On the Camino

In Canterbury I bought these three replica Pilgrim badges: This is the Canterbury Cross - the design comes from a Saxon brooch from about 850 which was found in 1867 on Canterbury (the original is in the Canterbury Heritage museum). I bought this version from the Canterbury Tales for £4.

Having covered the journeys of Bilbo and Fro do I thought that it was only fair to mention the run of 135 miles undertaken by Aragorn, Legoas and Gimli in 'The Two Towers'. This covered the distance from Rauros near Emyn Muil to Fan gorn going via Ensenment and the Wold of Rohan. 135 miles is 217.3km in four days so they averaged 54.3km per day, an impressive feat! Some people do run the Camino and travel 50-80km per day so this sounds possible although it's not something that I would like to attempt on my next Camino!

Saint Augustine's Abbey is the first site of interest you reach on The via Francigenia as you walk out of Canterbury. It was a Benedictine monastery and was founded in 598 and was dissolved in 1538 during the Reformation after which it was dismantled until 1848. It's now in the care of the English Heritage. A sign to the Abbey The Abbey

The Pilgrims' Way is the route that Pilgrims are meant to have taken between Winchester to Canterbury (although the idea of one route under this name seems to have come about in the Victorian era when surveyor Edward James who was working on the Ordnance Survey map of Surrey published a leaflet in 1871 called  Notes on the Pilgrims' Way in West Surrey) . The route follows an ancient track way dated to 500-450BC (although it may have existed in the Stone Ages) and follows the natural causeway east to west on the slopes of the North Downs - a path that was dictated by geography: avoiding the clay and the summits From 1173-1538 Becket's shrine in Canterbury was the most important Pilgrimage site in England. Winchester was a regional focus, a meeting point for travellers from the south coast seaports and an important ecclesiastical centre and the 'Pilgrims' Way' was the most direct route between the two

I remember when I first decided to walk the Camino six years ago and started to look for books that I had a lot of difficulty finding any, thankfully that seems to be changing as evidenced by a recent trip to my local Waterstones shop These were in the general travel section of the shop My favourite travel guides are those by Brierley as I like the maps he has but those done by the Confraternity of Saint James are good as well.