England’s Nazareth welcomes groups from the Tamil and Filipino communities, Irish Travellers and the Union of Catholic Mothers to Anglicans, Orthodox, Hindus (who also revere the Virgin Mary), and even the odd Quaker

The Norfolk landscape changes as you near England’s Nazareth ­– the ­village of Little Walsingham and its shrines. Driving north from the Waveney water meadows and the town I grew up in, the landscape yielded first to wide East Anglian fields, tractors chugging along narrow lanes. Then the hedges closed in again as we drove down into the Stiffkey river valley. The hedgerows were bursting with blackthorn blossom and cock and hen pheasants ambled on to the narrow roads, the lucky ones making it safely back on to the verges.

My parents used to welcome pilgrims to our house for dinner as they broke their journey about two days’ walking pace from Walsingham. They would park the heavy wooden cross they carried in the local Anglican church, lay out their simple bedding and eat with us: footsore, cheerful, an eye on the final push of pilgrimage.

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