Pilgrims’ progress

RUTH GEE and Leo Osborn, the North-East’s two most senior Methodists, have spent Holy Week walking the Wear from mouth to source. They know all about rugged pathways now.

They’ve been half-frozen and wholly soaked, stumbled through the mist, slid on the snow and once or twice come pretty close to falling into the raging river.

“What’s that they say about the sun shining upon the righteous?”

someone asks before Wednesday evening’s service and – honest – it isn’t even me.

The weather had been so bad, indeed, that in the first four days they never saw another walker, save for one or two on mandatory doggy duty, five minutes each way.

Rejoicingly? “Oh certainly,” says Ruth. “We even got to see the sun once or twice.”

“Mind,” says Leo, “we’ve had quite a lot of plodging to do. We hadn’t planned a lot of the details. It’s been a journey into the unknown in some ways.”

He’s chairman of the Newcastle upon Tyne Methodist district – we are old sparring partners, he tells Wednesday’s congregation; Ruth chairs the Darlington district, which embraces south Durham, Teesside and the North Yorkshire dales.

The river doesn’t divide their districts, says Leo, it spans them.

Pilgrims’ progress, they left Sunderland University on Sunday morning, bearing palm fronds and, briefly, a large cross made to mark the occasion.

The cross has been too big to carry the whole way, of course, but the palms have stayed together.

Fronds reunited.

It’s been an Easter journey both symbolic and spiritual. The first day ended at Chester-le-Street, the second at Durham, the third at Wittonle- Wear, the fourth – “bitter cold” – at Frosterley, the fifth at Rookhope, where things can get particularly bleak.

Yesterday, they led a Good Friday walk of witness from the wonderful High House chapel at Ireshopeburn – 250 years old this year – to Wearhead, source for both goose and gander.

It’s 71 miles, they reckoned, a pathway not only steep and rugged, but pretty meandering, too – and if the total appeared a touch on the high side, he always did believe in going the extra mile, did old Leo.

“It’s been very good to see the countryside and the river from a different perspective,” says Ruth.

The Weardale Way guide was published in 1996 – excellent, but now a little out of date, insists Leo. “We may not exactly have got lost, but we did ask ourselves some pretty searching questions from time to time.”

It was, of course, the guide’s fault and not his. Like the Pope, the chairman of the Newcastle upon Tyne Methodist district is generally regarded as infallible.

RETURNING together from a meeting somewhere, they’d come up with the idea a year ago after discovering a mutual enjoyment of walking, and deciding to seek sponsorship for the Methodist Relief and Development Fund’s project in the Cameroon, one of the world’s 21 poorest countries.

Almost a fifth of the people live on less than a dollar a day, 32 per cent are illiterate. Life expectancy is 50.

They’ve also been discussing the Passion story in St Luke’s gospel, recently proclaimed in the Bishop of Durham’s “Big Read” initiative.

Wednesday service is at Wolsingham Methodist church, officially reopened two months ago – we wrote about it – after a hugely effective £120,000 refurbishment that has made it altogether more welcoming and highlighted an extraordinary apse at the end.

The weather-beaten walkers appear similarly transformed, like clerical Clark Kents emerged, superheroic, from a telephone box. Ruth looks elegant; Leo – it’s Easter – leonine.

He’d spent the uphill part of the day wearing an Aston Villa bobble hat, a particular Lenten penance after his side’s 7-1 defeat at Chelsea last Saturday.

The music machine plays Jerusalem, the hymn about green and pleasant land. For green read clarty brown, for pleasant read seriously inclement.

“It’s lovely to be in a warm, bright and beautiful church,” says Ruth, and earns sympathetic laughter. The building, she adds, is splendid – “you’ve really made the most of Wolsingham’s position.”

The congregation of fewer than 20 includes supporters from Stokesley, Whickham, Lanchester and Bishop Auckland but, clearly, not too many from round the doors.

They’ve talked along the Weardale Way about that day’s reading, the story of Barabbas and of Pilate and Herod. In the Coptic church, says Ruth – and not many may know this – Pilate’s a saint.

Leo speaks of their determination to get to Wearhead. “Jesus didn’t go the easy way, or the way of short cuts. He went the way of the cross.”

They hope to raise £3,500, specifically to help Cameroon farmers buy seeds, sprays and tyres and to help with training. Easter donations may be made via justgiving.com/wear walk and would be very greatly appreciated.

■ Next week’s column will be still farther up Weardale, the 6.30am Easter Day dawn service somewhere amid the wilds of Middlehope Common.

Paste eggs and hot cross buns follow.