In the summer of 1987, I was a curate in the Church of England and had three months free before my next assignment as a school chaplain in Cambridge. I decided to use the time to make a hitch-hiking pilgrimage to Jerusalem from England, staying in monasteries en route.
It was a great adventure and one of the most memorable experiences happened while I was travelling through the valley of Susa in the Italian Alps on my way to Turin.
On the top of a mountain I spied a remarkable edifice – a church or perhaps a monastery. At my destination that night I learned it was Sacra di San Michele – a monastery dedicated to St Michael the Archangel.
