Mel Cormican

A Pedal Pilgrimage in the Nordics Mel Cormican

As with anyone that has been bitten by the biking bug, I can't tell you exactly why I made plans to cycle from Oslo to Helsinki. All I can tell you was that after my other cycling tours were over, the urge was there. "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it." Oscar Wilde wrote. "Resist it and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself." I wanted to go on a kind of reflective journey to make sense of it all, to take stock as it were. I wanted this to be a different kind of cycling trip; not a bicycle tour -tours are for tourists-but a "pedalling pilgrimage." And where better to go on this kind of pilgrimage but the least religious spot in the Western hemisphere: Norway, Sweden and Finland. To misquote Sinatra: if I can meet God there, I can meet God anywhere. As a follow up to his first book "To St Petersburg With Love," author Mel Cormican is on a quest for a spiritual enlightenment and awakening in the Nordics. Can he make sense of his own particular journey in the context of the religious and philosophical history of Europe?