I find the mountains to be a spiritual place, somewhere that stretches me beyond my limits and my sense of what I know. I’ve written a short book about this, Following Jesus in the Great Outdoors, and I run mountain pilgrimages for different churches and Christian organisations. If you’d like me to organise something like this for you, get in touch.

Next Mountain Pilgrimage event: 11-15 May 2026

“Mountaineering should not and cannot be only about oneself. ‘The geography helps in forcing a breakthrough to something beyond our previously-conceived limits of being’ (Belden Lane, 1998, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes). God becomes possible. From the biblical narratives of Moses and the people of Israel in the Sinai desert, through Jesus’s own wilderness temptations to the example of the early desert monastics in Egypt, Palestine and Syria, wilderness landscapes have featured significantly in the development of Christian spirituality” (Following Jesus in the Great Outdoors, p11).

“I come to the mountains not to conquer them, but to immerse myself in their incomprehensible immensity – so much bigger than we are – to better comprehend humility and patience” (Alex Lowe, in Joe Simpson, 2003, The Beckoning Silence).