This first book in the collection A Way of Gold and Light tells of that fragile moment when the desire is born to cross the threshold, to leave one’s certainties behind and step into the unknown, a rucksack on one’s back and a walking stick in hand.
Beyond the early stages, lived in a glow of enthusiasm, the reality of pilgrimage asserts itself: the slowness, the toll of the long stages, and that strange certainty that to walk is not merely to advance, but to let oneself be traversed by the unexpected.
The first step is sometimes the most uncertain. It is also the one that makes all the others possible.

In Naples, amid the tumult of Garibaldi station, one destination imposes itself as a starting point: Brindisi. It is no idle choice: from that port, thousands of pilgrims once set out for Jerusalem. Unable to reach the Holy Land, the author turns his gaze westward – and begins a walk across Italy, France and Spain, towards Compostela.
After a first pilgrimage setting out from Le Puy-en-Velay, the time of apprenticeship arrives: that of walking alone, for a long time, with no compass but oneself. Very soon, a question arises: should one follow waymarked routes, or risk a walk that is freer, more uncertain, more inward?
Stage by stage, the author discovers that autonomy cannot be decreed: it is built step by step, in solitude, through encounters and the unforeseen. The Way then becomes an experience of freedom as much as an exploration of oneself and of the world.
Freedom is not found at the end of the Way. It is invented at every step.

This third volume of the collection A Way of Gold and Light is demanding – and doubtless the most singular of the series. It tells of a five-month European pilgrimage that begins in Kraków and ends in Compostela, passing through the foremost sites of Polish spirituality, but also through tragic places that marked the history of the twentieth century.
Along the way, the pilgrim does not turn his eyes away. He passes through these places of memory without scholarly detachment, with his doubts, his wounded faith and his unanswered questions addressed to God. He seeks that fragile thread that links darkness to light. This book voices and shares that quest, without detours.
An account of the walk, a testimony to memory and a spiritual journal: these three threads never come apart, forming the very fabric of the road travelled over so many long months.

This book marks a pivotal stage after ten years of pilgrimage along the paths of Europe. Setting out from Winchester, the author reached Rome by the Via Francigena, following the historic footsteps of Archbishop Sigeric, before continuing his journey along the history-laden paths of the Huguenots and the Waldensians.
Across France, Switzerland and Italy, this fourth volume is also a time of re-reading: the encounters, the landscapes and the accumulated years cease to be isolated episodes and become, little by little, a larger story.
More than a simple travel journal, this text bears witness to a gradual transformation: walking becomes here a way of being, a way of inhabiting the world and of questioning it.

From John O’Groats to the Scottish Highlands, from Iberian sanctuaries to Mediterranean lands, from island paths to the great places of memory and contemplation on the Continent, the author pursues a quest begun in 2004: that of a pilgrimage lived as an inner experience, as freedom in motion and as openness to the world. He explores, and lives, the many faces of the Way.
Each stage becomes an occasion for encounters, for meditations and for humanist and spiritual questioning. Here the author widens his horizon: beyond Compostela, he asks what it still means to seek, to walk and to hope in a Europe shot through with uncertainties.
Far from a practical guide or a mere travel journal, this fifth volume blends an account of wayfaring, personal reflection and a sensitive gaze upon the emblematic places of European spirituality. It marks a new stage in the collection A Way of Gold and Light: a widening of spiritual geography, in which the Way becomes an exploration of inner landscapes as much as of the territories of Europe.

From the roads to Compostela to lands inhabited by History, and on to the great spaces of silence, this book questions what is essential.
This sixth volume of the collection A Way of Gold and Light is the chronicle of a quest that continues twenty-two years of pilgrimages across Europe. It also marks a turning point: the author has stepped beyond the thread of itineraries alone to enter a deeply inward kind of writing, nourished by thousands of kilometres walked, by encounters that left their mark, by closeness to nature and by questions that remain open.
What becomes of walking after one has crossed paths with the unnameable? How does silence transform our relationship with the divine? How can we preserve our trust in humanity in a world that buffets it so?
Blending autobiographical narrative, humanist reflection, spiritual quest and forays into fiction, this crossing explores the permanent tension between doubt and hope. At the heart of the journey, the presence of Bastien, a free and fragile child, offers a sensitive counterpoint to the wounds of History and questions the future. More than an account of pilgrimage, an invitation to inner resistance, to attention and to freedom.
This Way, between threshold and horizon, leads not towards a closing but towards a passage: that of a path that continues otherwise, in memory, in conscience and in fraternity.