The interior designer, TV personality and ‘non-conforming pagan’ tells Peter Stanford that religious beliefs and rituals are being given a modern-day makeover

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen is in a reflective mood. “‘Moved’ is a big word but in the cathedral on Iona I really felt that we were connecting with something. You would have had to be flint not to feel there was something quite porous about 2,000 years of history coming into you at that point.”

The 57-year-old interior designer and king of the TV home makeover is looking back on his experience of being one of seven well known names in the BBC’s latest outing of its Pilgrimage strand. Previous excursions have taken carefully collated bands of celebrity recruits (including Tablet columnist Adrian Chiles) on journeys of meaning along the Camino, to Rome and to Istanbul, attracting viewing figures of two million plus. This year’s model follows in the footsteps of St Columba – or Colmcille – from his native Donegal to Iona in the Inner Hebrides.

Unlike its forerunners, this is not yet a well established route, but aspires to become one, capitalising on the boom in pilgrimage that was such a feature of the spiritual landscape pre-Covid, and is now getting back on its feet. Supporters of the Columba Camino might have been hoping for a little less rain to have fallen penitentially on the novice band.