A solitary walk from the ruin of Melrose Abbey in Scotland to Lindisfarne, passing through enchanted woods and beautiful hills and moorlands, produced blisters, sunburn and aching muscles – and led to the discovery that pilgrimage turns our body into a prayer

There are pilgrimages and pilgrimages – some on foot and others by plane or bus, some in company and others alone – but a recent walk to Lindisfarne, which was solitary, testing and beautiful, filled me with an extraordinary and unexpected sense of excitement. Lindisfarne is a beautiful, spiritual spot, a “thin place”, where heaven and earth seem almost to meet.

The Lindisfarne pilgrimage is well mapped out and is called St Cuthbert’s Way, beginning in Scotland at the ruin of Melrose Abbey, close to the site of Cuthbert’s first monastery, and passing through woods, hills and moorlands for 62 miles until it reaches the coast just south of the border.

The priory where Cuthbert lived on Holy Island (Lindisfarne’s alternative name) was founded in AD 635 and Cuthbert was sent there as prior after the Synod of Whitby in AD 664. He later became a hermit on a nearby island, and after that a bishop.