Joanna Bogle reflects on the spiritual potential of a new Camino route and its value to people today.
People have walked to Walsingham for centuries. It is a stirring thought that in just over 30 years’ time – when today’s teenagers are middle-aged – the shrine will be a thousand years old. Pilgrims will be marking Walsingham’s millennium. In recent years there has been an increasing amount of research about the origins of the shrine, and about the ancient routes that led there.
Now, in a joint enterprise bringing together not only Christians of different denominations but also public authorities, the London-Walsingham route has been the subject of useful work. Signposts will take pilgrims along the way, and I have already experienced the delight of these, along lanes and meadowland paths in Norfolk where the discreet but clear wooden signs somehow link today’s pilgrim to the thousands who have walked before.
