Walsingham Camino

At a Glance

• Start / Finish: City of London (St Magnus the Martyr at London Bridge) → Little Walsingham, Norfolk
• Length: 269.0 km
• Stages: 12
• Duration: 12–13 days
• Difficulty: easy to moderate – flat land, but long days and little infrastructure
• Operator: Andy Bull (initiator, 2022) in cooperation with the Confraternity of Saint James
• Waymarking: no continuous waymarking – navigation by Trailblazer guide and GPX files
• Best time: April to October

Overview

This route is four years old and five hundred years old at once. In 2022 the author Andy Bull re-established the pilgrim route from London to Walsingham – on the basis of Leonard Whatmore's 1973 book „Highway to Walsingham“, whose place names he first had to transfer onto modern maps with volunteers. What came out is the axis along which kings, peasants and Erasmus of Rotterdam travelled in the Middle Ages to „England's Nazareth“: 269 kilometers from the church at the head of the old London Bridge to the Slipper Chapel a mile before the finish, where pilgrims took off their shoes.

The destination is Marian, the name is Spanish, and both have their reason. In 1061 the noblewoman Richeldis de Faverches saw the Virgin at Walsingham, who showed her the house of Nazareth; in 1538 Henry VIII had the image burned at Chelsea; in 1897 the first fifty pilgrims returned. The word „Camino“, in turn, is a statement: the Confraternity of Saint James has accredited the route, and whoever walks 25 stamped kilometers here may count them towards the Compostela. The route measures ten times that. Whoever walks all of it is obviously not doing it for the paper.

Other Names

In English the route is called London to Walsingham Camino – that is how it appears in the guidebook, with the Confraternity of Saint James and with the Long Distance Walkers Association. Andy Bull has explained why the Spanish word is in the name: when he spoke of a pilgrimage to Norfolk he got blank looks; when he said „Camino“, everyone understood at once. Historically the axis through Norfolk is called the Walsingham Way; in Rudham, old people still called a road exactly that into the 20th century. The destination itself has borne the nickname England's Nazareth since the Middle Ages.

Ideal For – and Less So For

The route is ideal if you like English church history and are prepared to work it out for yourself. Over 269 kilometers you pass a Saxon bishop's church, three priory ruins, the first Augustinian house in England, a Roman causeway and around forty churches with pilgrim stamps – and at the end two shrines, one Catholic and one Anglican, in a village of 800 souls. Ideal too if you want to begin your Compostela kilometers at home: 25 stamped kilometers are enough to count.

Honestly, though, it is not for you if you need waymarks, expect hostels or want mountains. There is no continuous signage – you walk by GPX track and book. There is no hostel network: you sleep in pub rooms, B&Bs and occasionally a church, all pre-booked. And there is no climb worthy of the name – the route database does not even hold elevation data for this route. If you are looking for the Pyrenees you are in the wrong place; if you are looking for horizons, the right one.

Route & Landscape

The route begins at a church door that everyone entering London had to pass for six hundred years: St Magnus the Martyr stood at the head of the old London Bridge, and when the stone bridge was built in 1209 the roadway ran right along its west porch. From there the route follows the River Lea north out of the city – Tottenham, Enfield Lock, the marshes – to Waltham Abbey, where Harold Godwinson is said to be buried. Then Essex stretches out: Broxbourne, Roydon, Harlow, the edge of Hatfield Forest at Takeley, and then it turns rural and stays that way. Via Tilty and Thaxted it runs along the Suffolk border to Clare in the Stour valley and through the empty hills around Hawkedon and Rede to Bury St Edmunds at kilometer 137.9 – halfway.

From Bury the ground changes. The Breckland is sandy heath with pine breaks, sparsely populated, partly military land: via Culford, West Stow and Lackford to Thetford, then Croxton, Stonebridge, Little Cressingham. There the route meets the Peddars Way, a Roman road laid out after AD 61 to hold down the Iceni after the Boudica revolt – dead straight north to the Cluniac ruin of Castle Acre. From there the route turns east: West Lexham, Litcham, Beetley, North Elmham, where the Bishop of East Anglia sat until 1071. The last kilometers via Stibbard, Kettlestone and Great Snoring are gentle Norfolk farmland, until at kilometer 268 the Slipper Chapel appears in Houghton St Giles and only the Holy Mile remains.

Stages, Terrain & Difficulty

Twelve stages, 22.4 kilometers on average; the kilometers come from the Camino Ninja map and are calibrated exactly to the route's 269.0 km. Technically none of it is difficult: field paths, towpaths, quiet lanes, no climb worth mentioning. What is tiring are the distances and the gaps between beds. Two days are deliberately short – in Thaxted and Castle Acre half an afternoon is worth more than the kilometers – and one is long: the 32.1 kilometers from Bury St Edmunds to Thetford through the Breckland; if you like, split it at West Stow. After rain, clay on the Essex fields is the real terrain issue.

1. City of London → Waltham Abbey (29.2 km) – From the porch of St Magnus the Martyr up the Lea through Tottenham and Enfield Lock until the city gives way to marshland.
2. Waltham Abbey → Harlow (22.2 km) – Along the river via Waltham Cross, Cheshunt and Broxbourne to Roydon and into the new town of Harlow.
3. Harlow → Takeley Street (20.1 km) – Via Sheering and Little Hallingbury along the edge of Hatfield Forest into open Essex.
4. Takeley Street → Thaxted (13.8 km) – A short day on purpose: Tilty with its chapel outside the abbey gate and Thaxted with guildhall and windmill want time.
5. Thaxted → Clare (26.4 km) – Through the quiet border villages of Little Sampford, Cornish Hall End, Stambourne and Ridgewell down into the Stour valley.
6. Clare → Bury St Edmunds (26.2 km) – Via Poslingford, Stansfield, Hawkedon and Rede into the town of St Edmund.
7. Bury St Edmunds → Thetford (32.1 km) – The longest, flattest day: via Fornham, Culford and West Stow through the pines of the Breckland.
8. Thetford → Stonebridge (19.5 km) – Sandy heath and pines via Croxton, then the wide emptiness.
9. Stonebridge → North Pickenham (20.4 km) – Via Little Cressingham onto the Roman Peddars Way.
10. North Pickenham → Castle Acre (11.5 km) – Second short day, again with reason: the finest priory ruin on the route.
11. Castle Acre → North Elmham (24.5 km) – East via West Lexham, Litcham and Beetley to the old bishop's church.
12. North Elmham → Little Walsingham (23.1 km) – Via Stibbard, Kettlestone and Great Snoring to the Slipper Chapel – and then the Holy Mile.

An Image Recovered from Its Own Seal

The story of Walsingham has a date, a document and a bonfire. The date is 1061: according to tradition the noblewoman Richeldis de Faverches is led in spirit to Nazareth, sees the house of the Annunciation and rebuilds it in Norfolk – the Holy House, with the promise „All that seek me there will find help in need.“ The document is the Pynson Ballad, composed around 1460 and printed by Richard Pynson in 1495, 21 stanzas, the earliest written witness to the legend; the only surviving copy lies in the Pepys Library in Cambridge. The bonfire came in 1538: Henry VIII, who had himself made the pilgrimage here in 1511, had the shrine demolished and the image taken to London, where it was „burned at Chelsea in the presence of Cromwell“. Erasmus had still seen it around 1512 and noted drily that it was „remarkable neither for size, material or execution“.

The revival came twice over. In 1896 Charlotte Pearson Boyd bought the derelict Slipper Chapel, which since the Reformation had served as poorhouse, forge, barn and cowshed; in 1897 fifty Catholics processed there, and on 15 August 1934 Cardinal Bourne declared it England's Catholic national shrine before 12,000 pilgrims. In the village itself the Anglican vicar Alfred Hope Patten had a new image of Mary carved in 1921 – as a copy of the figure on the seal of the medieval priory. It was blessed on 6 July 1922 and translated on 15 October 1931 into a newly built Holy House. The burnt original had been recovered from its own official stamp.

And St James? Honestly: the only hard evidence on the whole route is a bull of indulgence. In 1401 Pope Boniface IX granted the Portiuncula indulgence to pilgrims who visited Castle Acre Priory on Passion Sunday and on the feast of St James. Everything else here is Marian; the Jacobean connection is modern and comes from the Confraternity of Saint James. That does not make the route smaller. It makes it honest.

Highlights Along the Way

• St Magnus the Martyr, London (km 0) – first recorded in 1067, in the portico a timber from the Roman riverside wall of AD 65; Christopher Wren rebuilt the church after the Great Fire for £9,579 19s 10d.
• Waltham Abbey (km 29.2) – Harold Godwinson rebuilt the church in 1060 after the Holy Cross of Waltham was said to have healed him; he is supposed to lie under the slab behind the former high altar – excavations found nothing. In March 1540 the last abbey in England to be dissolved.
• Tilty (km 79.6) – of the Cistercian abbey of 1153 the capella ante portas, the chapel outside the gate, survives. On Christmas Day 1215 King John's soldiers broke in here during the Christmas Mass.
• Thaxted (km 85.3) – in 1393 the poll tax counted 79 cutlers in this village. The church, begun in 1340, is correspondingly large; Gustav Holst played the organ here from 1916 to 1925.
• Clare Priory (km 111.7) – founded in 1248, the first house of the Augustinian friars in England. After the dissolution it took 415 years until the friars returned in 1953 – they are still there.
• Bury St Edmunds (km 137.9) – tomb of King Edmund, killed in 869, abbey from 1020, a church 505 feet long. In 1214 the barons swore here the oath that led a year later to Magna Carta – „the direct precursor to Magna Carta a year later“.
• West Stow (km 148.8) – on the excavation site of an Anglo-Saxon settlement inhabited from 420 to 650 stand eight reconstructed houses in the country park.
• Thetford Priory (km 170.0) – Cluniac from 1103/04, foundation stone 1107. A miraculous statue of Mary financed gatehouse and choir; the Dukes of Norfolk had themselves buried here, one in 1524 for £1,300.
• Peddars Way (from km 202.1) – Roman road built after AD 61 against the Iceni, a National Trail since 1986. In the 15th and 16th centuries Walsingham pilgrims walked north along it.
• Castle Acre Priory (km 221.4) – the first Cluniac house in England after Lewes, west front from the 1160s; moved in 1089 because the old site was „too confined and highly unsuitable“.
• North Elmham (km 245.9) – seat of the Bishops of East Anglia until 1071; the ruin is a bishop's chapel of 1091–1119 and a fortified manor of 1388 in one.
• Slipper Chapel, Houghton St Giles (km 268.0) – here pilgrims took off their shoes before walking the last mile; Catholic national shrine since 1934, a basilica minor since 2015, over 250,000 visitors a year.

How Pilgrims Reach This Route

The starting point is as easy to reach as hardly any other pilgrim route in Europe: St Magnus the Martyr lies in Lower Thames Street, a good hundred meters from Monument tube station, in the heart of the City. From any London airport you are at the porch within an hour.

London starts two routes from our map at once: from the same part of town the Via Francigena (England) heads south to the Channel at Dover – one route to the sea, one to the Mother of God. The second English Celtic Camino feeder, the St James' Way England from Reading to Southampton, lies two train hours to the west. A route that ends in London and brings you here does not exist – you reach London by train, coach or plane.

Continuing the Pilgrimage?

Walsingham is a destination, not a waypoint – on foot there is no going on from here, but on paper there is. The Walsingham Camino is recognized by the Confraternity of Saint James: whoever walks at least 25 kilometers of it and gets stamped twice a day may count that stretch towards the 100 kilometers required for the Compostela. That is the Celtic Camino rule.

The Spanish part that then remains is the Camino Inglés from A Coruña with its 75 kilometers – together with your English 25 that makes the required 100. If you prefer a more generous count, walk the full Camino Inglés from Ferrol. And if England has given you joy: the Finchale Camino Inglés in the north and Epworth to Lincoln in Lincolnshire work on the same principle.

Preparation & Practicalities

The best time is April to October. There is no elevation, but plenty of mud: the clay soils of Essex and Norfolk are heavy in winter, and the champing season only runs from March to October anyway. You navigate by Andy Bull's Trailblazer guide and its GPX files; the publisher recommends loading them into the Ordnance Survey app. Bull walked the whole route again in 2025/26 and updated accommodation, church opening times and individual routings – including a 14th bonus stage to Wells-next-the-Sea.

Accommodation must be booked ahead; there is no hostel network as in Spain. You sleep in pub rooms and B&Bs; an English specialty is champing, overnighting in redundant churches of the Churches Conservation Trust – within reach of the route are St Mary the Virgin in Stansted Mountfitchet, St Peter's in Hockwold cum Wilton near Thetford and St George's in Hindolveston. And it is perfectly legitimate to walk the route in sections: Karen Lawrence covered it at weekends between March 2023 and May 2024 and made a book of it.

For the stamps you need a pilgrim passport (credencial). It is issued by the Confraternity of Saint James; order it in good time, the CSJ posts only on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays. Around 40 churches with stamping points are listed in the guide, and the number is rising – for the Celtic Camino count you need two stamps a day. The easiest way to plan your stages is directly in the Camino Ninja app, where you put together your daily distances and book suitable accommodation at the same time.

What the Route Costs

England is not a cheap pilgrim country, and this route is no exception: there are no ten-euro hostels. Reckon on £70 to £110 a night (around 80 to 125 euros) for a pub room or B&B and a further £25 to £35 a day (around 30 to 40 euros) for food – experience values, not list prices. It gets cheaper with champing: £55 per adult per night Monday to Thursday (around 63 euros), £65 Friday to Sunday (around 75 euros), breakfast at selected sites £10; the church is yours alone for the night (as of September 2026).

The fixed costs are modest: Trailblazer guide with GPX files £17.99 (around 21 euros), credencial from the Confraternity of Saint James £6 (around 7 euros) for non-members, free for members. At the finish the Catholic national shrine runs its own pilgrim hotel, Elmham House: from £70 per person per night with breakfast (around 80 euros), with en-suite bathroom from £90 (around 104 euros). If you want to walk guided: Andy Bull leads multi-day pilgrimages through the Anglican shrine, three nights full board £239 (around 275 euros) plus transfer (all prices as of September 2026).

Getting There

You need to organize nothing for the start: St Magnus the Martyr lies around 150 meters from Monument tube station (Zone 1); from any London airport or main station you are there in under an hour – and can still walk the first hour on the day you arrive.

The return from Walsingham takes planning, because Little Walsingham has no railway station. The nearest hub is King's Lynn, the second Norwich; from both, buses run via Fakenham, which lies three kilometers off the route and is the public-transport hub of north Norfolk.

• Rail to London: hourly King's Lynn → London King's Cross, around 1 hr 35 min – National Rail
• Rail, alternative: half-hourly Norwich → London Liverpool Street, a good two hours
• Bus: First Coastliner 36 Walsingham ↔ Fakenham ↔ Wells-next-the-Sea – First Bus
• Bus: Lynx route 49 Fakenham ↔ King's Lynn, roughly every two hours Mon–Sat – Lynx
• Total journey time Walsingham → King's Lynn with change in Fakenham around 1 hr 15 min; taxi from King's Lynn around 45 minutes
• Coach: National Express serves King's Lynn towards Cambridge, Peterborough and London Victoria – National Express