In April 2006, Brandon Wilson began a 2,620-mile walk to promote peace on a path where Crusaders waged a religious war more than nine centuries ago.

On the six-month trek from northern France to Israel he found that most people he encountered wanted peace, and he returned with a sense of renewal and profound gratitude for the countless meals, aid and directions strangers gave him.

The intrepid explorer, who was born in Sewickley and now lives in Maui, has recounted his experiences in a book, "Along the Templar Trail," published in January by Pilgrim's Tales.

"It has really become a passion of mine to find these historic pilgrimage trails," said the 54-year-old writer, who grew up in Moon and attended Sewickley Academy.

A Quaker, Mr. Wilson finds spiritual solace in this deliberate style of travel.

"Traveling slowly, traveling deliberately, puts you in a certain state of mind. I think trekking can become transcendental. It's a sort of trampoline for the mind. You listen to the inner voice and sort through feelings and emotions."

It's not the first such trip for this author, travel writer and photographer. In 1992, Mr. Wilson ignored the warnings of Chinese officials and trekked through mountainous Tibet with his wife, Cheryl. Afterward, he wrote "Yak Butter Blues: A Tibetan Trek of Faith." The couple also spent seven months in Africa, and their experiences on that continent are recounted in "Dead Men Don't Leave Tips: Adventures X Africa."

On his trip from France to Israel, Mr. Wilson had a companion he calls Emile, a Frenchman he met in 1999 while walking 500 miles on Spain's Camino de Santiago to the northern town of Santiago de Compostela. The Frenchman told his friend about his desire to walk from France to Israel.

So, in 2006 the two men set off from St. Jean de Losne, a town near Dijon in northwestern France. The route stretched across Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Cyprus and ended in Jerusalem. Mr. Wilson, who is skilled in traveling light, carried 15 pounds of equipment, which included 30 blister wraps, waterproof matches, a Swiss Army knife and camping equipment.

"We retraced the route that was used during the first Crusade. It took them four years to get to Jerusalem and recapture the city from the Moors, who were Muslim," Mr. Wilson said, recounting the trail's early history.

In the beginning, the duo "walked the canals of France. We followed these paths throughout France until we connected to the Donauradweg. The Donau is their name for the Danube [River] and the radweg is a bicycle route."

"Starting in a town called Donaueschingen in Germany, we were able to walk this bicycle route all the way through Germany and Weltenburg into Austria through Vienna, into Bratislava and then south down to Budapest," he recalled.

The weather wasn't always pleasant. In Germany, it rained 18 out of 21 days and there was snow in the Black Forest in May.

Along the way, Mr. Wilson said, "People were overwhelmingly supportive and kind and generous. They would stop and give us food."

"Once we arrived in Budapest, we were pretty much on our own. We had a 1,000-year-old map from Godfrey de Bouillon," the medieval knight who led the first Crusade from 1096 to 1100. They found the map on the Internet.

"I wanted to be able to document what we were doing so that other people who are interested can follow in our footsteps," he said.

One day, while having lunch and giving an interview to a newspaper reporter, the two men learned that the Beirut airport in Lebanon had been bombed.

"Israel and Hezbollah had been trading missiles back and forth. At that point, we were worried about continuing and if we should continue because even though I'm an adventure traveler, I like to plan ahead. We decided to continue as far as Istanbul."

News reports were grim.

"What we heard on the BBC at that point was that this could be the beginning of World War III," Mr. Wilson said.

"We went on through Serbia, talking to people all along the way and choosing peace and negotiation as an alternative to endless war. We can't continue on this path of destruction. Cooler minds must prevail, as they have for centuries. People have to learn to live together again and realize that we are more similar than we are different."

In Bulgaria, the pair gave dozens of interviews, explaining that, "We were doing this walk to talk about peace."

In Turkey, temperatures soared to 90 degrees. "My friend was getting weak and disoriented and suffering from heat exhaustion. When we reached Istanbul ... my friend decided to go home. At that point, he had walked the width of Europe."

Emile's departure was the lowest point of the trip. "I was disappointed for him, as he was so emotionally wrapped up in the journey," Mr. Wilson said.

Alone, he hiked through central Turkey, listening to the BBC every evening on a short-wave radio he acquired along the way.

"At that point, the Kurds had set off a bomb along the coast of Turkey. In Damascus, Syria, there was an attempted bombing of the embassy. Tourists were shot in Amman, Jordan, by some gunman."

At the Turkish port of Alanya, he caught a ferry to Cyprus, an island off the coast of Turkey. Cyprus was a stronghold of the Knights Templar during the Crusades and was used as a staging area from which soldiers and supplies were sent to Palestine.

"I knew the Cypriot path was a path taken from the Third Crusades after Richard the Lionhearted captured Limassol. Cyprus had just recently removed barriers that allowed people to cross from the north to the southern part."

After walking across Cyprus from the north, he reached the southern city of Limassol, a cosmopolitan resort town.

Then, luck intervened. While he was in Cyprus, a woman told Mr. Wilson about the Israel National Trail and gave him the name of a man instrumental in creating the trail.

Mr. Wilson left Cyprus on a boat for Haifa, Israel. In that country, he met Dany Gaspar, who gave him a list of "angels" who could provide additional directions, food or shelter.

"This was such a find and such a vast improvement. I was walking on small well-marked trails off the roads through these incredible areas of Israel," he said.

The best moment of the journey came when he passed through the Jaffa Gate and reached the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

In Israel, he celebrated Rosh Hashana under the stars with a young couple while camping with them in the woods. He passed another night with a military officer and his wife in a suburban village, stayed with a Jewish policeman and talked with an American woman living on a kibbutz.

"It was interesting talking to a cross section of Israel and seeing their reactions, especially to the concept of peace."

Israel, he said, is an "island in a sea of sharks," and Jerusalem feels like an armed camp where teenagers walk around in flip-flops talking on their cell phones and carrying AK-47s.

"There's a huge sense of fatalism among the people I talked to."

He is more hopeful about the global prospects for sowing peace.

"... I am certain most people of the world truly want and crave peace. If only their leaders will listen."