Walsingham to Santiago

Alison and Ian will be walking from Walsingham in North Norfolk, England, to Santiago de Compostella in North West Spain (over 1500 miles) starting on Easter Monday, 5th April 2010. They will be walking via Vezelay in the Burgundy region of France.

This blog will be one of the ways you will be able to keep up to date with where they are, what they are doing and so on.

There are three logos displayed on this site and they, along with the title "The cross and the shell" need a little explanation:

The bird is the Housing Justice logo - Alison is the Chief Executive of Housing Justice, which is the Christian voice for the homeless and badly housed in England and Wales (see their website at http://www.housingjustice.org.uk/). We will be raising money for Housing Justice through our walk.

The cross represents Student Cross (and the other pilgrimages that have grown from Student Cross) - Student Cross is a cross carrying pilgrimage which started after WW2 and involves pilgrims walking during Holy Week, carrying a large wooden cross. Several groups walk from different parts of England to Walsingham where they then celebrate Easter together. This pilgrimage has its roots in a cross carrying march for peace which happened immediately after WW2 and ended up in Vezelay, which is one of our major stopping points en route to Santiago (see http://www.studentcross.org.uk/, http://www.northerncross.org.uk/ and http://www.scottishcross.org.uk/ for the other pilgrimage details).

The shell represents the Camino, or pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostella - the best known route is probably the section through Northern Spain from St Jean Pied de Port. We will join that after walking across part of England and through the length of France but our whole journey will be a pilgrimage very much in the traditional style - on foot, carrying all our belongings with us, etc...

So, "the cross and the shell" is our way of saying that we plan to link the three ancient pilgrimage sites of Walsingham, Vezelay and Santiago by establishing a new pilgrimage route between them.

Of course, we plan to keep you up to date on our planning through this blog and perhaps we will even get some feedback with ideas and advice from you!

We will soon have a facebook page and at the end of January we will have a website with a just giving facility and some mapping links so that, when we get going, you will be able to track our progress each day! So you will have ample opportunities to find out what is happening as we wear out the shoe leather across Europe.