The Extra Mile: A 21st Century Pilgrimage Book

Peter Stamford has been the editor of the Catholic Herald. One day on a day trip to Walsingham his curious son asked him what the story was about why people visited the monuments and churches. His ignorance set him off on a quest to answer the questions he also had as a boy about the places up and down the UK that his mum and dad used to 'go out for a run' too. Focusing on the lost virtue of spiritual silence in a modern world that seeks to fill every space, this very special travel book looks at the journey into the past life of many of the UK's holy sites of pilgrimage and why they were of special significance. Particular gems are the visit to Lindisfarne by carrying the cross on Good Friday over 2 miles of mud flats at low tide and the visit with the druids to learn the history of Stonehenge and the annual pilgrimage at the summer equinox. Stamford seeks to excite the desire to visit the interesting places on our coastal fringes, as well as the seeking of the spiritual beauty of these intriguing places by explaining the reasons why they got their names, e.g the sipper chapel at Walsingham, and the incredible mystery of how stone that can only have been mined in Wales was able to appear in Salisbury before the advent of any form of transport including a wheel. How on earth did they do it, and why? Read More