That's the Spirit: Michaela Strachan and Tom Rosenthal's Pilgrimage Through North Wales
Pilgrimage: the Road through North Wales - Friday 9pm, BBC2
Caroline Frost - 27 March 2024
If you can’t ever go far enough to escape yourself, perhaps the opposite is also true – that you needn’t travel great distances to find yourself. While previous series of Pilgrimage have led their celebrity soul-voyagers overseas, this year’s crop of famous pilgrims put the idea to the test with their spiritual journey taking them only a few hundred miles from home to the north coast of Wales. Beginning at Flint Castle on the English-Welsh border, their two-week quest followed a path linked by churches, echoing tales of long-forgotten Celtic early-Christian saints, and finished on Bardsey Island, a sacred place that has drawn pilgrims for centuries.
Two pilgrims – TV presenter Michaela Strachan, who says that her faith is “the natural world”; and actor Tom Rosenthal, who has Jewish family heritage and wanted to learn more – reveal how the trek brought them unexpected blessings…
MICHAELA STRACHAN
Going in, I was physically strong but not robust emotionally. I’d had a year of grief and just lost my best friend, which was still very raw. It felt heavy, I felt vulnerable – which doesn’t sit comfortably, as I’m someone who likes to look strong and capable in front of people. And here I was with people I didn’t know and with the cameras on us. I found it challenging.
We had a lot of fun as a group, though. I learnt a lot, and everyone was a breath of fresh air – there were some strong characters, and I think I did a lot more listening than talking, which is rare for me! Because of my emotional state of mind, I needed to retreat sometimes. In the evenings, while the others played games, I found my own space. It was healing.
I didn’t expect to find the area so beautiful. If we’d had typical Welsh weather, I might have felt differently, but we were blessed with the most wonderful September week, and my favourite day was when we walked up Snowdon. I’d go there every weekend if I lived nearby. I loved the coastal path, it’s so beautiful – although when other people were admiring some of the views, I admitted I found the sight of so much cultivated land a bit depressing, which I think surprised some of the others. But I was saying, “Where are the trees?” It made me think of our place in nature, and the fact that as a species we think we’re so important, but actually we’re just a tiny part of everything else.
I love hiking. It’s where I find my peace, my guidance, it’s my soul food. I love being out in beautiful places. Mother Nature is my religion, the mountain is my church. I had lots of spiritual explorations when I was younger, before I decided none of it was for me. This pilgrimage gave me confirmation that Nature is my happy place, that it’s where I’m content. In that sense, I learnt more about everyone else than I did about myself.
TOM ROSENTHAL
I’m spiritually engaged in other ways, but it would never have occurred to me to do a pilgrimage – it sounds so weird and archaic. That tells me we have a vacuum in our culture. I did philosophy at university, where it’s broadly accepted that everyone is an atheist of some sort, but this felt like an opportunity to make a spiritual investigation, to walk and properly engage with my spirituality.
I feel more connected to the Druids than the gods of, say, ancient Greece. North Wales feels part of us, and it was all breathtakingly beautiful, but my favourite place was a “ponder spot”, where we were invited to gaze over the beautiful view and focus on something that drew us in. Our guide talked to us about “the thin space”, the place between heaven and earth, where they are closest. I looked for it, and I felt I was being prepared in some way for life after death. It was very powerful.
We got on very well as a group, and you can learn from every person. No one really has the answers to the questions we’re asking; everyone’s intuitions are valid, especially in matters of the divine. Faith is above logic. To engage in this stuff, you have to switch off the rational part of your mind and try to engage with your heart and soul. You go on a show like this and wonder if you’re going to have to manufacture epiphanies or if you’re really sincere. But, actually, repeatedly walking with a group of people, travelling to churches and engaging with those sites of significance as they are intended to be, that had a powerful impact on me. I experienced a deep letting-go of a burden I’d been carrying with me. It was a profound therapeutic experience. I was in floods of tears, and it showed me the power of pilgrimage.
If you can’t ever go far enough to escape yourself, perhaps the opposite is also true – that you needn’t travel great distances to find yourself. While previous series of Pilgrimage have led their celebrity soul-voyagers overseas, this year’s crop of famous pilgrims put the idea to the test with their spiritual journey taking them only a few hundred miles from home to the north coast of Wales. Beginning at Flint Castle on the English-Welsh border, their two-week quest followed a path linked by churches, echoing tales of long-forgotten Celtic early-Christian saints, and finished on Bardsey Island, a sacred place that has drawn pilgrims for centuries.
Two pilgrims – TV presenter Michaela Strachan, who says that her faith is “the natural world”; and actor Tom Rosenthal, who has Jewish family heritage and wanted to learn more – reveal how the trek brought them unexpected blessings…
MICHAELA STRACHAN
Going in, I was physically strong but not robust emotionally. I’d had a year of grief and just lost my best friend, which was still very raw. It felt heavy, I felt vulnerable – which doesn’t sit comfortably, as I’m someone who likes to look strong and capable in front of people. And here I was with people I didn’t know and with the cameras on us. I found it challenging.
We had a lot of fun as a group, though. I learnt a lot, and everyone was a breath of fresh air – there were some strong characters, and I think I did a lot more listening than talking, which is rare for me! Because of my emotional state of mind, I needed to retreat sometimes. In the evenings, while the others played games, I found my own space. It was healing.
I didn’t expect to find the area so beautiful. If we’d had typical Welsh weather, I might have felt differently, but we were blessed with the most wonderful September week, and my favourite day was when we walked up Snowdon. I’d go there every weekend if I lived nearby. I loved the coastal path, it’s so beautiful – although when other people were admiring some of the views, I admitted I found the sight of so much cultivated land a bit depressing, which I think surprised some of the others. But I was saying, “Where are the trees?” It made me think of our place in nature, and the fact that as a species we think we’re so important, but actually we’re just a tiny part of everything else.
I love hiking. It’s where I find my peace, my guidance, it’s my soul food. I love being out in beautiful places. Mother Nature is my religion, the mountain is my church. I had lots of spiritual explorations when I was younger, before I decided none of it was for me. This pilgrimage gave me confirmation that Nature is my happy place, that it’s where I’m content. In that sense, I learnt more about everyone else than I did about myself.
TOM ROSENTHAL
I’m spiritually engaged in other ways, but it would never have occurred to me to do a pilgrimage – it sounds so weird and archaic. That tells me we have a vacuum in our culture. I did philosophy at university, where it’s broadly accepted that everyone is an atheist of some sort, but this felt like an opportunity to make a spiritual investigation, to walk and properly engage with my spirituality.
I feel more connected to the Druids than the gods of, say, ancient Greece. North Wales feels part of us, and it was all breathtakingly beautiful, but my favourite place was a “ponder spot”, where we were invited to gaze over the beautiful view and focus on something that drew us in. Our guide talked to us about “the thin space”, the place between heaven and earth, where they are closest. I looked for it, and I felt I was being prepared in some way for life after death. It was very powerful.
We got on very well as a group, and you can learn from every person. No one really has the answers to the questions we’re asking; everyone’s intuitions are valid, especially in matters of the divine. Faith is above logic. To engage in this stuff, you have to switch off the rational part of your mind and try to engage with your heart and soul. You go on a show like this and wonder if you’re going to have to manufacture epiphanies or if you’re really sincere. But, actually, repeatedly walking with a group of people, travelling to churches and engaging with those sites of significance as they are intended to be, that had a powerful impact on me. I experienced a deep letting-go of a burden I’d been carrying with me. It was a profound therapeutic experience. I was in floods of tears, and it showed me the power of pilgrimage.
Why not check out Radio Times Travels' UK & Ireland holidays? Experience a journey like Michaela Strachan and Tom Rosenthal here!