Heavenly days...

...in Norfolk, walking the pilgrim way to Walsingham.  After a wonderful time at the New Dawn gathering, I came briefly home to London, tackled housework and various crucial bits of writing, re-packed, and set off for Bury St Edmunds, to join the John Paul Walk, back to Walsingham!

The Walk is always joyful - this year perhaps especially so....a beautiful Mass for St Dominic's day in a Medieval church, the sight and sound of young pilgrims singing along the country lanes,  the glorious splashing across a ford as we approached the Abbey ruins and fine old parish church at Castle Acre...

Sleeping on the floor in schools and church halls, talking and laughing together...the joy of cool water to drink...

And after the days of walking, the welcome at Walsingham, and the enchantment of an evening there, with the cool air and the silence as night fell.  I stayed on after the other JP pilgrims had departed, as I needed to do some work with the team from EWTN. Booked into the Pilgrim Bureau for a delicious refreshing wash, then a fish-and-chips supper next door at the pub with the EWTN team...

A night's rest with crisp clean sheets, and a cooked breakfast, and then the bus to Kings Lynn. Norfolk buses have their own odd systems. No apparent bus-stop in Walsingham, you just wait at the village pump...and although a timetable at the Pilgrim Bureau gives information about bus times to Wells or Fakenham, the bus actually goes all the way to Kings Lynn, with the main stop being Hunstanton. Holidaymakers on the bus but also locals greeting the driver: "Morning Joe" "Morning Pauline"   "See tall Andy this week?" "No, he's off work till next Monday"  and so on. A long  but delightful ride through the glorious countryside...one notices the changes of the years....old Methodist chapels now turned into shops or homes, villages and small towns with trendy craft-shops and coffee-shops, some closed pubs (a tragedy!), signs in Polish or Lithuanian advertising delicacies from home.

London warm and sticky, the Tube almost unbearable...