Camino to Cop26: climate pilgrims walk 135 miles to promote film

There will be no red carpet, no designer outfits and definitely no limousines. In fact, the stars of the film have shunned any sort of mechanical transport and instead walked 135 miles from London to Bristol for the premiere, and are asking their audience to accompany them by foot on their last leg before the screening.

The film, which is being premiered on the harbourside in Bristol on Tuesday evening, is Of Walking on Thin Ice (Camino to Cop26), which tells the story of a group of climate pilgrims who hiked 500 miles from the south of England to Scotland for last year’s climate conference in Glasgow.

More than 1,000 people joined the 2021 walk, some of them spending the whole 56 days sleeping on the floors of dozens of church halls, having conversations, making new friends and trying to find a way to make a difference. Much of the adventure was filmed on 16mm celluloid by the film-maker Benjamin Wigley using a hand-crank Bolex camera.

Wigley has produced a dreamy, black and white impressionistic vision of England and Scotland, full of flag-waving activists pounding the pavements, lanes and towpaths, with a haunting soundtrack of song and conversation, sometimes sad, sometimes optimistic.

For the premiere, some of those who made the original 500-mile trip resolved to walk to Bristol to publicise the film. On Tuesday afternoon they will finish their latest trek by walking from St Stephen’s church in the city centre to the harbourside – hopefully with a sizeable audience – for a free screening being put on as part of the Encounters film festival.

“It just felt right to do it like this,” said Helen Locke, a climate activist, mountain leader and one of the organisers of the Cop26 walk. She admits she felt grief after last year’s walk ended.

“It was an incredibly moving experience,” she said. “Everybody pulled together. Then it was over and the outcome wasn’t brilliant, certainly there wasn’t any great commitment from our government. I struggled after that.”

But the film has given them another reason to get together and to continue talking about the climate crisis. “The film is a great tool to use to carry on those conversations and reaching people and communities. I think walking and film are pretty easy things to get onboard with.”

The Guardian joined the pilgrims, part of the Extinction Rebellion movement, on the last full day of their walk. They had slept – on the floor as always – at a Baptist church in Keynsham, between Bath and Bristol.

Some are religious, others not. Before setting off, one of the pilgrims, Stephen Marcus, handed out slices of apple to dip in honey to mark Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. Dave Whitney, who said he was not a person of faith, gave a brief speech, stressing that while the end of this walk was nearing, it would not be the end of the pilgrims’ journey.

That is certainly the case. After the premiere, the idea is to walk the film to village and church halls, to festivals and screenings around the country.

Wigley has carved a “film staff” out of buddleia and cherry wood. The head can be unscrewed revealing a secret hollow just big enough to hold a USB stick that the film will be transferred on to. Village halls, film societies and festival organisers will be able to play the film using this.

The film-maker got the idea after screening rough cuts of his work on the Cop26 walk in very small venues. “The atmosphere was amazing. I thought: this is how the film should be shown. And it should be distributed on foot.”

Walking along the River Avon on the way to Bristol, Melanie Nazareth, a barrister, said the walk to Scotland had changed her thinking. “What I learned is it’s too late for a lot of things, we’re going to get some really bad stuff coming our way. At the same time we’re becoming less compassionate as a nation. Events like this walk show that community is still very important.

“Doing things like walking to a screening gives you a bit more time, a chance to have proper conversations, to talk to people about how they live and how they could live. The film becomes a focus, an opportunity we can use to talk, which I think is much needed.”

• For more details and tickets visit the Encounters film festival website.