Sponsored Walk on Saturday 30th April

The map above was produced by using the bike hike website.
It shows in high level detail where the team will be walking on Saturday. The surprising thing is that it says the route is just over 40 miles rather than the 42 miles that Father Stuart measured when he did the route last year. However, in the grand scheme of things, I guess 2 miles isn't much and maybe my guesstimation on the route when using this tool has produced the difference. However, on Saturday our son, James, is going to be one of the support drivers and he will be guest blogging on this blog to report on how we get on during the walk as an hour by hour report (almost!) and I'll get him to report what John's Satmap device says our mileage is at each meeting point.

The progress we aught to make is listed below:

Departing: All Saints Church, Edmonton
4am

Meeting Point 1: Pindar Car Park, Cheshunt Station
7.75 miles total
Arriving around 6.15am
Departing at 6.25am

Meeting Point 2: Dobbs Weir Cafe
12.25 miles total
Arriving around 7.45am (We will be visiting the cafe.....)
Departing at 8.15am

Meeting Point 3: The Moorhen Pub, Burnt Mill Lane, Harlow
17.75 miles
Arriving around 9.55am (.... but we definitely won't be visiting the pub)
Departing at 10.05am

Meeting Point 4: Pig Lane, Bishop's Stortford
25.5 miles
Arriving around 12.30pm
Departing at 12.50pm

Meeting Point 5: The Green, Bentfield Green
31 miles
Arriving around 2.35pm
Departing at 2.50pm

Meeting Point 6: Rickling Parish Church, Rickling
35.5 miles
Arriving around 4pm
Departing at 4.15pm

Final: St Mary's Church, Saffron Walden
42 miles total
Arriving around 6.30pm

The team walking is 15 people strong and, although personally it has been an enormous personal challenge to see if I can get fit enough to walk it, the real aim of the walk is to raise funds to restore the Tower of All Saints Church in Edmonton, North London.

This Grade II listed building was put on English Heritage's At Risk register last year and it requires £500,000 worth of restoration. As this year is the Church's 875th Anniversary, it seems appropriate to have a Pilgrimmage this year both to celebrate the 875 years of Christian witness at the Church and to raise money to preserve the building.

But why walk to Saffron Walden? Well, 1136 was the year that the Church first appeared in official records (and so a Church has actually been here a lot longer but we use 1136 as the 'start' year). In 1136, the living from our Church was given to the newly formed monastery at Saffron Walden; hence our walk to Saffron Walden!

In actual fact, the monastery no longer exists, having been swept away with Henry VIII's Reformation but apparently the grounds of the monastery are where the current Audley End House is to be found.

So, if anyone would like to sponsor John and myself, you can do so by visiiting our Charity Giving Webpage. You can, of course, encourage the whole team by sponsoring the whole team at the whole team's Charity Giving Webpage.

Any donation, however small, would be very gratefully received. In the words of some supermarket giant or other ..... Every Little Helps :)

Thank you :)