ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the practicalities and sensualities of pilgrim travel in medieval Britain. Victor Turner termed the practice a 'kinetic ritual', which is perhaps the most succinct definition—a ritualized movement which aims at transformation and realization. This movement obviously involves traversing differing environments, especially during longer and international pilgrimages. The urban environments of the medieval West, the settings of the majority of pilgrimage shrines and religious power centers, also generated a complicated and intricate series of spatial interactions and interpretations. The one environment that has dominated the imagination of the medieval West, as well as large portions of its landscapes, was the forest. The forest stands as a representation of the wild, to be overcome, managed, used and possessed—in a word, 'civilized'. The symbolic value of standing before the city gate, and the visual sensory impact of the encounter with this ‘boundary of civilization’ mark the transition between the rural and the urban.
