Pilgrims mark diamond jubilee
EVERY Good Friday people across West and North Norfolk have grown used to seeing groups carrying heavy crosses walking along many of the lanes and smaller roads of the county, all aiming for Walsingham.
They are members of the 250-strong Student Cross Pilgrimage. One who knows more than most about this colourful occasion is Frank Hewitt, who helped to inspire this annual event some 60 years ago.
He was at England’s National Shrine at the weekend to celebrate the pilgrimage’s diamond jubilee.
Now 80 years old, he has an unbroken record of 37 consecutive pilgrimages from 1970 to 2007. This year he travelled by car acting as a sweeper-in for one of the groups.
“I was one of a group of servicemen at the London School of Economics who had returned safely from the Second World War,” said Mr Hewitt. “We decided we wanted to have a pilgrimage to mark our safe return.”
Their plan resulted in some 30 students walking from Saffron Walden, via Cambridge, Mildenhall and Swaffham to Walsingham in 1948.
Now there are ten pilgrimages, or legs, each Easter, the furthest taking a week to walk 140 miles from Oxford.
Other legs set out from Nottingham, Leicester, Desborough, Ely, Epping and Colchester. One group, mainly for the elderly, called the Easter leg, assemble and walk to Walsingham from North Elmham on Good Friday.
Two others for families and children celebrate the preceding Holy Week by gathering in Lynn and Wells then walk the final few miles only so that all ten groups arrive at Walsingham’s Slipper Chapel within an hour of each other on Good Friday afternoon.
“Sixty years of walking to Walsingham has helped their timing,” said pilgrimage organiser, David Ring. “It’s the oldest pilgrimage in Britain and people give up a lot of their time to celebrate the Easter liturgies.
“Student Cross is about more than just those who walk. The legs receive incredible support along the way from parishioners and residents who often feed and house pilgrims for the night.”
He added: “Student Cross is a week which is physically demanding but spiritually uplifting.”
This year pilgrims suffered hail, sleet, driving rain and freezing winds yet still arrived at Walsingham smiling and singing.
After dark on Saturday evening their Easter Vigil started in the grounds of the Anglican Shrine. They then walked in a candle-lit procession through Walsingham to the Catholic parish church.
On Easter Sunday they took part in a Holy Trot carrying their crosses, decorated with flowers and greenery, around Walsingham’s Holy sites.
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Sunday 27 May 2012
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