The shrine at Walsingham. Photo: Courtesy British Pilgrimage Trust.
Pilgrim’s progress: Jeff Dean walks to Walsingham
‘Did it meet the criteria for a pilgrimage?’
There we were, six wet but cheerful people, sitting at the back of a medieval church in Norfolk. We were enjoying warm drinks, having braved twelve miles in the worst that Storm Claudia could throw at us. Five more miles and we could stop for the night. We repeated the distance on the next day, with slightly less mileage the day after. We were on our way from the shrine of Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth-century mystic, to the shrine dedicated to Mary at Walsingham. It was a pilgrimage organised by an Anglo Catholic foundation attached to Julian’s shrine. We had already had two church services, including one blessing with holy water, which – as the presiding priest noted – was perhaps superfluous given the weather. A pattern of formal worship repeated each day.
