Virgin Trails is a fascinating, colourful and often mesmerizing journal of one mans quest to understand the sacred and profane. It is a story that takes us along thousands of miles of streets, roads and alleyways, following the routes taken by thousands of devout travellers each year to the legendary shrines of the Virgin Mary in Paris, Lourdes, along the Camino de Santiago to Barcelona and Rome. Why do they do this? What is it that propels so many people each year to forsake the comforts of home, to face inclement weather and the travails of travel? Writer Robert Ward takes to the hills to answer that very question, encountering pilgrims, priests, sages and sightseers. His journey is a ceaseless series of epiphanies probing the shadowy reaches of his own soul and the lives of his fellow travellers ending where all roads lead: Rome.