“There is this false conception that I’m this fragile, incapable human being,” says Patsy Kensit, the actress and Nineties icon bravely traversing 242 miles across north-east England in the new series of BBC Two’s Pilgrimage. “But my kids will tell you how determined I am.”
There is no doubt that she is made of steely stuff. Patsy and six other celebrities of different religious beliefs are put through the ringer in the eighth instalment of the popular show, which explores the power of faith and the great outdoors. This series has an English route (Spain, Italy and Turkey have previously featured) and that means rain – biblical rain that comes at Patsy and her fellow walkers from every angle.
The trail takes the group up the aptly named Steps of Doom, just one of the many obstacles that quite literally take your breath away. Imagine sleeping in a bunk bed for the first time in your life with a person you had met mere hours ago, or laying bare your entire ideology and bringing it into question. On top of all this, Patsy entered the challenge with the additional stress of having broken her shoulder in three places, an injury that thoroughly scuppered her planned strength training.
“I knew it was going to be hard,” says Patsy, “but I absolutely needed to do it. I’d had such a shock; I’d never broken anything in my life, and it was like the universe, or God, sent this wonderful opportunity to me. I wasn’t as gung ho physically as I usually am, but I didn’t want to be that person on the show complaining about being in pain. My kids have only ever seen me pick myself up and carry on. If I hadn’t done that, what kind of example would I be to them?”
Patsy and the other pilgrims, including actor Hermione Norris, presenter Ashley Banjo and comedian Hasan Al-Habib, journey from North Yorkshire through Northumberland, with Patsy praising “some of the most beautiful landscapes” she’s ever seen in her life. Whitby Abbey, Durham Cathedral, Hadrian’s Wall and the Cheviots are all on the route, which ends with a two-hour walk across the tidal causeway to Lindisfarne, known as Holy Island. All this follows in the footsteps of three seventh-century saints, St Cuthbert, St Hild and St Oswald, who were pivotal in turning the belief of the time from paganism to Celtic Christianity.
Patsy describes herself as an ‘à la carte’ Catholic, having inherited her faith from her mother Margaret. She takes the bits from Catholicism that feed her soul and adds her own ingredients: meditations, affirmations, gratitude. “I still have that fundamental foundation that I was brought up practising,” she says. “I believe in God, in a higher power, and I believe in the universe. There are parts of Catholicism I love, and there are things I disagree with, such as its views on contraception. But I love the pomp and circumstance of going to pray. I take a bit of Buddhism, a bit of Krishna and, equally, my higher power can be a tree. I just think it’s the most wonderful thing to hug a tree and hold on to this magnificent thing that’s been here for hundreds and hundreds of years.”
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Patsy does indeed hug a tree on her pilgrimage. For someone whose trees are usually those that line the streets of London where she lives, she seems very at home in the wilds of the woods. “I always feel better for being outdoors,” she says. “It’s the most wonderful tonic. I am so happy that I did this, and with the kindest group of people. There was one particularly tough walk; Ashley Banjo stayed back with me at my pace and kept me company. Then Tasha Ghouri [model and Strictly Come Dancing runner-up] did the same when we walked up the Steps of Doom. She was so sweet to me, like my carer!
“But my favourite moment of all was when we’d just walked up a really steep hill – it went on for ever – and production called lunch in a clearing. All the cast and crew sat in a circle eating chicken sandwiches with the sun shining; it felt so great. There was a lot of kindness and some great laughs.”
For Patsy, the experience was more than just bonding or an exploration of her faith. It was a chance to find peace of mind. She talks of it being a journey of self-discovery, providing answers that had often eluded her. “I came into the pilgrimage with a lot of anger, which I had always attributed to failing in my marriages,” she says. “I have a noisy mind, which is man’s worst enemy. All that time outdoors taught me how to quieten it, which allowed me to come to terms with the fact that the trauma I’ve been carrying was actually from childhood. My trauma isn’t about having sons from two failed relationships; this is about my whole life. I can be quite hard on myself, but being able to recognise that helped me to not feel like a failure.”
The loss of Patsy’s mother is the source of much of her aforementioned trauma. She was 23 when her mother died, having first been diagnosed with breast cancer when Patsy was just four. “I said goodbye to my mother at least six or seven times by the age of 11,” she says. “You get the call saying she’s not going to make it through the night. I was constantly in fear of losing her, and I think that was where my trauma began. I’ve been sort of broken my whole life, worrying about the person I love more than anything in the world dying. She was 53 when she did die, and the church was great for me. Trauma has always been made slightly easier by faith.”
That faith means going to Mass at St James’s Church in Marylebone every day when she can. Patsy lights a candle and says a prayer to St Jude, the patron saint of hopeless cases and her personal favourite. “When my mother was pregnant with me, she nearly lost me,” she says. “She prayed to St Jude to make this baby healthy. Thank God that I was and, because of him, Jude is my middle name. I’m never, ever happier than when I’m in church.”
All this clarity came with a cost. Prone to hypothermia, there were points when Patsy was laid down under a stack of foil thermal blankets, the show’s medic by her side, desperately trying to thaw her out. The fear of worsening her condition meant that she was unable to face the freezing swim in the North Sea offered up to the pilgrims at their final destination of Lindisfarne, something she is still punishing herself over. Then there was a nettle sting on one bum cheek, thanks to her gameness for an alfresco wee. But the dark days were worth it all for the light. The wildest of weathers, the most dramatic of landscapes, brought a calm to her storm.
“We would be walking under black skies, rain shooting down, and suddenly the clouds would shift, and there would be this brilliant sunshine with psychedelic colours,” she recalls. “If I was ever asked the one thing I’d like to do again, it would be this. These are troubled times, but that was a package full of love, of pleasure, of pain, of freezing and beautiful sunshine. It was everything. A mixed bag, wonderful and extreme. I’ve learned so much from it. Money couldn’t buy the sense of peace that journey brought me.”
