Discover the Healing Power of Putting One Foot in Front of the Other
‘If you want a thought-provoking first-hand chronicle of a pilgrimage which also makes you smile – then this is the read for you.’
Sheila Travis, Peak Wesley Way
When American minister, J David Juliano, found himself burnt out and struggling with broken relationships, he didn’t book a therapist. Instead, he booked a flight to England and set out to walk The Peak Wesley Way, a forty-seven mile pilgrimage route linking six Methodist chapels across the Peak District. This trip would put Saint Augustine’s solvitur ambulando maxim – ‘it is solved by walking’ – to the test and maybe, just maybe, restore this pilgrim’s soul.
Chronicling David’s experience, Walking the Edges is part travel memoir, part spiritual reckoning. It is a story about what happens when you trade the pressure of performance for the simple rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other. With the self-deprecating humour of Bill Bryson and the vulnerability of a man rediscovering his sense of purpose, unaccustomed walker David discovers picture-book villages, eccentric locals and the surprising history of the Derbyshire peaks.
More broadly, pilgrimages are clearly enjoying something of a revival. The Most Revd and Rt Hon Dame Sarah Mullally DBE was the first Archbishop of Canterbury in modern history to prepare for their installation with a pilgrimage, when she walked the Becket Camino. Earlier this year, the BBC broadcast the eighth series of its reality show, Pilgrimage, and data from the British Pilgrimage Trust suggest one in three adults have been on pilgrimages – or actively want to. But why this upsurge of interest? Could it be that in a society beset by anxiety and addicted to doom-scrolling, the simple practice of putting one foot in front of the other, following ancient paths and being surrounded by nature, is helping people authentically connect both with themselves and others?
Click here to watch David introduce his new book!
‘I didn’t set out to write a book about pilgrimage. I set out to go on a walk because I’d reached a point where some things in life simply weren’t working any more,’ comments David. ‘I was exhausted, relationships had become strained, and I’d rather lost sight of what mattered. Somewhere along those forty-seven miles, in the company of some remarkable people and surrounded by extraordinary beauty, things began to change.
‘I think that’s what makes pilgrimage so powerful. It takes us out of our familiar routines, slows us down and creates space for things we otherwise avoid. My hope is that readers will recognise something of their own journeys in mine – and perhaps discover that it’s never too late to begin again.’
So if you are one of those people considering a pilgrimage, or beginning to think you may be in need of one, Walking the Edges might just be the wise and humorous guide you need. Whatever your age, there is no situation that cannot be improved by a gentle dose of solvitur ambulando.
‘A warm and quietly profound account of what happens when you take your broken self to the hills and just start walking.’
J. F. Penn, award-winning author of Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Way
Walking the Edges by J David Juliano (ISBN: 9781917941068) is published by Instant Apostle on 06th November 2026 and is available from bookshops and online retailers, Memoir, paperback, 196pp, £12.99.