Pilgrim’s Journal — Glasgow — The Pilgrim’s Wagon

This is the third entry in the Pilgrim’s Journal, the companion reflections to the pilgrimage films.

The first days of the journey had unfolded through thresholds and ancient landscapes. London had opened the road. Uffington had revealed that the land itself seemed capable of conversation.

Day three was, on the surface, much simpler.

I was flying to Scotland to collect a van.

A practical errand.

The sort of thing that doesn't usually find its way into a spiritual journal.

And yet, as so often seems to happen on pilgrimage, the ordinary quietly began revealing itself as something else. The day unfolded through unlikely repetitions, strange recognitions, hidden treasures, moments of laughter, and the curious feeling that the journey itself was slowly gathering a physical form.

By the end of it, I no longer felt as though I had simply bought a vehicle.

It felt as though the pilgrimage had been entrusted with a vessel.

A wagon.

A home.

A companion for the miles still to come.

The White Horse

There was one familiar prelude before the journey could properly begin.

A cigarette.

I slipped quietly out toward the smoking area beside the terminal and sat down to roll, taking in that strange atmosphere airports always seem to carry. Not quite departure. Not quite arrival. A threshold of their own.

As I wandered back inside, my eyes were drawn toward the artwork lining the hallway.

Painted on the wall was the image of a white horse.

I stopped dead.

For a few moments I simply stood there, smiling with my whole being.

Only days earlier I had been standing beside the ancient chalk figure of the Uffington White Horse — walking its curves, watching the birds wheel above it, leaving a small offering to the land. That encounter had felt deeply alive, as though the landscape itself had stepped into conversation.

And now, the very first thing waiting for me inside Bristol Airport was another white horse.

Not ancient this time.

Not carved into the hillside.

Just a modern image painted onto the wall of an ordinary building.

Yet somehow that almost made it stranger.

I stood there quietly laughing to myself, shaking my head in disbelief.

It wasn't the sort of smile that comes from finding something amusing.

It was the smile that arrives when the world briefly becomes transparent — when life seems to lean in and whisper that there is more happening than we usually allow ourselves to believe.

The conversation, it seemed, had not ended at Uffington.

It was still unfolding.

And somehow, in the most unlikely of places, the White Horse had come to greet me one more time.

Letting Fate Choose

The evening before the flight, I had paused over a surprisingly small decision.

Seat selection.

With most budget airlines you can pay a little extra to choose exactly where you sit. A small fee for certainty.

Ordinarily I would have picked a window seat without thinking, but the only window seats were at the very back of the plane.

Something inside me hesitated.

A quiet thought crossed my mind.

What if I didn't choose?

What if I simply let the journey decide?

So I closed the seating map and continued through the booking process without selecting a seat at all.

A tiny gesture of surrender.

A very small act of trust.

Weeks earlier I had expected to collect the van almost immediately after Valentine's Day, when the listing had ended. But the road, it seemed, had arranged things differently.

Mac, the owner, had been delayed returning from sea. At first I experienced the postponement as frustration. Gradually, though, it began to feel more like a quiet redirection. The extra days had made room for the pilgrimage itself to begin the way I'd originally intended: in London.

Perhaps the delay had been necessary.

Pilgrimages seem to have a rhythm of their own.

Sometimes the road only appears after we stop trying to hurry it.

The following morning, after boarding the aircraft, I glanced down at my ticket.

13F.

A window seat.

Not only that — it was positioned directly beside the wing, in the emergency exit row, with an uninterrupted view across the great silver span stretching outward toward the horizon.

I smiled.

The small act of letting go had somehow delivered something far better than anything I might have chosen for myself.

Seat thirteen.

A number often misunderstood as unlucky, yet one carrying older and deeper meanings. In the tarot, thirteen belongs to transformation — not an ending, but a shedding of old skins so that something new can emerge.

And here I was, flying north to collect the vessel that would carry an entirely new chapter of life.

I fastened my seatbelt and looked out through the window.

Rain drifted softly across the glass.

Passengers settled quietly around me.

The engines began to rise in pitch.

Then the aircraft rolled forward toward the runway, and I found myself instinctively lifting my phone to film the wing beside me.

At the time I didn't know why.

Only that something quietly suggested I should.

The Wing

The aircraft paused briefly at the edge of the runway.

For a moment everything seemed to hang in perfect stillness.

Then the engines surged.

The acceleration pressed gently into my back as the runway disappeared beneath us. Rain streaked across the window, turning the outside world into soft grey brushstrokes.

The great silver and white wing beside me flexed almost imperceptibly.

Then the ground fell away.

For the first few minutes nothing changed. The sky remained colourless, wrapped in layers of drifting cloud. The world below vanished completely.

Then, slowly, the light began to shift.

The grey thinned.

The clouds opened.

And suddenly we rose into clear blue sky.

Above us stretched an endless field of light. Below lay a vast white ocean of cloud, illuminated by the winter sun.

Then the wing caught it.

The reflection moved slowly across the aluminium surface, transforming the great mechanical structure into something almost luminous.

I found myself completely transfixed.

Only two days earlier, standing on the hillside at Uffington, I had left a tiny iridescent insect wing as an offering to the White Horse.

A delicate thing.

Almost weightless.

A fragment of the natural world carried gently by the wind.

Now I sat beside another wing entirely.

Vast.

Engineered.

Fashioned not by nature but by human hands.

Yet somehow the two belonged together.

One impossibly small.

The other impossibly large.

One lifted by the currents of the air.

The other created to lift human beings into the sky.

It was impossible not to feel that the conversation had continued.

The first wing had been given freely to the pilgrimage.

Now, somehow, the pilgrimage seemed to be giving one back.

The light had always been there.

Nothing new had appeared.

The aircraft had simply reached the angle where the wing could receive it — and return it.

At that precise moment, a familiar chime sounded through the cabin.

The seatbelt sign switched off.

The signal that passengers were now free to move.

Only later, watching the footage back, did I realise that the chime and the brightest moment of the reflection had happened at exactly the same instant.

Light.

Release.

Movement.

All arriving together.

I couldn't help wondering whether grace works in much the same way.

Perhaps it is always there, quietly surrounding us.

And every now and then, if we happen to reach exactly the right angle, we become capable of catching it.

Arrival

The descent into Glasgow happened quietly.

The clouds parted once more, revealing fields, rivers, roads, and the soft muted colours of a Scottish winter beneath the wing.

It struck me then that this was my first time in Scotland.

The place had lived in imagination for years — mountains, stories, old kingdoms and wild weather — yet I had never actually set foot there.

A gentle shudder passed through the cabin as the wheels touched the runway.

The skyborne moment was over.

The ordinary world resumed.

Inside the terminal everything returned to the practical rhythm of arrivals and baggage halls.

Mac had already messaged to say he was nearby.

When we met, he suggested driving to a quiet car park so he could show me around the van properly.

That alone felt generous.

Most vehicle sales are brief affairs — a handshake, a signature, keys exchanged.

But this was different.

For over an hour he patiently walked me through every system he had built with his own hands.

The electrics.

The water.

The heating.

The gas.

The countless little details that quietly transform a vehicle into a tiny home.

It felt less like buying a van and more like being entrusted with a piece of someone else's long devotion.

He told me about the life that had grown around the project.

Originally the van had been built as a way to escape. A companion for mountains and climbing trips, a chance to step away from ordinary routines and disappear into the wild for a while. He had spent the best part of two years lovingly building it by hand, creating the freedom he imagined he was searching for.

Then life surprised him.

The very month he began taking the van out on her first adventures, he met the woman who would become his partner.

And now, they're expecting a child.

As he spoke, I realised the story had quietly turned itself inside out.

The wagon he had spent years building as a way of escaping the world had become the vehicle through which he met it more fully than ever before.

The mountains were still there.

The adventures were still there.

But they were no longer an escape.

Now they belonged to a larger story — one shared with the woman he loved.

I knew, too, that they were planning the next chapter already. A wedding. The birth. Dreams of finding land further north and putting down roots of their own.

Listening to him, it was impossible not to feel that the Cerulevan Cruiser had fulfilled exactly the purpose she had always been meant for.

Not to carry someone away from life.

But to carry them towards it.

And perhaps that was why meeting him felt less like buying a vehicle and more like receiving an inheritance.

His chapter had reached its natural close.

Mine, quietly, was just beginning...

Eventually the practical explanations came to an end.

The money was transferred.

The paperwork was signed.

I asked if a hug would be acceptable.

It was.

Then Mac stepped back, handed me the keys, and for the first time I stood alone beside the vehicle that would carry the pilgrimage onward.

Learning the Wagon

There was, however, one small detail that still needed addressing.

I had to drive it.

Up until that moment the van had existed mostly as an idea — a beautiful one, certainly, but still theoretical.

Now the keys were in my hand.

And seven hours of road stretched between Glasgow and home.

The scale of the vehicle suddenly became much more noticeable.

For the past few years my travelling companion had been a small yellow Mini — cheerful, compact, and automatic. Driving it required very little thought at all.

This, on the other hand, was something entirely different.

A long wheelbase van.

Three and a half tonnes.

Manual gears.

And a driver who hadn't used a clutch in quite some time.

For a moment I stood beside the Cerulevan Cruiser looking at the driver's seat with the sort of respectful caution one might give a large and unfamiliar horse.

Excited.

But also, if I'm honest, slightly bricking it.

Before setting off on the long drive south, I decided to spend a little time practising in the car park.

Fortunately, it was enormous.

And entirely empty.

Plenty of room to become acquainted.

So I climbed into the driver's seat, adjusted the mirrors, and turned the key.

Clutch down.

First gear.

Slowly releasing the pedal, trying to remember the delicate dance between clutch and accelerator.

The van rolled forward.

Success.

Very slowly I guided the Cerulevan Cruiser around the empty parking area, tracing wide loops between the painted white lines.

At first every movement felt enormous.

The steering.

The braking distance.

The height of the vehicle.

Everything demanded more attention than I was used to.

But little by little the unfamiliar began to settle.

The clutch started to feel less mysterious.

The gears found their rhythm.

After a while I even attempted reversing into a parking space — an exercise that took a few attempts and a fair amount of laughter.

Gradually something shifted.

The van began to feel less like a machine and more like something alive.

A large animal learning to trust its rider.

Or perhaps the other way around.

The nervousness hadn't vanished. There was still a long road ahead, and undoubtedly a few moments of concentrated silence waiting somewhere along the motorway.

But something essential had changed.

The pilgrim had found his wagon.

And the wagon, it seemed, was ready to carry him.

The First Treasures

Eventually the moment came to leave the car park behind.

I eased the Cerulevan Cruiser out onto the road.

The pilgrimage had acquired its wagon.

And now the wagon had acquired its first journey.

The early miles passed slowly as we settled into one another. Every movement still required attention — the width of the vehicle, the longer braking distance, the quiet concentration of changing gears.

By the time I reached the third service station, the initial nerves had softened.

Each mile brought a little more confidence.

Each gear change a little smoother.

I pulled into the service station and stepped out to stretch my legs.

As I walked back toward the van, something small lying beside another parked car caught my eye.

A little metal pill box.

My first thought was that someone must have dropped it, so I knocked gently on the window.

"Did you lose this?"

The people inside glanced at it, then shook their heads.

"No. Not ours."

I carried it back to the van, noticing the delicate artwork on the lid.

A rose.

Threaded in red.

Immediately I was reminded of the little rose bookmark beside the Thames only days earlier.

I laughed quietly.

Of course.

Roses again.

By now the symbol had appeared so consistently throughout the pilgrimage that I had learned to pay attention whenever one crossed my path.

The rose bookmark beside the Thames.

The rose planted on the hillside at Uffington.

And now a rose-patterned pill box appearing in a service station somewhere between Scotland and home.

I opened the lid.

Inside sat half of a small blue diamond-shaped tablet.

For a moment I simply stared at it.

Then the realisation arrived.

Viagra?

Or something very close to it.

I burst out laughing.

It was such an absurdly perfect moment.

A sacred pilgrimage through ancient landscapes, mythic horses carved into hillsides, celestial signs and shining wings...

...and the first roadside treasure revealed by the wagon was a rose-patterned Venusian pill box containing half a Viagra.

The universe, it seemed, was not above a slightly cheeky joke.

The Wagon Reveals Herself

By now the rhythm of the road had settled into something surprisingly peaceful.

Driving the van no longer felt quite so intimidating. The Cerulevan Cruiser had started to feel... cooperative.

Less like a possession, and more like a travelling companion with her own personality.

At the various service stations and quiet pauses along the motorway, I began noticing little details inside the van.

The kind of things you only discover slowly, once you've spent a little time inhabiting a space.

One of the first things that caught my attention was the name of the company that had originally sold the van.

Eden Commercials.

I smiled.

A heavenly van.

The name seemed oddly appropriate.

Then another little detail revealed itself.

The drawer locks.

I hadn't really looked closely at them before, but when I did I noticed that the catches on the main cupboards carried two interlocking hearts.

And beneath them, a single word.

Love.

I actually laughed out loud.

Of course.

A Valentine van.

The symbolism was becoming almost ridiculous in its persistence.

The listing had ended on Valentine's Day.

The Venus thread had woven itself through the pilgrimage since London.

Roses had appeared beside rivers, on hillsides, and now on mysterious pill boxes.

And here, quite casually, the wagon itself carried two joined hearts built into the furniture.

It felt less like coincidence and more like personality.

The Cerulevan Cruiser, it seemed, had a sense of humour of her own.

Moments later I noticed something else resting quietly on the floor mat.

A single white feather.

Small.

Perfect.

I picked it up gently and turned it over in my fingers, smiling at the gentle crescendo of symbols that had accompanied the day. Each little discovery seemed to arrive exactly when it was needed, as though the wagon herself was slowly introducing who she was.

But the Cerulevan Cruiser had one final surprise waiting.

The Stag

Seven hours after leaving Glasgow, the familiar roads of Somerset finally began to appear.

Fields I recognised.

Lanes I had travelled countless times before.

Eventually the road wound its way back into the valley — the small woodland glade I had called home for the past nine years.

I guided the Cerulevan Cruiser gently into her place and switched off the engine.

The silence that followed felt deeply restorative after a full day of driving.

For a few moments I simply sat there, letting the stillness settle around the wagon.

The pilgrim's wagon had arrived.

Though as I stepped outside and looked back at her resting beneath the evening sky, another thought quietly surfaced.

I hadn't simply returned home.

I had parked my new home beside the old one.

With the van resting, I began exploring the interior a little more carefully.

Opening cupboards.

Checking compartments.

Learning the little secrets of the wagon that would carry me across the country.

While searching through the overhead storage space for the window covers Mac had mentioned, I noticed something tucked away toward the back.

At first glance it looked like the head of a animal.

A cow, perhaps.

Curious, I reached inside.

Then the realisation arrived.

It wasn't a cow.

It was a stag.

I pulled out a single antler and turned it over in my hand, smiling at the unexpected discovery.

Then, glancing back into the compartment, I spotted something else lying quietly beside it.

The second antler.

Completing the stag.

Hidden treasure.

For a moment I simply stood there holding them, laughing quietly to myself.

Had Mac forgotten them?

Or had he tucked them away deliberately?

Mac, if you're reading this one day, perhaps you'll have to tell us.

Either way, it felt strangely fitting.

When we first built the cabin here at Woodland Glade nine years ago, the very first thing I found after it was finished was an antler.

A white one, worn smooth with age, lying just behind the cabin.

I remember the moment clearly. I'd left apples out for the deer and was delighted to find fresh tracks and droppings nearby, convinced they couldn't be far away.

Then I spotted the antler.

It felt like a quiet sign that the forest approved.

I never did find a second one.

So now, having secured my travelling home for the years ahead, to find not one antler but two waiting quietly inside the wagon felt rather wonderful.

The Cerulevan Cruiser, it seemed, had come carrying a small piece of the wild with her.

And standing there in the stillness of Woodland Glade, it felt as though the forest itself had quietly welcomed the wagon home.

The Unicorn

With the wagon finally resting beneath the stars, it felt like the right moment to celebrate.

When I first discovered the van online, I had noticed something amusing in one of the photographs.

Mounted beside the small kitchen area was a bottle opener.

Above it were two simple words.

OPEN HERE.

There was something about that instruction that made me smile.

It felt oddly ceremonial.

Almost initiatory.

The pilgrim finds the wagon.

Drives it safely across the country.

Brings it home beneath the trees.

And now comes the final instruction.

Open here.

So naturally, I decided the occasion called for a beer.

Now, I should confess — I don't actually drink very much.

In fact, I had also bought a lemonade.

A celebratory shandy seemed much more my speed.

The beer itself had caught my eye once I was back in Clevedon.

I'd never seen one before.

And, if I'm honest, I was probably more captivated by the label than the contents.

A unicorn.

Mythic enough to feel perfectly at home at the end of a journey like this.

So there I was, standing inside the Cerulevan Cruiser, preparing to complete the ritual.

The opener had issued its instruction.

Open here.

Simple enough.

Except... nothing happened.

I tried again.

Still nothing.

Watching the footage back later is genuinely painful.

Because the answer had been visible the entire time.

Through the green glass, staring me directly in the face.

The bottle had a ring pull.

No bottle opener required.

Not even slightly.

At that point I burst out laughing.

Perhaps the opener had never been intended to open the bottle at all.

Perhaps it had opened something else instead.

A tiny mythic portal of cosmic humour.

Eventually I lifted the ring pull, took a sip, quickly reached for my carefully moderated celebratory shandy, and stood there smiling to myself.

Feeling very contented.

And very, very silly.

Later, while editing the footage, I noticed one final detail.

The unicorn on the bottle.

White.

Just like the horse that had greeted me at the airport that very morning.

Thread upon thread.

Home

The pilgrim's wagon had been secured.

The long road south had been travelled.

By then I had almost stopped thinking of her as a vehicle at all.

She was my companion.

I stood for a while beside her in the stillness of the glade.

The soft blue paint shifted gently in the fading light, somewhere between the colour of the sky and the colour of the sea.

Cerulean.

The name had come to me almost as soon as I had first seen the listing online.

A small play on words.

Cerulevan.

And now, standing there beneath the evening sky, the full title quietly settled into place.

The Cerulevan Cruiser.

I wandered slowly around her, reminding myself of the little details that had already caught my eye.

Bears.

Eagles.

X-wings.

A beautiful mural of stars, trees and mountains stretched across the bodywork, each image seeming to belong to the strange mythology the pilgrimage had been weaving since the very beginning.

But it was one small detail that truly stole my heart.

Across the painted sky ran a single streak of light.

A shooting star.

I thought immediately of the strange celestial visitor that had quietly set so much of this story in motion — the interstellar traveller 3I/ATLAS, passing briefly through our own solar system before continuing its long journey between the stars.

A wanderer.

A pilgrim of the heavens.

And now, resting beside me beneath the trees of Woodland Glade, was another traveller waiting patiently for the road ahead.

Standing there in the quiet of that first evening, I found myself looking back over the day.

The White Horse waiting inside the airport.

The wing catching the light above the clouds.

The strange little treasures scattered along the road south.

The hearts.

The feather.

The hidden stag.

The white unicorn waiting for its absurd little moment of revelation.

None of it had felt planned.

None of it could really have been anticipated.

And yet each small discovery had arrived with the curious feeling that it belonged exactly where it was, as though the road itself had been quietly introducing me to the companion that had just entered my life.

I looked once more at the soft blue wagon resting beneath the trees.

Not waiting.

Not demanding.

Simply present.

Ready for whatever came next.

And for the first time since the pilgrimage had begun, I had the unmistakable sense that I no longer needed to wonder how the next chapter would unfold.

The road had already arrived.

To Be Continued