Once Britain’s most senior police officer, he was forced out of his job by Boris Johnson. But, as he and his wife tell Peter Stanford, a shared faith has sustained them throughout their most difficult moments

The word “pilgrimage” has many meanings, especially in modern parlance – anything from a walking holiday to the search for physical, mental or spiritual healing. Felicity Blair is clear that the 13-day trek that she has just completed with her husband, Ian, through rainstorms, fields full of combine harvesters and ancient chapels along Chaucer’s Pilgrims’ Way from Winchester to Canterbury was “very much a pilgrimage rather than a hike, with the rhythm of the walking opening me up to everything”.

She speaks with the authority of a veteran of the 140-mile “Portuguese Camino” from Porto to Santiago de Compostela. But this latest pilgrimage – “we don’t walk very fast, let me tell you” – added another ingredient to the mix: a link to Blessed John Henry Newman.