Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage.  Most of the definitions of pilgrimage refer to the religious side of the journey, however my pigrimage is very different.  Dictionary definitions refer to journeying to a sacred place for reasons of spiritual growth.  My pigrimage re-shapes the meaning of the word, being niether religious, nor sacred, nor a means of self-discovery.  My pilgrimage is a way of trying to put Irene Mawer into the context of a real person, as opposed to being a dusty figure from a hundred and fifty years ago.

By visiting where Miss Mawer used to live in the English village of Blewbury, and where she lived and taught in Boscastle, in Cornwall, I have already gone some way to transforming her into a real person.  A pilgrimage to Greece will be another ingredient to add into the pot.  During this current overland route to Greece, the first stop on the tour was the cemetery at Giavera, to visit the grave of Irene Mawer’s first husband, Robert Dale.

It came as quite a surprise to me to find that I have friends who live just a few kilometers from Giavera, and that I have previously been close to the cemetery.  Perched high up on the side of a hill, the slope drops sharply away and miles and miles of farmland and industrialisation fills the wide, flat vista below.  My husband, Andy, and I parked our camper van in the nearby car park and stayed for the night. The sun dropped out of view, leaving a horizon which glowed in a hue of shades from orange to red.  After the sun had finally set, and the inky blackness was filled with points of bright light, I didn’t exactly feel closer to God – but from my point high on the hill, I felt a special connection to something spiritual, as if I were almost able to stretch out and touch the stars.  I thought alot about Robert, and about the young men in the cemetery.  At 33 years of age, Robert could perhaps be counted as one of the ‘luckier’ ones, so many of those white gravestones bore the ages of 20, 21 and 22.  Oh the pity of war.

While I looked at the red sky, the words of a poem called The Fallen, by Roberty Laurence Binyon repeated themselves in my mind:

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.”