were, on the contrary, too busy for a Meditation she replied with a snort, and something unprintable.

And now here I am. The busy cathedral is empty, in the middle of a Saturday morning. Outside there are crowds, but they don’t impinge on the quiet space.

The welcomer wants to chat. Why don’t I stay a bit longer and attend the afternoon’s bike blessing service? It would be churlish to tell her.

I’m anxious to move on. The day is hot, and I’ve still a long way to go.

I set off along canal paths, but they aren’t conducive to cycling. There are too many interruptions, and the periodic ups and downs are ridged with bricks so that barge-towing horses don’t slip. I can’t ride a bike with a cello up and down those. At one barrier I have to unload the bike completely, lift the luggage over, and then carry a 25kg bike. I give up after that, and aim for a main road.

It’s really hot by the time I get to Lichfield. They’re preparing for an ordination, which seems to involve moving about 1,000 chairs. I played the Meditation here in Lent, so that today’s chair shifting could proceed uninterrupted.

I get thoroughly lost in Cannock. A bit later I decide to ignore a Road Closed sign, which a mile along the road turns out to be a mistake. The road disappears into a trench that would have stopped a tank.

And then, thirty miles into the afternoon, a familiar voice hails me from across the road. Jake – he of the famous London to Cape Town ride – has come to escort me the last few miles to safety, conviviality, fire-cooked stew, cigars, and the best puddings in the world.

After dinner, Gillian’s paintings come out of their gold box, and are solemnly passed from hand to hand around the table, before being laid out in blessing, in the fading light at the end of a long and beautiful day.

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There are two cathedrals at Coventry, one grown at the foot of the ruins of the other. A man with an 800mm camera lens is leaning on a pillar taking pictures of the recently fledged Peregrine falcons on the tower of the old one. The tower is all that’s left intact of the first cathedral, standing sentinel over a courtyard and a shell.

On 14 November 1940 Coventry was relentlessly bombed. Hundreds of people were killed. The city, once one of England’s finest, was flattened.

On the same date in 1990, Queen Elizabeth unveiled plaques, and accepted on the cathedral’s behalf the gift of a German bell inscribed with the word Peace. Everywhere around the new, postwar, cathedral there are memorials, art works, and promises: Never Again.

I am to play in front of the Baptistry window. The window is fabulous, and famous. Look how Gillian’s paintings are transformed into stained glass! The font itself is lightly carved from a boulder brought from a hillside in Bethlehem.

The performance isn’t until 3pm, so I walk leisurely around the whole building, taking it in, settling myself in it. It makes me cry. I need sunshine; I need sustenance; I need tea.

I pause to admire Lady Godiva. Here’s a tradition I think might happily be taken up again – riding naked through the town to protest about taxes. My protest would be about funding Israel’s continuing genocide in Gaza.

I learn about the origin of “peeping Tom” – he was the one who didn’t obey the injunction to keep his doors and windows shut when Lady Godiva passed by. And what about being “sent to Coventry”? In the Civil War, Parliamentary Coventry had a big jail for Royalists, where they could be locked up and forgotten about.

The performance exhausts me; it always does. Gillian is here, unexpectedly. The gentleman who marches up to me during the applause, looking like someone important on his day off, introduces himself to me as the Dean. He offers very generous thanks, and immediately segues into an interrogation.

What are you doing, he wants to know? I’m on a pilgrimage. Yes, but what does that mean – for a non-theist like you? You say “no-one has returned”; so why are you here?

These are very direct questions (he apologises for the lack of polite introduction, but time, he says, is short, and this is important). Yes, these are very important questions. I relish tackling them with someone so erudite as Dean John. I talk about believing in God, while not believing in the existence of God. Is he satisfied? I don’t know. Does he think I’m trespassing? If so, he’s too generous to say it.

The paintings and the music packed away, Daniele takes me back to the tea van. Mohammed, we discover, is from Palestine. When I am immediately intemperate on the subject of war and genocide, there are tears in his young eyes, and he won’t let me pay for tea and sweets. When we leave I am wearing his Save Gaza wristband. I won’t take it off until this pilgrimage is over.

After a strenuous journey to Birmingham, during which I was helped over a fallen tree by a young Bangladeshi family picking green plums from the wreckage, I’m sitting in Rob’s kitchen, gently restored.

We’re having almost the same conversation I had with the Dean – though I promise I didn’t start it. Rob is a mathematician, and physicist, so far beyond the cutting edge of it all you couldn’t possibly keep up. He introduces the idea of atheism. He declares himself an atheist, who believes in God. But he’s talking maths and physics, so it’s impossible to know what he means, or whether to take him seriously. Which is probably what the Dean thought, too.

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