On my journey between Leeds and Norwich today I was held up in traffic for well over an hour near Kings Lynn due to the Sandringham Flower Festival and the presence there of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall. They had the good sense to avoid the crowds and arrive by helicopter.

The Church of Saint James the Great, Castle Acre, Norfolk

I’d planned to break my journey with lunch at the Churchgate Tea Rooms in Castle Acre and then pay a visit to the Cluniac Priory and, if time permitted, to the Castle. Instead I just had my lunch and took a look around the church.

Bless me, if today isn’t the patronal feast of Saint James and there in the church (being prepared for this evening’s Sung Eucharist in the presence of the Bishop of Lynn) were displays relating to The Camino de Santiago de Compostela or The Way of Saint James.

I have come across this path, or perhaps I should say these paths, many, many miles away from their single destination – Santiago de Compostela in Spain – in Alsace , in Geneva and in Hautrive in the Jura region of Switzerland.

In Alsace last month

In the Jura Region in 2008

In Geneva earlier this month

And on my latest walk in the Yorkshire Dales last week a fellow member of The Weekday Wanderers who had just returned from a three week cycling pilgrimage beginning in southwest France was telling me all about this fantastic experience.