Pilgrim’s Journal — Pembrokeshire: Church Rock

When I collected the Cerulean Cruiser, I already knew what she was for.

She wasn't simply a campervan.

She was the Pilgrim's Wagon.

Woodland Glade would remain home for a little while longer. Over the following months I returned there between each journey. Those first pilgrimages in the wagon settled into a gentle rhythm: travelling out into unfamiliar landscapes, then returning home to reflect, integrate and prepare for the next.

Looking back, I can see those months as a beautiful transition. Rather than asking me to suddenly let go of the place I'd called home for almost a decade, life seemed to be widening my sense of what home could become.

Pembrokeshire became the first destination.

I'd never been before.

The first place calling me was St Govan's Chapel.

Hidden amongst the cliffs, I was utterly charmed by the photographs I'd seen, and I knew I wanted to experience it for myself.

Looking for somewhere nearby to stay, I came across Bucksdown Farm in Bosherston.

It immediately felt right.

A huge meadow within walking distance of the coast, where travellers were welcome to stay for as long as they liked. No booking. An honesty box. A couple of people were living there in their vans, and the whole place carried a wonderfully relaxed, generous atmosphere.

At only £6 a night, I remember laughing to myself.

"This is incredible."

I could easily imagine returning here again and again.

After settling in, I wandered down towards the coast for my first glimpse of the landscape.

Church Rock caught my eye on the map, and I found myself wandering in that direction.

As I approached along the cliffs, I stopped.

Rising from the sea was this magnificent rock formation and, from where I first saw it, it genuinely looked like a church.

As I made my way down onto the beach and saw it more closely, I was taken aback.

It didn't just look vaguely like a church.

It was the proportions that caught me.

The pointed peak.

The broader body beneath.

Immediately, my mind went back to All Saints Church at Woodland Glade.

For nearly a decade, that church had become part of my life.

From where I sat, I looked across the valley towards it almost every day.

Without ever intending to, it had rooted itself into my heart.

Then another memory surfaced.

Years earlier I'd bought an amethyst crystal.

The moment it arrived, I remember thinking how much it resembled the church. I was so delighted by it that I took the crystal outside, held it up against the distant church and took a photograph.

That crystal has stayed with me ever since.

Standing on the Pembrokeshire coast, something made me smile.

Without ever consciously thinking about it before, I realised I'd been carrying my own Church Rock for years.

A church shaped by the slow artistry of the Earth.

Now here I was, beginning life in the Pilgrim's Wagon, and the very first landscape I explored was welcoming me with another.

Not one carved from crystal, but from living stone.

Sea.

Wind.

Time.

I loved that.

Standing there, it felt as though the conversation I'd been having with the landscape at Woodland Glade hadn't ended.

It had simply found a new voice.

Over the days that followed, I found myself returning there again and again.

Almost without deciding, Church Rock became somewhere I greeted the sunrise.

It became a place to sit in wonder.

To listen.

To simply be.

On my final morning before returning home, I walked down before sunrise one last time.

A thick sea mist had settled across the bay.

The beach was there.

The cliffs were there.

The sea was there.

But Church Rock had vanished.

Completely.

For a moment I laughed.

After days of faithfully greeting me each morning, it felt almost mischievous.

I stood on the shore, watching the mist drift slowly across the water, wondering whether this was simply how our final meeting would be.

So I waited.

Ten minutes.

Twenty.

Half an hour.

Nearly an hour.

Gradually the mist began to soften.

Then, almost as though emerging from another world, the familiar silhouette slowly revealed itself once more.

I smiled.

It felt strangely important to see it one final time.

As I turned to leave, I found myself quietly saying,

"Thank you."

Then, almost without thinking,

"Goodbye, friend."

Only looking back do I realise how significant that was.

I hadn't set out searching for another place to belong.

Yet, almost immediately, a relationship with this new landscape had begun to grow.

That became one of the first great awakenings of this new chapter.

I realised that what I'd loved so deeply at Woodland Glade had never been confined to one valley.

Woodland Glade hadn't simply given me a place to call home.

It had taught me how to enter into relationship with a place.

How to notice.

How to return.

How to let a landscape slowly become part of me.

Church Rock was the first place that showed me those roots could grow again.

Not by replacing what had come before.

But by gently extending it.

As I travelled back and forth between Pembrokeshire and Woodland Glade over those following months, I noticed something changing within me.

I still loved returning to the valley.

I still loved looking out towards All Saints Church.

Nothing about that was diminishing.

Something else was simply growing alongside it.

Looking back now, I think that's why Church Rock has stayed with me.

It was the first place that quietly revealed home wasn't something I was leaving behind.

It was something I was learning to recognise wherever I was willing to slow down, pay attention, and enter into relationship with the living world.