Another adventure awaits Prof George Euvrard of the Rhodes Education Department. He and three others are departing on Sunday 31 August from the monastery, where they will be blessed for their 600km journey to Knysna.
Another adventure awaits Prof George Euvrard of the Rhodes Education Department. He and three others are departing on Sunday 31 August from the monastery, where they will be blessed for their 600km journey to Knysna.
The four will trek in a trail run which will take them about 25 days.
Euvrard was inspired by the Camino de Santiago in Spain, an ancient pilgrim's trail where he and his wife walked parts of the Way of St James in 2008 and 2009.
“It was such a lovely opportunity to have in a country," he told Grocott's Mail.
"I thought, wow, imagine in South Africa if we could have a place where anybody…can just have a time out and walk where you don’t have to worry about anything and just think about some of the bigger questions in life.”
In 2011, Euvrard started a solo pilgrimage from Grahamstown to Knysna. He has done it a few times and established a safe route that goes through isolated areas and farms.
“The vision is to set up a walking route, a trail, where people can come and they’ve got overnight stops all along the way sorted. I have developed the trail as far as Knysna from here.”
Euvrard hopes to extend the pilgrimage to Cape Town, a 1 600km long route that would take about 60 days to complete. Dawie Jacobs, Charge D'Affaires at the SA Embassy in Uruguay, plans to develop a pilgrimage to honour Nelson Mandela.
The Mandela Heritage Trail, or the Camino de Madiba (The Way of Madiba), would stretch from Madiba's burial site in Qunu to Cape Town. Euvrard has a similar pilgrimage in mind where one can walk from Grahamstown to Madiba’s prison cell on Robben Island.
“Mine is a South African trail,” he said, “I call it Indlela yoBuntu, which means the way of ubuntu.”
“This is sort of in contrast to ending a pilgrimage at some great cathedral, like the Camino de Santiago in Spain. It is a much more humble thing,” Euvrard said. He has a route in mind just waiting for him to develop.
Euvrard explained his fondness for pilgrimages as, “Time out to just let oneself go and the challenges that come with it." That and his love for the Eastern Cape bush.
He would like to describe himself as a pilgrim, in the sense that it is a way of life. For him a pilgrimage never comes to an end.
