Mary Colwell makes a 500-mile solo pilgrimage along the Camino Franc's, winding through forests, mountains, farmland, industrial sprawls and places of worship and weaving her experiences of the Camino with natural history, spirituality and modern environmentalism.

Ancient pathways through the modern world are gathering places for contemplation and prayer and touch-points for unexpected kindness, intense spirituality, demon-slaying, strange goings-on and magical tales. Pilgrims pitch themselves against heat, cold, wet, dry, hunger, thirst, and sometimes pain ' the physical reality of being a soft-bodied creature on a hard planet. Yet the soaring birds, rocks, trees, butterflies and flowers give succour, medicines or warnings. Nature is, in a sense, a fellow traveller.
 
Pilgrimages are physical journeys through space as well as metaphysical journeys through time. The same tracks follow the same routes through a planet always in flux, providing still points in a turning world. Our ancestors trod these paths before us and left their fretful or hopeful dreams in monuments scattered across the landscape. These ornate cathedrals, standing stones, mysterious caves and secret hermitages speak of a hunger for pardon, immortality, beauty and a release from fear. Yet to undertake a pilgrimage is to acknowledge that while the world may change, humanity does not. 
 
Pilgrims have always walked in times of upheaval, and in Gathering Places, Mary Colwell relates her solo pilgrimage along the Camino Franc's in a time of global pandemic when the focus of political power in the western world was shifting.
 
The 500 miles of pathways of the Camino Franc's wind through mountains, forests, farmland, plains, cities, villages and industrial sprawl, as well as places of worship. And in a typical year, 100,000 people walk this route or part of it. Mary walked the entire 500 miles virtually alone, accompanied only by Nature itself, and this delightful new book, she weaves her experiences of the Camino with natural history, history, spiritual stories and modern environmentalism.