Originally a spiritual voyage, Ray Aquilina, 72, found himself in a survival test when he became lost in the French Jura Mountains amid a thunderstorm.
When the San Ġwann resident made an wrong turn in the Loue Valley, he was traveling a solitary stretch of the Via Francigena, the historic 3,000 km pilgrimage from Canterbury to Rome. Driven astray by fellow hikers, he found himself off the official route, climbing over downed trees in a woods far from any roadmarks.
Aquilina said, “That was hand down the worst day.”
“My children phoned me to wish me a happy Father’s Day; I had to tell them I was lost and had no clue where I was.”
The skies opened and he was trapped in a lightning after hours of backtracking and river crossing, only a light jacket.
“I thought, this is it; I am in a forest, lightning all about. Should I trip, I may have plunged down a mountain,” he remembered.
He arrived at a village bar eventually, soaked but not harmed.
“The barkeeper was dumb I made it out of the Loue Valley by myself,” he said.
Aquilina’s suffering was only one little piece of a profoundly emotional voyage. Walking some 1,200 kilometers beginning on May 17 in Canterbury, he arrived in Aosta, Italy on June 24. As part of the Catholic Church’s Jubilee Year of 2025, he aims to finish the second leg to Rome in September.
Aquilina has passionately welcomed long-distance pilgrimages since overcoming cancer in 2023. Since 2015, he has walked 13 Camino routes and is currently collecting money for Caritas Malta.
He noted, “This is a pilgrimage, not only an adventure. Walking alone like this gives you the impression of a bird, free and exposed to the world. It’s profoundly spiritual.
