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but the only one to reach us intact is the
Periegesis
Hellados
or Description of Greece written in the 2
nd
century AD by a man called Pausanius. Written for
armchair travellers this work, full of digressions to tell a
story or explain an ancient ritual very much in the way of
a guided tour, has become a guide book for time-travellers
offering an invaluable eye-witness account of the ancient
world. It is of particular use to archaeologists helping them
to understand new discoveries from ancient Greece.
The Roman AA Guide
With the expansion in travel possible within the Empire
the Romans introduced inland guide books, known as
itineraria, listing hotels with symbols to identify quality.
One person who might have made use of such itineraria
was a Christian pilgrim of the Roman Empire called
Egeria who described a journey to the Holy Land in the
4
th
century AD in the form of a letter home. This is the
earliest example of formal writing by a woman in Western
European Culture.
When Travelling Took a Lot of Faith
With the fall of the Roman Empire Europe slipped into
its Dark Ages (also known as the early Middle Ages) and
leisure tourism disappeared. The people returned to the
time consuming task of trying to stay alive and warm with
adequate shelter, enough to eat and, with a bit of luck,
possession of their own teeth long enough to reach the ripe
old age of 40. The roads, no longer patrolled by Roman
troops, were once again deadly; if you didn’t get robbed
on the road you might be slain overnight at the inns,
which had become dirty and dangerous. People really only
travelled for those old favourites, empire building, war and
pilgrimage. Indeed travel was now so dangerous that it
took a great deal of faith to set off from home which meant
that the majority of travellers were religious pilgrims.
To mitigate the dangers the faithful travelled in groups
and stayed at dedicated pilgrims’ inns along the way.
On the route to the Holy Land the Knights Templar
protected pilgrims from attack as much as possible with
the Knights Hospitaller patching up those who slipped
through the safety net.
Christians took great care to describe routes of pilgrimage
so that travellers might avoid being sliced to pieces along
the way. By the late Middle Ages, a pilgrimage to Our
Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk once during his lifetime
was held to be the duty of every pious Englishman.
Pilgrims to Walsingham, which was even more important
than Canterbury, included all the Kings & Queens of
England in the three hundred years from Henry III in the
1220s to Henry VIII. Pilgrims travelling from London to
Norfolk would follow the River Lee and stop off on the
way at Waltham Abbey (about 20 miles north of Charing
Cross) to see a miracle-working cross that had been kept
there since the days of King Canute. The Welsh Harp
(photo below) would have been very well known among
mediaeval pilgrims but only the wealthy few could have
afforded to pay for a bed there for the night.
And there’s the rub. You could only employ a guide if you
had the money and you could only use a written guide if
you could read. Most pilgrims were neither literate nor
wealthy so they relied upon word of mouth and stone route
markers laid out along established pilgrims’ routes. It was
the duty of every good citizen to help the pilgrims’ in their
quest and in order to attract such help pilgrims often
adopted a recognisable pilgrim’s uniform of wide brimmed
hat and a blue cloak that was big enough to double as a
blanket. Canny shrines and churches also began to make
it as easy as possible for pilgrims to find them and even
began to actively advertise their spiritual attractions.
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