The English countryside...

...so enchanting, so glorious, and with so many layers of history there...

Mass in the ruins of  Bury St Edmunds Abbey, people kneeling on the grass, strong young voices singing, reverent lines of communicants...

Then the pilgrim walkers of the John Paul II Pilgrimage for the New Evangelisation gathered in the church hall of St Edmund's church, for a good supper and introductions and instructions for the journey. Sister Hyacinthe is a splendid leader and this is the 9th annual pilgrimage - but the first to be able to carry the word SAINT attached to the name of John Paul...

Night prayer in St Edmund's church, everyone singing the Dominican Office, turn and turn about with the verses of the psalms, already sounding a united group, voices blending together. As we knelt to pray before the Blessed Sacrament, we pulled out kneelers, and I pondered the fact that I hadn't brought a pillow for the night...so...

We made up our beds on the floor of the big hall of the parish school. The church kneeler made an adequate pillow, but a kind young sister, already seeing my plight, had come forward with her soft woollen shawl - not needed in this warm weather, urging me to use it. So with this, and the kneeler, I was perfectly comfortable.

We rose the next day at 5.45, sang Morning Prayer, then were driven in a convoy of minibuses and cars to Brandon, for Mass. The local parishioners there welcome the pilgrims every year and provide a splendid breakfast.  It was the feast of St Dominic. Our chaplain, Father Simon Heans (Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham) said Mass, there was splendid singing, and he preached about St Dominic and read from an account of the latter's adventures walking and preaching...and staying in horrid places among the poor and unwashed with the smells and the fleas...

We were in luxury, with a delicious breakfast of  fresh hot waffles and fruit and cream, and brioch and croissants, all served with such a joyful sense of welcome...and then we set off, with a processional cross held high, an a great Papal flag, and our banner of Our Lady of Walsingham, and everyone praying the rosary as we rounded our way down the lane and out through the pig farms and I nto the open country...