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Only fitting that a train (among other) disruptions would go on to define the final part of my pilgrimage. It begins with my shuttle from Stonehenge back to Salisbury Station, where I would complete the final leg of my journey over to Oxford, being an hour late. This required changing my train ticket to aContinue reading “To Arrive Back Where I Began: Finding the Power of Story on The Streets of Oxford and Making My Way Home”

As the sun comes up on the final full day of my literary pilgrimage, I find myself climbing the hill to the heart of the ancient city of Exeter. Knowing this was the central hub for all trains travelling in any direction, be it west to Cornwall, South to the Salisbury Plains, East to London,Continue reading “A Pilgrimage to Stonehenge: Where World’s Collide and the Sacred Survives”

David Suchet, whom helped bring Agatha Christie’s iconic detective, Hercule Poirot, to life on the small screen from 1989 to 2013, wrote a recently released book called Travels With Agatha Christie, in which he, along with his wife Sheila, retrace the steps of her early promotional tour for the British Empire Exhibition of 1924 (whichContinue reading “Meeting The Legacy of a Quiet, Strong, Complicated Mystery Writer and Revolutionary: Walking in the Footsteps of Agatha Christie”

The evening sun is setting as I drag my now weathered luggage up the cobblestone streets of York back to York Station. I am heading, briefly, back to London, this time taking a different route on a train that is both running and on time. Here the landscape, still visible in the slow descent ofContinue reading “Arriving At King Arthur’s Court: Understanding The Meaning of a Pilgrimage at Tintagel”

And look! In through the window of the train carriage, next to his rattling first-class teacup, can be spied a notebook, which is aspiringly, if provisionally, titled: The Complete Guide to Britain’s Only Named Wind. Marverlous! It’s about time someone wrote a book for Helm …  I intend to capture its very spirit and IContinue reading “To Name The Wind Amidst the Horror: Ascending the Steps in My Pilgrimage to Whitby”

A day in the Cotswolds. That’s what my tour was called (shout out to the wonderful people at Go Cotswolds, a small grassroots company with a small passionate team who will quickly tell you before the tour starts: there’s no way to actually see the Cotswolds in a day). Another early morning wake up call,Continue reading “A Day in The Cotswolds and an Evening In Dark Basements: When Things Don’t Go As Planned”

Sitting adjacent to The Salisbury plains is an area known as the Cotswolds, a word that combines the phrase sheep pen (cot) with hills (wold), reaching back to the Roman introduction of the Cotswold Lion (sheep) into these still rolling hills. Here is a world preserved in time, having escaped the sweep of the industrialContinue reading “Shakespeare, Resistance, and Interpreting the Great Play of Life: A Pilgrimage Into a Storied Literary Place”

Somewhere along my travels, upon hearing my itinerary, someone asks me what I thought of London. Not a difficult question to answer, but I did find my immediate, in the moment, off the cuff response to spill out suprisingly quickly. A two-word descriptive. How was London?, London I mused, was “a lot.” This isn’t aContinue reading “From London to Bath: A Bittersweet Departure and an Encounter With Sacred Britannia”

One of my earliest childhood memories reaches back to when I was around 5 years old, growing up in a north end neighborhood defined by it’s proximity to the railyards and the iconic steel bridge that spans it’s tracks, connecting downtown to this isolated hub of immigration and settlement. Here the neighborhood was our playground,Continue reading “Crossing a Bridge Into Enchanted Chidhoods and Finding the Philosophy of a Bear: A Continued Pilgrimage”

And above all, watch with glitering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” (The Minpins, Roald Dahl) They often say, don’t meet your heros. It’s no secret that meeting our childhood stories can haveContinue reading “Growing Up Into My Childhood Stories: A Pilgrimage to Dahl”