Upton Bishop St John's Walk to Jerusalem

  Saturday 27th February With Compostela in sight below us, we join the obligatory photo opportunity by the pilgrims' statue below the top of the Monte do Gozo, the Hill of Joy. Indeed, the feeling of euphoria is contagious and everyone is babbling excitedly in the morning sunshine. The two pilgrims are pointing towards the towers of the cathedral, 4km away. Following their directions, we go into the Oficina de Acogida al Peregrino to get the final stamp for our passports and pick up our certificates. It is busy. The people in the office are welcoming, they smile and nod, but they see so many pilgrims all they want to do is the paperwork and move on to the next so they have no curiosity about us. It is a bit of an anticlimax. The carved romanesque Cathedral portico is a magnificent work of art on its own. Passing under it we find the ornate, gilded altar gleaming luxuriously in the lamplight. Janet, who has been here on a feast day, tells us about the Botafumeiro:  'The censer...

Monday 22nd February By the time we have bought new boots and succumbed to an expensive note book bound in gorgeous Italian marbled paper, it is almost lunchtime but we have a long way to go, and new boots to break in. 'Don't throw away the old ones yet!' Instead of sinking into a chair on a Florentine Piazza, we buy picnic food and set off for the coast. Tempting as it is to call in and say hello to the leaning tower of Pisa, we take the more northerly route through Lucca and Viareggio, past the marble quarries at Carrara and on to La Spezia and the Cinque Terre. Here we join the Sentiero Azzurro, the cliff path connecting the five towns with their brightly coloured houses that cling to the steep coastline. It is getting dark by the time we reach Genoa and the new boots have done quite enough for one day. The birthplace of Christopher Columbus seems like a good place for footsore travellers to stop for the night. Tuesday 23rd We set out bright and early. 'Lunch in Mona...

Saturday 20th February Michael's recommendations mean we make a slow start today. Coming to the outskirts of Perugia we agree that it would be a dereliction to bypass the town so we loop up into the medieval centre before ca rrying on to the shores of Lake Trasimene. 'Hannibal defeated the Romans at the battle here in 217BC.' 'With or without elephants?' The shores are peaceful, the water twinkles but we don't stop at the beach and we only pause for coffee in Arezzo, lovely as it is, because Florence is now not far away and we are all keen to get there. We wind down through lush green  Tuscan  hills and  villages  punctuated with columns of poplars and cypresses. The villages come thicker and faster until they merge into one. At the point where we get our first view, Florence  is a distant smudge , the Bruneleschi dome rising alongside its Campanile out of  the wide sweep of terracotta rooves.  The really romantic view is from Fiesole but our approach ...

  Monday 15th February Likou was there to meet us as promised, his eyes twinkling from the depths of his wrinkles, on the inland edge of Marathokampos. He looked us up and down. We are walking fit, hardened by almost five thousand miles over every kind of terrain, and his Greek sideways nod said he could see this. Even so, Mount Kerkis rises steeply from the seashore, its rocky head as grizzled as Likou's, an imposing and rugged climb. He set a slow pace at first but, as we bunched behind him Likou, an observer not a talker, picked up speed until we were swinging along at our usual rhythm. Once we had gained some height, instead of taking the trail that led towards the rocks, he turned along the flank of the mountain, heading steadily inland and dropping at length into a green valley spangled with anemones, red, violet, white and humming with bees. Ahead of us the track was lined with brightly coloured hives, like miniature beach huts. Some of us were not keen to go any nearer but ...

 Saturday 13th February We explored the island of Samos on foot today. The wooded mountains and terraced fields, criss-crossed by roads and tracks, are studded with monasteries. It is an empty and peaceful landscape and as we head westward towards Potami, now and then we come upon a waterfall where water cascades into inviting pools.  'Anyone for a dip?'  The  foolhardy dip a toe but not for long. It is quite chilly. 'Nicer in August.' 'But more crowded.'  Indeed, we have this lovely island almost to ourselves. The tourist eateries down on the waterfront are largely shut up for the season but the locals are pleased to see us, to sell us meze and excellent Samos wine and to tell us what we must see and do. They direct us to the cave of Pythagoras who, it turns out, as well as being a philosopher, was a vegetarian and an advocate of communal living. 'Not the squaw and the hippopotamus bloke?' ? 'You know: the squaw on the hippopotamus is equal to the s...

Monday 8th February We turned right a little way before Beirut and headed inland into much tougher country with deep rocky valleys and steep climbs. The final approach to Baalbek is along a wide valley with snow topped mountains rising in the distance on either side. The name Baalbek written in Arabic on the signposts looks like a two masted ship.  The city was known to the Greeks as Heliopolis, City of the Sun, and the temple complex is a reflection of its importance in those times: it is breathtaking. For all the conflict that Lebanon has know over the centuries, and particularly over the last fifty years or so, the temples dedicated to Venus, Mercury and Jupiter as well as Bacchus, have remained undisturbed. The temple columns soar overhead, broad ceremonial stairways sweep up to monumental porticos and massive doorways have fine carvings still as sharp as they must have appeared to the Roman pilgrims who came to worship here. Built with brute force and muscle power and built to...

  Sunday 7th February A few miles north of Haifa is Acre or Akko. We paused here to stand on the ancient fortifications, to wander among the narrow streets and the crusader ruins, where we imagined what it must have been like to be besieged for four years from 1189. Those same crusaders made themselves a handsome profit out of the spice trade for a while; no wonder they were in no hurry to get home to damp, grey England. They must have travelled a similar route to the one we are following for the return journey, through Athens and Italy. The atmosphere in Acre was not particularly friendly so we didn't linger. We walked on to our RV at Rosh Hanikra. There is a feeling of apprehension now among us.  'He did say 10pm didn't he? not 10am?' 'Yes, because he said 22.00 hours, so he was clear about it.' 'Will he come?' 'Will it be safe?' None of us was particularly hungry. We spent a lot of the afternoon among the sea grottoes of Rosh Hanikra, travelli...

Monday 1st February A feeling of solidarity has sprung up between us pilgrims so that, despite being free to go where we please this week, most of us seem to be keen to stick together as a group. Today we've stayed in Jerusalem. There is, after all, a huge amount to see and do and we've covered a fair old mileage just walking along the Via Dolorosa, where high walls cast deep shade, going from the Wailing Wall to the Yad Vashem, the deeply moving Holocaust memorial, from the Tomb of Lazarus to the Garden Tomb. The golden Dome of the Rock is a gleaming landmark from any height. We climb up the Mount of Olives as the sun is going down, leeching warmth from the air as it goes, and the view is breathtaking. Tuesday 2nd To Bethlehem today, walking up the hill of Manger Street, imagining we are weary travellers with a donkey, expecting our first child any moment now. The town is bustling with people and cars but it does not take much of a leap to wonder how they must have felt findin...