BBC Pilgrimage series heads for the Alps

The BBC announced the return of its annual Pilgrimage series as part of its forthcoming Faith and Hope season. 

Seven celebrity pilgrims of differing faiths and beliefs will be followed across three 60 minute episodes – set to air next month on BBC Two and iPlayer – as they walk a 300km pilgrimage through the Austrian and Swiss Alps. 

The celebrities include The Traitors winner and practising Catholic Harry Clark, agnostic singer Jay McGuiness and journalist Nelufar Hedayat who refers to herself as a modern Muslim. 

Over twelve days, the celebrities will scale a medieval catholic route which will take them from Innsbruck to the Alberg pass and then down to Einsiedeln Abbey in the foothills of the Swiss Alps, near Lake Zurich.

The monastery, founded by followers of the hermit St Meinrad in the 10th Century, attracts about a million pilgrims and visitors each year to its venerated Black Madonna and unique history. 

Harry Clark, the youngest of the pilgrims, said: “I’ve always had faith. I was an altar server and played the violin in church with my sister, so I was always around faith.

“I’m so excited to go on this pilgrimage, to meet the other pilgrims and find out about their religions, what they believe in [or don’t] and why, because I’ve questioned who God is my whole life, not in a bad way, but as in no one knows who God is.”

Comedian and actress, Helen Lederer, who is from a mixed cultural background with a Protestant mother and culturally Jewish father, said: “My faith is that I believe in God but I’m not sure what the God is. Although my Czechoslovakian grandparents were cultural Jews, they never talked about their faith.

“With my mixed background, with all the pain of my family that isn’t mine but theirs, I want to be able to turn it into something that will give me a bit of peace.”

Daisy Scalchi, the BBC’s Head of Commissioning, Religion and Ethics, said: “The cast of this year’s Pilgrimage embraced the challenge of the journey – and then some. They each laid their souls bare as they got to know one another, trekking together through stunning, and often challenging, landscapes.

“I hope viewers will connect with their honesty and genuine curiosity about what guides us all through life.”

Pilgrimage: The Road Through the Alps will air on BBC2 and BBC iPlayer next month. 

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