I like long distance footpaths.
Pick any modern Ordnance Survey map, and you'll find it criss-crossed by
way-marked routes celebrating lovely parts of the country, or good causes, or
famous people. I've walked a big circle round Greater London on the London Loop
several times, followed rivers on their journeys to the sea on the Thames Path
and the Nene Way, matched my steps to those of notional Saxons on the Jurassic
Way and the Ridgeway, and discovered bits of a close-by county that I never
knew existed through the Hertfordshire Way. These are all paths for walking
'softies' and I'm quite happy with that. Personally I like the mixture of
countryside (often endangered green space) and built environment. But there's a
drawback. The way I do it, on occasional days when I aim to cover only between
ten and fifteen miles at most, half the day's sometimes gone by the time I've
organised my transport so that I don't have to go halfway to somewhere and then
re-trace my steps. So, I thought, another local long-distance path would be a
Very Good Idea: perhaps I could construct my own? So a plan with a purpose
started to form. Why not walk from my own church in Weston Favell, Northampton
to the mother church, the Cathedral in Peterborough, but dropping in on every
church in the diocese between the two - about four hundred in all? Well, that's
it in a nutshell. How long will it take? I can't say. Weather and natural
indolence may conspire to make it the work of several years. The aim is part
physical exercise, part pilgrimage. If you're reading this, the chances are
that you may have got here because I left a calling card at one church or
another. As I go, I'll do my best to keep a journal of what's happened and
where I've been. Now where are my boots and stick?
