This year, former Malvern College staff member Sophie Holroyd is undertaking an extraordinary personal challenge: a near-solo 2,000-kilometre walk from Canterbury to Rome along the Via Francigena, an ancient pilgrimage route that winds through five countries – the UK, France, Switzerland, Italy, and the Vatican City.
Sophie’s journey, which crosses the English Channel and the Alps via the formidable Colle del Gran San Bernardo, is no small feat. Though she has long-distance walking experience, this is her first such endeavour abroad, and the scale of it is immense. She jokes that she may well be in need of the legendary St Bernard dogs – brandy barrels and all – as she reaches the Alpine heights.
But Sophie’s motivation is deeply rooted in a modern sense of purpose. Inspired by Pope Francis’s call to make 2025 a ‘Pilgrimage of Hope’, she is walking to raise funds for Plant Your Future, a UK-based charity set up by Jenny Henman (6.96-98), working to restore tropical rainforest and improve lives in the Peruvian Amazon.
“Although I’m not a person of faith,” she says, “I’ve taken Pope Francis’s exhortation to heart. This is a pilgrimage of action – to address climate change, biodiversity loss, and rural poverty.”
Plant Your Future partners with over 1,000 smallholder farmers who once cleared rainforest in hopes of a better life, only to find the land depleted and their futures uncertain. The charity works to reverse this damage by promoting sustainable agroforestry: farmers are trained and equipped to reforest their land using native tree species, which not only restores ecosystems but also provides long-term, sustainable incomes.
To date, more than 750,000 native trees have been planted through this programme, with a goal of reaching one million by the end of this year. The trees not only help store carbon – up to 450 tonnes per hectare, or the equivalent of one million car miles – but also bring back biodiversity and support a growing green economy in these remote areas.
“There’s hope growing in the Amazon,” Sophie explains. “And I want my steps across Europe to reflect that hope – step by step, tree by tree.”
The initiative also creates vital employment, particularly for women, in the charity’s tree nurseries and new seed bank, and provides technical career paths for local teams running farmer field schools and supporting reforestation efforts.
Sophie, who taught English at the College from 2005 until her retirement, is now calling on the wider Malvernian community to support her “Pilgrimage of Hope” fundraiser. “Any donation – great or small – is deeply appreciated,” she says. “Together we can transform lives and landscapes and care for our one, precious, endangered common home.”
You can support Sophie’s fundraiser for Plant Your Future, here.
Read Sophie’s blog to follow her journey, here.