In previous years this has included gentle folk ballads, harmony from a  twenty-strong choir, an evolutionary rap artist and a rendition of the  ‘Large Blue Butterfly blues’. Some pieces were written exclusively for the Trail.

This year we have widened our artistic interpretation even further to include poetry, two classical performers (a harpist and flute player), a Jazz choir and, because 2012 is our ‘Year of the Bird’, some bird inspired music.

Our line up so far:

1.    Ruth Wall   - regarded as one of the UK’s leading harpists,.will play some of her own work and a Steve Riech piece adapted for harp at the evening event following the Trail. BOOKED

2.    Jonny Berliner       - returns for a repeat performance with his witty and wonderful science songs including a brand new song to celebrate our 2012 ‘Year of the Bird’.

3.      Maciej Burdynowski        - brings his choir from London to perform at various positions along the Trail. Expect improvised harmony inspired by the Quantock hills and our journey back in time.

4.     Stephen Preston    - we are also thrilled  to welcome this English flautist who is famous for his classical renditions and, more recently a whole new musical language ~ ecosonics ~ based on ‘birdsong’. BOOKED

In previous years a large cohort of our pilgrims have come from London and further afield. Consequently, we decided that it would be helpful to adopt a Bank Holiday weekend to give people time to make the journey and, to minimise  hassle, we have organised full board accommodation at a local Outdoor Education Centre.

We also offer two evenings of entertainment:

On the Saturday before the walk we are organising a series of speakers to include topics such as bird conservation, world biodiversity and perhaps even a surprise guest.

On the Sunday night there will be an evening of cabaret from the performers you will have met previously along the Trail.

Follow this link to our ‘pitch’ on their website and then invest via pay-pal. The package you choose dictates what you get.

Please note: this website is very much a work in progress- new format coming soon.

The Trail is inspired by Richard Dawkins’ book “The Ancestor’s Tale”, subtitled a Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life. The book rewinds the evolutionary history of our species, and many others, back to our shared origins 3.7 billion years ago.

The Ancestor’s Trail traces the same journey on foot. We align Darwin’s Tree of Life with the many footpaths straddling the Quantock hills and place groups of walkers at the tips of selected branches. Symbolically, as each group follows their trail, they walk further into history until, at pre-specified times, they rendezvous with the walkers following the Human trail. In this way our ever-increasing band of ‘pilgrims’ arrives together at the Dawn of Life ~ Kilve beach, appropriately famous for its fossils.

Along the trail, rendezvous points will be marked by appropriate words of wisdom, music and performance.

This “pilgrimage” is a shared experience organised by humanists to celebrate the simple and ingenious truth that all life on Earth is related through evolution. Although we claim this as a shared experience for non-religious people; because, by definition, our common origins belong to us all, we warmly extend an open invitation to all people.

How does it work?

You’ll need to manipulate Darwin’s evolutionary tree in your head. Lie it flat along the spine of some picturesque hills in Somerset; its branches approximately lining up with its many tributary footpaths. Now add yourself at the end of one particular branch, representing one specific life form, and start walking towards its roots. Symbolically, each step will take you back in time.

If we are to reach our goal in a sensible time frame, each step must represent thousands or even millions of years.  In terms of the life forms with which we are most familiar, very little happens in the first few billion years of evolution, and yet, especially from a primate point of view, everything happens in just the last few million years.  Given this, we decided to create three different scales over the trail. The first expands our mammal centred period since the terrible climatic catastrophe that ended the reign of the dinosaurs. From this point on you will walk back 10,000 years every step. Beyond this point, our time travel increases by an order magnitude to 100,000 years per stride and then, for the last 2.7 billion years, we increase by another order of magnitude to around a million years every stride. In this way we ensure a relatively constant procession of rendezvous throughout the trail.

Eventually our symbolic re-enactment will reach its ultimate origin; the dawn of life itself. Staged along the rolling green hills of the Quantocks (an area of outstanding natural beauty) , we are very fortunate to be able to end the Trail at Kilve beach ~ a beautiful, rugged, rocky beach which is, appropriately enough, famous for its fossils.

People can choose their walking distance through the Trail they adopt. The longest Trails are nearly 20 miles, but for less hearty walkers or younger families, there are a whole range of shorter options. The Gazelle Trail is 10 miles, the Starfish Trail 5 miles and the Bacteria Trail less than a mile!  If you wish to avoid walking altogether, you can simply and turn up at the beach at the allotted time and join the party!

Our website includes a Google Map of the Quantock Hills. This provides links to detailed route plans for all the trails and once booked, we will add your name on your trail so you can see in advance with whom you will be walking. On specified trails marshals will lead you up to the main Trail rendezvous to make sure you don’t get lost!

Choosing your trail:

*First open the :  Google Map of the walk. You can choose to walk one of any of the many different trails, each one representing a different branch of Darwin’s tree. You need to decide how far you want to walk or, if you prefer, which life form you wish to represent. The distances are shown for each trail, along with a rendezvous arrival time that will ensure you meet up with all the other walkers on the human line of the Ancestor’s trail.

modelled on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Instead of pilgrims journeying to

Canterbury, Dawkin’s protagonists are living species, journeying back through

evolutionary time.

In real time, individual species diverged and speciated. But in the

backwards time of The Ancestor’s Tale, separate species start the

journey apart, in the present, and “converge” together as they

descend into the past. Humans “meet” the chimpanzee and the

bonobo around 6 million years ago. We all continue back in time

together, rendezvousing with gorillas another million years earlier.

The time doubles before the next

convergence, with orang utans, at 14 million years ago. Dawkins takes

his readers back and back and back. We eventually meet rodents and

rabbits at 75 million years, amphibians at 340 million years, lungfish

at 417 million years.

Insects, spiders, worms, snails and other protostomes are all more

closely related to one another than to us, so on their own journey they

have already converged. We meet them as one huge scuttling,

crawling, sliding band at around 590 million years ago. The common

ancestor – the “concestor” in backwards time – which we share with

the protostomes, was probably worm-like, segmented, with a mouth

at the front, and probably had eyes.

Dawkins reversal of time is designed to exorcise the “conceit of hindsight”,

in which all of evolution is seen as something inevitably progressing

towards the human and in which we lazily describe one species as

“more evolved” than another, for example. The Ancestor’s Tale is a

fascinating overview of all life on earth. Our small hope is that the

Ancestor’s Trail will help to illustrate the tree of life by symbolically

walking the journey back

to the origin of life.