Pilgrims walk – don’t they?

It was a nutty idea to start with, I suppose, especially as there was no way I would have time to do it. But the image of pilgrims of old making arduous journeys to reach their goal was strong in my mind, when finally my invitation for a nine-day Pilgrimage arrived. I determined that I should walk at least part of the way from Scotland to Haifa and take overland routes for the rest of the way.

On July 2nd, greatly helped by the Galloway friends, I made a token start, walking from St Ninian’s Cave to Whithorn, where Christianity was first brought to Scotland about 400 AD. The serious walking began next day when I headed off into the Border hills south of Moffat.

A week later, I reached Hadrian’s Wall near Lanercost Priory, where Edward I had stayed on his way to hammer the Scots. It had rained earlier and I had had a taste of being soaked but now it was baking hot. The view was magnificent; the wall fascinating, but trudging up and down the rolling hills with a 50lb pack (and still very unfit) was sweet torture.

On to Burnlaw to say hello to Garry and Rosie Villiers-Stuart. If I needed a stiff dose of spiritual uplift, the next ten days provided it, together with a variety of wonderful workshops and music. At the close, I was driven south by Steve Day, staying with him and his family before hitching across England to Harwich and the Netherlands ferry.

Holland
Pim van Prooijen and Matin Dadfar greeted me in Rotterdam, where I stayed a night before walking most of the way to Nijmegen, not far from the Bahá’í-owned conference centre of Du Poort, where I joined the Dutch Summer School. Mr Giuseppe Robiati’s exposition of the New World Order of Bahá’u’lláh was something else and the morning sessions of “happy songs” had me humming for weeks afterwards, not entirely because fellow-participants Maryam Manmteghi and Jasenko Nuhi, from Bosnia lifted me all the way to Langenhain.

This was my first visit to any House of Worship and I was both awe-struck and ecstatic.

Bekir Atik, truck driver

I offered a few days of service and spent many happy hours dead-heading roses and other flowers with gardener Gisela von Brunn. The staff was kindness personified and if I had not had a journey to make, I might have been gardening there yet!

Bahá’u’lláh was, as ever, watching over me. At a filling station just east of Frankfurt, I asked a Turkish lorry-driver for a lift – and was taken all the way to the Austro-Italian border. Being dropped at 0130 was something of a test, however! Nevertheless I made it, to old friends in Dravograd, Slovenia, by the end of the day. This was where my family and I had spent many months during our horse-drawn travels (see my book The Seven Year Hitch for that story). After a few days, a lorry lift down to Croatia was arranged for me. And there I almost stuck.

Bulgaria
I intended to hitch to Sofia, where I was to help with preparations for the Bulgarian summer school. But not a glimmer of a lift could I raise and not liking the look of some of the people roaming about, I took to a hotel for the night. Next day was as bad and I began to wish I had gone on to Sarajevo with the Slovenian lorry. Eventually I accepted a lift to Osijek and from there took a bus, via the still wardamaged town of Vukovar, to Belgrade. A sleeper to Sofia cost only £22 equivalent, so I booked one and went in search of something to eat before departure.

Berta Petruski met me at the station next morning. An American, she has lived in

Bulgarian Summer School

Bulgaria for nine years. Besides helping prepare papers for the school, I saw something of the city and the surrounding country, thanks to Bertha. Then Mr Afsin, the main speaker, arrived and we all travelled to Plovdiv, where the school was held. There was a good mix of nationalities at it, from Albania to Ireland, including Knight of Bahá’u’lláh to Moldova, Anne-Marie Krueger.

A walk in the hills beckoned as soon as the school finished, so I took a train 25 km south and then hiked sweatily upwards. It was cooler at 3,000 feet and I had a delicious five days plodding through woods and meadows and enjoying the peace, the birds and my own company.

Edirne
It took four lifts, after returning to the plains, to reach Edirne. The first was in a rattle-trap Russian UAZ pick-up, going to small farms collecting milk for delivery to a central tank. The last was with three young Turks returning from holiday – who took me to the door of the Saray Hotel.

The lovely gardens at the Azzat Aqa house and the delightful Kocabiyiks who look after it captivated me. It was a privilege to be able to work for a few hours in the garden. In a different way, the newly-restored Rida

Talip and Hanife Kocabiyik

Big house gave me a tremendous sense of peace and spirituality, as well as being very emotional, especially when saying prayers in the room that had been Mirza Mihdi’s bedroom. The new Pilgrim House was on the verge of opening and Tahireh and Fikrat Karaçay, the young caretakers, made me most welcome. The gorgeous Seleminiye mosque, where Bahá’u’lláh used to pray, was another attraction in this pleasant, bustling town.

Any Bahá’í’s visit to Turkey should include Istanbul, if only to visit the house at Fatih. The original house was destroyed by fire and earthquake, but the present one is a haven of peace, where the caretaker Miss Vekil welcomes you. I went upstairs to pray in the main room and was overwhelmed to find that in a frame on one wall is a coat of ‘Abdu’l- Bahá’s, while displayed in a glass cabinet are a ring, handkerchief and lock of hair that belonged to the Blessed Beauty. No-one had mentioned these and once again, I found my eyes watering.

I took a ferry from Istanbul to Aderma, then walked for four hot, perspiring days before taking a bus fr om Yenice t o Çanakkale, then a short ferry trip to the Gallipoli Peninsula. In 1915, my father had fought here with the 4th/5th Royal Scots, so this was a personal pilgrimage. It was a bonus knowing Bahá’u’lláh too, had been here. Returning to Çanakkale, I took a long bus-ride south, to dispel the terrible sadness of that blood-soaked, deathly Peninsula. A visit to Ephesus and a tranquil mosque in Selçuk, followed by three days walking (feeling more liquid than solid) did that. Reaching Bodrum I embarked for the Dodecanese island of Leros, where, in the waters around the island, my half-brother’s submarine, HMS Trooper, had been lost with all hands in October 1943.

There were two ways to reach Haifa other than by air. One was overland via Syria and Jordan but that route was long and of uncertain duration. First I had to check out possibilities on Cyprus. Back in Bodrum, I caught a 16-hour night bus to Mersin and the port of Ta?ucu. Afterwards I realised we had passed through Konya, where Rumi had lived. No time for regrets about not stopping there, though, as a high-speed catamaran whisked me across to Girne in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), from where a short bus trip took me into Nicosia.

After a disjointed first day, I was ‘rescued’ by Frank Kennedy and accommodated in his still-unfinished flat, an act of kindness I cannot sufficiently thank him for. Adjoining the flat is his Euro Learning Centre, the computer and English language school, which provides a living for this doughty Irish pioneer. The TRNC is unrecognised by any nation save Turkey, which makes some aspects of life awkward. However a five-minute walk takes one to the Greek Cypriot side, so one has the best of two worlds. But there is no unity in the diversity between Turkish and Greek Cypriots and it will take some time yet to undo this Gordian knot.

I was able to carry out quite a lot of service in both the North and South Nicosia Bahá’í Centres. Most of this was cleaning and tidying around the outsides, removing a fallen tree, hacking back bamboo and fierce encounters with beautiful bougainvillaea, which is jaggier than barbed wire, but included some tiling and minor joinery in the North.

I reluctantly accepted that a sea voyage to Haifa was, disappointingly, not going to be practical. The cheapest option was to fly to Tel Aviv, returning via Cyprus and thence a charter to the UK. In the end it didn’t matter, I was going on pilgrimage! Suddenly it was October 23rd. Mount Carmel, here I come!