On Saturday 19th October we welcomed Helen and Ian from the ‘Pommie Pilgrims’ group to Bradford Cathedral, as part of the national pilgrimages they are doing to raise money for the church at the heart of their community, in the Derbyshire village of Youlgreave.
Helen and Ian were following in the recent footsteps of Sandy, Alex, Herfa and Rose who had walked from Leeds’ Catholic Cathedral to Bradford Cathedral a few days earlier.
Fresh from completing their contributions to the walks and ahead of going for a curry and returning for our concert that evening, we spoke to Helen and Ian to find out more about them and the pilgrimages – covering their family connections to the church; avoiding bulls; and bringing the whole community into the pilgrimages, and began by asking – why is it the Pommie Pilgrimage?
Helen: “Youlgreave is the Village that I grew up in as a child and, somewhere in its history, they started a silver band. There was somebody sitting on a wall and it was going along, going ‘pom pom pom’, and the name stuck. [The village] became known as ‘Pommie’.
Why are you doing the pilgrimages?
Helen: “We’re raising money for the church, for toilets, heating and a kitchen.”
Ian: “It’s a wonderful, beautiful church but it doesn’t have any toilets and it has no kitchen facilities, [for] when we want to put events on and use it for the community.”
Helen: “It’s also for the school children. [Currently] there’s nowhere for them to go. They have to be taken over the road with a key to the reading room…”
Ian: “It’s going to cost hundreds of thousands of pounds – we don’t know yet [how much]. Somebody in the village had the idea of trying to kickstart some funding and came up with the idea of linking Youlgreave with all of the 42 Anglican Cathedrals.”
Helen: “It’s a lady who loves walking. She’s walked the whole of the coastline of the British Isles, so her immediate thought was [to do the walk] and tell a story. We’re not getting sponsored: we’re just trying to tell a story and put it out there and hopefully funding will come in!”
We spoke to Helen and Ian after they arrived at Bradford Cathedral, with just three more Cathedrals for the overall team to visit.
Helen: “We’re almost there. The deadline to complete is the 1st November, because we’ve got some things in the village to celebrate the ending of it.”
Ian: “The first one we did was Youlgreave to Derby over three days on Palm Sunday, [with] over sixty people from the village. Some people only did a few miles – older people and people with children – but twenty-seven did the walk over three days.”
Helen: “An anonymous donor put in £100 per person for the people who completed the three days, [which] was nice and a good start.”
Ian: “We also had about thirty people complete another community one, from Sheffield to Youlgreave, over three days a few weeks ago.”
Helen: “We had bell ringing at both Sheffield Cathedral and then back at our church as an end of project thing, which was nice.”
Ian: “I’s been open to people of faith, or no faith, or any faith, but the church is special to us. Helen was born in Youlgreave, and her parents and grandparents were both married in the church, as were we, and our son and daughter-in-law.”
Looking at this particular leg of the pilgrimage, Helen and Ian had set off from Wakefield Cathedral on the Saturday. We next asked how that journey had been.
Ian: “We had wonderful sunshine yesterday. We planned it all out on OS map as to where to walk. We walked about eleven-and-a-half miles yesterday from Wakefield Cathedral to Drighlington.”
Helen: “There were some green routes, with fields and paths and a few little bits of road as well. Today has been less green, partly because we came to a field with a bull, many cows, and some calves, and I wouldn’t go across – I mean there were big horns involved! We had to do a mile extra in the rain!”
You’ll see in the photo that Helen and Ian are both walking with little flags showing a stone carving – Petra.
Helen: “Petra is our sort of symbol. She’s a stone figure that’s just inside the church as you come in the porch, so we took Petra as our as our Pilgrim.”
We ended the chat by asking about the importance to them of the pilgrimages.
Helen: “What’s come out of it is that people have just loved walking and talking, and that sort of community spirit, and I think people are now looking into what do we do when this is finished: will we do regular walks as a village?”
Ian: “It’s prompted a lot of people in the village to come together and get involved in walking, people who wouldn’t ordinarily have done it. But the big thing for us is that we’d like to see our church used as a community asset, and the thought of actually having toilets in there and a kitchen facility, that will just enable all of that to happen, will be absolutely wonderful.
“The acoustics, as you’ll know, are wonderful in churches, and we do have concerts in there. But that’s the big thing for us: to see the church used.”
Helen: “I think people have found actually entering the cathedrals is very moving. Sometimes there’s been Evensong on, and found that very emotional, and inspiring. A lot has come out of it.”
Ian: “And a lot of people have gone and done pilgrimages to Cathedrals, that have some special meaning to them, from areas where they were born, or brought up, or where family members were involved. A lot of people have involved their wider families in doing it. We’ve involved friends from different places to do it, and caught up with friends that we haven’t seen for a long time.”
The Pommie Pilgrims have also been supported by those who maybe aren’t able to walk as far.
Helen: “For those who can’t walk in the village, they’ve acted as what we call ‘Petra’s Angels’, who have provided lifts between places, and that’s been really helpful.
“There’s one lady in her mid-80s, who’s walking to Guilford – she has family there – so she’s done the last mile up to the Cathedral and she’s used her walking frame to walk the miles in the village, and she’s clocked up forty-one miles by walking a mile a day over the summer. She’s done a brilliant job!”
You can find out more about the Pommie Pilgrims on their Facebook page; in the Church Times piece from earlier in the year; and you can donate to their cause on their JustGiving page.