The Third Way
Lessons on a Walk to Wallingford
I’ve spent the last few days on pilgrimage again. This time though, neither my walk nor my destination have been exotic or romantic. Instead, I’m here in the UK, drizzle and clouds overhead, heading along St. Frideswide’s Way to the fabled not-so-holy city of Reading.
However, even in the most mundane of places, pilgrimage can still work its magic and teach us a valuable life lesson or two.
I’m walking St. Frideswide’s Way because I wanted to keep my fitness up throughout the winter after coming back from my walk through Umbria in the footsteps of St. Francis. And I am walking this path in stages, two or three snatched days in-between work and family commitments. Back in November, I did two days, trudging from Oxford to the village of Culham. Yesterday, I picked up the route again, this time hoping to head to the town of Wallingford nine miles distant before the close of day.
Yet I was apprehensive. The pilgrimage route follows the Thames Path, a waymarked walkway that clings to the banks of Britain’s second-longest river. But during the first two days, heavy rain preceding my walk had made the path slappy and muddy. I feared the same — or worse — would be the case now, particularly since it seems to have rained solidly since before Christmas.
Nonetheless, I was undeterred. Nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that. So, I parked my car up in Culham and walked down to the river. And yes, she was heavy, swirling waters almost overflowing her banks. I set off.
However, within twenty metres of setting off, there was a problem: the path turned into a large puddle that was unavoidable. What to do? Give up before I’d even walked the length of a football field? Not I! Hitching my jeans up, I plunged in, getting damp feet, but traversing the puddle and continuing onward.
Except that no further than a quarter of a mile further on, the path disappeared under water again, this time far more than just a puddle. It may, perhaps, have been traversable, but then beyond that I spied even worse, the paths simply disappearing into a lake which was all that remained of the meadow by the river that it usually runs through.
I was defeated.
During the first portion of my walk, I’d found my thoughts constantly wandering towards ‘La Belle Sauvage’, the first volume in Philip Pullman’s trilogy ‘The Book of Dust’. This was unsurprising. The books are set in Oxford and ‘La Belle Sauvage’ is a story all about the baby Lyra Belacqua (the heroine of the trilogy) being taken to safety from the Trout Inn at Godstow, by the river just north of Oxford, down the Thames in a boat named La Belle Sauvage to London. So, yeah, a book all about floating down the Thames from Oxford suits well a walk down the Thames from Oxford, but it was all reinforced weirdly by one of those curious Camino coincidences: I stopped to pray in St. Mary’s Church, Iffley, and whilst I was there a little girl came in with her grandmother and got chatting to me in that delightful way that confident five-year-olds do.
A little girl who announced proudly that her name was Lyra.
Which is why ‘The Book of Dust was occupying my mind as I stood defeated on the burst banks of the Thames, wondering if I would ever walk to Wallingford or not.
Now Pullman, the author of the books, is an atheist. He is involved with the Humanists UK, and yet whilst not religious, his books are full of spirituality. And, in one episode in ‘La Belle Sauvage’, the Thames is imagined as a goddess, and she even appears in human form to the heroes as they sail down her.
Now rivers as goddesses are something that I have always struggled with. The concept is alien to the Abrahamic religions, yet it is an ancient one and was familiar to our Pagan ancestors as well as to many other faiths. In 2024 when I was in India, I visited the Ganges and witnessed the aarti ceremony which gives praise to Ganga (Ganges) as a goddess. And I have to admit that it was powerful; it stirred and touched something within me, something primaeval, reaching back into the dawn of human history. Even so, the river as a goddess still never made sense to me until that moment and then, standing by the turgid and torrential Thames, I glimpsed an understanding.
For in that moment, it felt as if the goddess of the river was saying to me, “Please, leave me alone right now. You may want to walk by me, but not now. In the summer I shall welcome you, then you will be allowed to stroll by my side and paddle in my waters, but right now I do not want you.” And the feeling that I got was of a mother — think of a bird protecting the eggs in her nest — protective of her young whilst she gives birth — for is not this time of the year, the time of birthing and new life? And it seemed too that she was kind by firm as any mother must be. “Look, I warned you with the puddle and you chose to ignore me; now I’m giving you a sterner warning. Turn back now. Carry on and I’m sorry, but I will have to hurt you!”
And so, carry on I did not. Turn back I did.
I have a friend. I’m not going to tell you any details about her, except to say that I have never discussed her before and that she comes from a very conservative and religious background. For the sake of this essay, let’s call her Sara, although that isn’t her name. Regardless of name though, conservative or liberal, religious or secular, humans are humans, and she is a lovely girl.
But anyway, my confrontation with the river got me thinking about her and, as a plodded along, I could not help but see a parallel between that little episode and her life.
For a couple of years ago, Sara had a bit of a life crisis. The long-term engagement that she’d had with a man fell through because he’d fallen in love with and married someone else. It’s an ancient tale and never a pleasant one. As someone who has gone through that hell himself — the feelings of rejection, inadequacy and other such self-doubts — I know how much it can hurt. Well, it did hurt her and, so, to help get over it all she went on holiday.
And whilst on holiday she met a man. A man from another faith, a man forbidden to her. But Cupid can shoot his arrows in all the wrong places and, in short, she had a holiday romance with the chap before heading back home, a head full of joyful memories and new experiences.
And ever since then, she has been trying to process what happened. Firstly, what she did was, in the context of the mores that she had been brought up with, incredibly wrong. Now, you or I might not see things that way. We might see it as a glorious romantic adventure, a divinely ordained meeting between two connected souls, or even a moment of self-realisation and empowerment. But in her community, in her faith, if they ever found out about it, it would be seen as wrong, incredibly so.
Shameful, disgusting and sinful.
So, Sara has a serious quandary. On the one hand she must come to terms with the fact that she has done something terrible, but on the other, she thoroughly enjoyed the experience and found that it felt right.
And that is hard to get your head around. Imagine for a moment that you rob a bank. You might enjoy spending all the money that you’ve filched, splashing out on a nice holiday or some other luxury. But it would always feel somehow wrong, that niggling feeling that you did not do the right thing. And there’s the problem: Sara doesn’t have this feeling. Instead, despite her knowing it was wrong, it still feels right.
Which means one of two options:
1). It was wrong as her society declares and so she therefore cannot trust her own feelings.
2). It was right and so the values and rules that she was brought up with were wrong.
Either way, it’s a bugger of a bind to be in.
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So, what did this Sara do? Well, within her community there is considerable pressure on a girl to get married by a certain age and, since her dipping of her toe into the heady world of romance had been so blissful, then she decided to go and get married to a boy from her own tribe. After all, if the forbidden was fun, then surely the permitted will be paradise, right?
Right…?
The problem with life is that it doesn’t always follow the rules. The chap that she married, sourced by the community, whilst not a bad guy, quite a good one in many ways, well… she’s just not that into him… nor is her into her. They lobble along to a degree, but the spark isn’t there and, in comparison to her holiday heartthrob, well… let’s just say that it is no advert for playing by the rules.
And what’s more, because of the mores of her society, into one another or not, they are kind of stuck with each other. Since he is not physically abusive, nor playing around with other women, nor indulging in drugs or crime, indeed, since he’s not really an arsehole at all, then she has no justifiable reason — in the eyes of the community — to ever leave him… nor him to leave her.
Which brings me back to the river. For, metaphorically, I believe that Sara is standing as I was, her feet wet from an earlier tryst with the waters, a flirt with danger that she got away with, but now her path ahead to her destiny flooded and impassable. And, therefore, like me, she has two options:
1). Surge ahead regardless in pursuit of her destiny, her dream, diving into the freezing, surging waters, hoping to reach her Wallingford regardless.
2). Turn back in failure, giving up her destiny and dreams of a happy life, staying within the bounds of what her community deems acceptable.
All in all, I feel for her. The choice she has to make is awful and monumental. I would not wish it on anyone, and particularly not her as she is a lovely girl who deserves a lot better. But the fact remains that whatever I want or feel, Sara is metaphorically standing by that river, her path blocked and there is nothing that she can do about it.
Isn’t there?
The fact is we often say that God wishes us to walk a certain path, our own personal Camino. To follow the path, that is our destiny, we have no choice but to follow it. But, in fact, that is not correct. My destination that day was Wallingford; that was my goal. Which particular path I took to reach it was up to me. St. Frideswide’s Way was the obvious one, the one mapped out for me by those who have gone before. But then they were not walking during a flood.
And so too with Sara. She needs to reach her Wallingford, Santiago, Jerusalem, Mecca, wherever. That is her destiny. If she does not then the failure to do so will stay with her for life. She needs to let her heart guide her and to live this earthly existence to the full, with joy and happiness.
But at the moment she cannot go forward, but if she does turn back completely, gives up on her destiny, whilst she might survive, might lobble along in her meh marriage, be comfortably uncomfortable, she will lose something. Every time we do not follow our dreams or destiny, we plant an acorn of self-doubt and, before we know it, these have all grown up and become a dense forest, choking us, binding us. We’ve all seen those people defined by their broken dreams; bitter, angry, unhappy.
Conversely though, if she plunges in, the dangers are real. Like the river, her community, on the one hand, life-giving and beneficent, can also hurt and damage. At best she dives in, forges her own path and fulfils her destiny but is disowned by them, kicked out, left alone without support or love, a piece of her forever missing. At worst their vengeance can be deadly.
Literally.
Honour killings and the like are not merely a fantasy of the press.
But yesterday, I did walk to Wallingford, all nine miles of it. It was tough and tiring but I did it and, not for a single mile did I follow the waymarked path.
After turning back, I go out my phone and worked out an alternative route. It lay along a busy A-road. My heart sank. Yes, I would get there, but it wouldn’t be so scenic, and I’d have to continually be on my guard and alert due to the speeding traffic. I’d walked along the verges of busy roads in Italy and it’s not fun. In fact, it’s scary. Nonetheless, these fears notwithstanding, I pushed on. It was either that or failure. The misery of being comfortably uncomfortable.
And do you know what? When I found my new way to Wallingford, all those fears were unfounded. Trust in the Lord and He will provide. Yes, the road was busy, but there was a wide and flat pavement to walk along, a way so simple to navigate that I could immerse myself in meditation as I walked rather than forever worrying about where to put my feet. And, when I broke my musings, I could enjoy pretty Oxfordshire villages and admire the majestic birds of prey soaring over the fields looking for food.
Which is where, I believe, the solution for Sara lies also. Her choice is not binary. Although it might seem so in the moment, there is more than one alternative to diving into the icy waters. If she seeks, she will find what she wants.
But she has to seek. We receive warnings for a reason: I would have been an idiot to plough on stubbornly along the Thames Path and she would be a dangerous fool to reject or flaunt her community’s mores openly. Likewise with Sara. A holiday romance might have been fun, but life is not an eternal holiday romance. Diving in is dangerous, plain stupid.
Conversely, turning back, accepting less than she deserves, believing that happiness is unobtainable in this life, staying in a position of failure, denying destiny and settling for comfortably uncomfortable is the most surefire road to misery.
But, as it did for me, for Sara a third way exists also and, despite the fears she may have about searching for it, should she begin to seek it and walk along it, those fears will vanish just as surely as mine did.
I don’t know how exactly, but they will. Perhaps if she did confess to her father than she was not happy as she is, he would be supportive. As a father I know that regardless of what the world may think, my prime desire is the happiness of my kids.
It could be that she merely has to speak to her husband and he admits that he isn’t that into things either and longs to end it, or even that he admits it has been a failure so far and they both, through talking and trusting, build a new, deeper, more genuine bond between them that can form the basis of a happy marriage. I don’t know the details. All I know is that we need to trust and not be afraid.
For God is the best of planners and He wants all of His creatures to be happy.
I have no idea how Sara’s story will end, for it is her story not mine and she is responsible for her own destiny. All I know is that if you stay true to your dreams and destiny whilst also heeding the warnings presented to you, then the right path will reveal itself, whether it is marked by a little yellow arrow or not.
For giving up and settling for the comfortably uncomfortable is never the right option.
Written 20/02/2026, The Trout Inn, Godstow, UK
Copyright © 2026, Matthew E. Pointon
