The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

A journey just as much about having the cour

A journey just as much about having the courage to reflect back as about going forward. Solitude forces him to open the door to his personal demons. Simply walking requires behavior that’s totally out of character; an ability to connect with both nature & mankind. He draws the strength to keep going from his new found awareness of nature's intricate beauty. The humanity of random strangers, those ‘great unwashed’ he’s spent a lifetime tuning out, offer insight and comfort. Harold had abided by the British unspoken rule not to ask for help, yet it is constantly offered, and with such civility!

I loved this book on so many levels. It’s unapologetically sentimental though not cloyingly so. It’s a great adult love story that deals unflinchingly with the challenges of lifelong commitment. It focuses on the value of friendship, humility, self-forgiveness and human kindness. And it’s a tremendous 1st novel which I’d love to see performed on stage; this would make for a fabulous play.

“it never ceases to amaze me how difficult the things that are supposed to be instinctive really are”

"They made assumptions. They thought it was a love story, or a miracle, or an act of beauty, or even bravery, but it was none of those things.”

“Harold was an old man. Not a walker let alone a pilgrim. Who was he hoping to fool?”

"They made assumptions. They thought it was a love story, or a miracle, or an act of beauty, or even bravery, but it was none of those things.”

“Harold was an old man. Not a walker let alone a pilgrim. Who was he hoping to fool?”

“Small clouds sent shadows scurrying across the land. The light was smoky over the distant hills, not with the dusk but with the map of space that lay ahead. He pictured Queenie dozing at one end of England and himself in a phone box at the other, with things in between that he didn’t know and could only imagine: roads, fields, rivers, woods, moors, peaks and valleys, and so many people. He would meet and pass them all. There was no deliberation, no reasoning. The decision came in the same moment as the idea. He was laughing at the simplicity of it.”

“As Harold made is way north towards Gloucestershire, there were times when his steps were so sure they were effortless. He didn’t have to think about lifting one foot and then the other. Walking was an extension of his certainty that he could make Queenie live, and his body was a part of that too. These days he could take the hills without thinking; he was becoming fit, he supposed.
Some days he was more engrossed in what he saw. He tried to find the right words to describe each shift; only sometimes, like the people he had met, they began to jumble. But there were days when he wasn’t aware of himself, or his walking, or the land. He wasn’t thinking about anything; at least not anything that was related to words. He simply was.
He felt the sun on his shoulders, watched a kestrel on silent wings, and all the time the ball of his foot pushed his heel from the ground, and weight shifted from one leg to the other, and this was everything.
Only nights troubled him. He continued to seek modest accommodation, but the inside world seemed to stand as a barrier between himself outside. Curtains, wallpaper, framed prints, matching hand and bath towels; these things had become superfluous and without meaning. He threw the windows open, so that he could continue to feel the presence of the sky and the air, but slept badly. Increasingly he was kept awake by images from the past, or dreamed of his feet lifting and falling. Getting up in the early hours, he watched the moon at the window and felt trapped. It was barely light these days when he paid with his debit card and set off.
Walking into the dawn, he watched with wonder as the sky flamed with strong colour and then faded to a single blue. It was like being in an altogether different version of day, one that held nothing. He wished he could describe it to Maureen.”

Harold Fry was a tall man who moved through life with a stoop, as if expecting a low beam, or a screwed-up paper missile, to appear out of nowhere

Harold Fry was a tall man who moved through life with a stoop, as if expecting a low beam, or a screwed-up paper missile, to appear out of nowhere

They believed in him. They had looked at him in his yachting shoes, and listened to what he said, and they had made a decision in their hearts and minds to ignore the evidence and to imagine something bigger and something infinitely more beautiful than the obvious

He must have driven this way countless times, and yet he had no memory of the scenery. He must have been so caught up in the day's agenda, and arriving punctually at their destination, that the land beyond the car had been no more than a wash of one green, and a backdrop of one hill. Life was very different when you walked through it.

The letter that would change everything arrived on a Tuesday. It was an ordinary morning in mid-April that smelled of clean washing and grass cuttings. Harold Fry sat at the breakfast tabl

The letter that would change everything arrived on a Tuesday. It was an ordinary morning in mid-April that smelled of clean washing and grass cuttings. Harold Fry sat at the breakfast table, freshly shaved, in a clean shirt and tie, with a slice of toast that he wasn't eating. He gazed beyond the kitchen window at the clipped lawn, which was spiked in the middle by Maureen's telescopic washing line, and trapped on all three sides by the neighbors' stockade fencing.

Harold studied the mysterious envelope. Its pink was not the color of the bathroom suite, or the matching towels and fluffed cover for the toilet seat. That was a vivid shade that made Harold feel he shouldn't be there. But this was delicate. A Turkish Delight pink. His name and address were scribbled in ballpoint, the clumsy letters collapsing into one another as if a child had dashed them off in a hurry: Mr. H. Fry, 13 Fossebridge Road, Kingsbridge, South Hams. He didn't recognize the handwriting.