Fair points.
And that opens up the question of whether it is the journey or the destination that is of importance.
In the Middle Ages, it was likely about the destination. After all the journey was somewhat perilous! And the only modes of transport were horses / wagons for the rich, and walking for the poor.
Whereas now, whilst the destination is certainly important, perhaps we also cherish the journey? The freedom from day to day duties, the community, the chance to get out in the fresh air, be active, to live a simple life...... These may not have been objectives in the Middle Ages
Have we, in modern times, raised the importance of the actual 'journey'? And Why?
The short answer is that the New Age junk (yeah… I’m actually really excited about a forthcoming academic book from the UofT press “Fascist Yoga”…) has turned everything into “the journey is more important than [anything else]”… total garbage if you ask me. It leaves all the room for ego, and self-involvement, removes the obligation to focus on whose regions one is tromping through… it’s very much of the egocentric current moment. I’m sure that early pilgrims, if they could even comprehend it, would be appalled.
“The journey” is, as it is deployed now, all about the internal… whereas pilgrimage has always been directed at something outside oneself. A destination… in which we owe something outward…
Edited to add:
"Outward" in the sense of specific veneration of relics... but also something that the more recent scholar, Marcel Mauss (early 20th C) helps us to understand as part of an economic system of gift exchange. Because pilgrims (I mean the ones who self designate[d] as such) understood that one had to seek the intercession of a given saint in order to have a specific need met. One did not make pilgrimage just for fun (though it could have been a relief, yes). But the idea that one would arrive at the pilgrimage site and dismiss it as irrelevant would not have
made sense to those seeking what pilgrimage promised.
reading backward, we see that long pilgrimage made by walking did have many things to offer in terms of improved health for those early ones making their way to Santiago, but they probably would not have counted the walking itself or its miseries as among their blessings. Better food, given in exchange for carrying the intentions of those who could not go? That would have been very welcome. The medical care that hospitals along the way could offer would have been the best the age had to offer (but also, the dangers of the road make that a complicated exchange). Fresh air and steady exercise probably *did* help cure minor ailments and lead to what we now refer to in mental health literature as the "benefits of self-efficacy". So in all of this, anyone making their way without a nefarious motive would have felt an obligation outward -- to the Saint, and to the cathedrals along the way with their own important relics, and to those along the way who supported them.
I can't guarantee that they weren't stealing grapes and leaving poop on the trails, but the various literatures show is that while, yes, per Canterbury, people claiming piety could get up to no good, for the most part, people were sincere in their efforts to make pilgrimage to a site.
Most medievalists and medical historians are pretty familiar with the literature. The rest of us, less so. Dorsey Armstrong is a good person to start with ...