To the questions that reach the rectorate of the cathedral – especially through the guides of the Visitor Service – we sometimes answer in images. The subjects are varied and sometimes highlight unsuspected aspects of the cathedral…
Some visitors to the cathedral, including organized pilgrims, sometimes make the journey by bike – alone or in a group?
The traditional image of pilgrimage as “on foot” is still very much alive. In fact, there’s a real revival of individual or group initiatives on the roads to Santiago de Compostela. However, today we are amazed by the wide variety of means of travel.
The Paris-Chartres railway line attracts some pilgrims, who sometimes request special trains – for certain gatherings of several thousand people.
Coaches are in demand, particularly for groups from Germany and Italy – or further afield from Poland, Russia and Moldavia.
For American pilgrims, Chartres is sometimes the first shrine visited on French territory, after landing at Roissy – especially when the inevitable discovery of Paris takes place at the end of their stay.
There are other, more surprising initiatives. Every December, a group of young people from the Versailles chaplaincies travel to Chartres on mountain bikes, leaving the Paris suburbs at dusk and entering the cathedral at dawn.
In 2005, a pilgrimage of bikers from the North of France was welcomed, and in 2006, a group of twenty pilgrims on rollerblades from the Le Mans region.
Even more confusing and sympathetic: seven kayakers from Rouen in 2003 and five skateboarders from Paris in 2009.
