Harry Potter: West Yorkshire, England

August 31st - September 3rd, 2023

Note: If you’re new to our work, we condemn JKR and her transphobia. Read more about it here.

Join Vanessa Zoltan, creator and host of Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, for a pilgrimage this September in rural Yorkshire, England! This group of pilgrims will explore Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows through the theme of wandering. Each day, we will have a morning discussion about a passage of text, viewing it through our theme. We will engage in sacred reading practices while reflecting on the text and our own lives. We will spend our days walking up to twelve miles a day through beautiful countryside and woodlands. Immersing ourselves in this new landscape, we will create a time outside of time where we’ll spend our days reading, journaling, and joining in conversation about the final book of the series.

For the time we are together, we will be thinking about what role displacement plays in this book and the Harry Potter series as a whole. Meditating on how The Deathly Hallows sends Harry, Ron, and Hermione far from their established paths, we’ll connect these themes and conversations to our own lives, asking questions like: how does being uprooted give us space to grow? By which values do we orient ourselves in unfamiliar landscapes? And which relationships in our lives endow us with a sense of belonging even when we are far away from home?  

We’ll meet in Manchester on the early afternoon of the 31st and then travel to Oakwood Hall Hotel in Bingley where we’ll stay for the remainder of our time together. Each day, we will make space for writing, reflection, reading, silence, ancient reading practices and of course, for walking.

VANESSA ZOLTAN

Vanessa is the CEO of Not Sorry. She is on three of our podcasts: Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, The Real Question: Should I Quit?, and Hot & Bothered. She founded Common Ground Pilgrimages in order to travel with brilliant faculty to beautiful places and talk about books with amazing pilgrims. It was a great trick she pulled off. She is also the author of the book, Praying with Jane Eyre.

Vanessa was trained as a non-denominational chaplain at Harvard Divinity School. She is a proud California girl who currently lives in MA with her gorgeous, blended family. Her Romance novelist pseudonym, if she ever publishes a Romance novel, will be Lorelai Mason.

Vanessa is working as faculty on this trip.

What's Included:

• Three nights in a shared or private room at a beautiful countryside estate, Oakwood Hall Hotel

• All meals from lunch on August 31st to breakfast on the September 3rd

• Transportation within England from August 31st in Manchester until September 3rd in West Yorkshire

• One-on-one chaplaincy sessions with Colette

• Private walking tours, picnics, and talks with local experts

• Customized journal

pricing/Logistics:

We will be walking up to 12 miles each day, sometimes on hilly terrain. The Yorkshire summer might be mild and sunny, or wet and windy, sometimes all in the same day. We won’t be rushing but we expect to be tired at the end of each day. We will be meeting in Manchester on the afternoon of Thursday, August 31st and ending at a local train station in Bingley on the afternoon of Sunday, September 3rd.

• The total cost of the trip is $3,300 for a shared room and $3,800 for a private room.

• People who have attended another Common Ground pilgrimage will receive a 5% discount on the cost of the trip.

• Registration is first-come, first-served.

• We will reach out to the first registrants with a link to make their payment within 48 hours of receiving their registration link.

• When you sign up through our registration system, it will act as a waitlist, and we will let you know via email once a spot has been confirmed for you.

• If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at commonground@notsorryproductions.com.

COVID Policy:

We are so excited to begin traveling with you again, and as always, our first priority is to make sure that the trips are safe for everyone involved, including the communities we visit and the people who host us. To that end, we are keeping a close eye on the evolving COVID situation and will update you as frequently as we can if the situation with the pilgrimages changes. 

Below are some potential expectations we could have in terms of covid safety. Depending on the recommendations of international health organizations at the time of the pilgrimage, we may institute any or all of the following guidelines. Please understand that signing up indicates your willingness to cooperate with any of these rules as your pilgrimage faculty deem necessary:

• Wearing masks indoors or outdoors, no matter group size

• Social distancing, both indoors and outdoors 

• Getting proof of a negative COVID-19 test within a certain number of hours before arrival

• Getting a negative COVID test upon arrival at the destination

• Proof of vaccination & booster dated within a year of departure date

• Quarantining upon arrival to destination country

On our end, we will refund fully any payments made for the trip in the event that we at Common Ground Pilgrimages have to cancel due to change in travel restrictions, variants, etc. 

By making payment, you acknowledge the above precautions and are willing to follow them, or any similar recommendations, when you come on the pilgrimage. 

Refund Policy:

Please be sure you can attend the event before booking. If an unforeseen circumstance does occur, we will do our best to find a replacement for you. If we are able to get someone to take your place, we will refund your full payment minus a service charge (10% of the full payment). For cancellations within six weeks of the beginning of the trip, we are not able to find replacements. We strongly urge you to purchase travel insurance in the event of a personal conflict, health issue, or unexpected circumstance.