Eighty miles, eleven churches and one blister, by Daniel Robshaw

An original contemporary newspaper travel article.

Nobody I met on the Wellspring Way was walking for quite the same reason. There was a retired nurse from Swansea walking in memory of her husband, two students who wanted cheap exercise, and a vicar who admitted he mainly came for the cream teas. I was there because my doctor had told me, rather sternly, to spend less time at my desk.

The route runs for eighty miles along the north coast, linking eleven small churches and chapels, some of them more than a thousand years old. Most walkers take six days. At each church you stamp a small cardboard passport with an ink stamp kept in a box by the door, and by the end mine was a crowded patchwork of crosses, fish and seabirds.

The walking is not hard, but it is relentless. The path climbs in and out of every cove, and on the third day I counted fourteen stiles before lunch. I developed a blister the size of a coin on my left heel and limped through the afternoon in a pair of borrowed sandals.

Luckily, I did not have to carry much. A local firm moves walkers’ bags between guesthouses for £15 a day, so I set off each morning with nothing heavier than a water bottle and a sandwich.

The path ends at a small stone well where, according to tradition, walkers drink a mouthful of water and make a wish. I am not religious, and I am not sure what I wished for. But I walked back to the bus stop more slowly than I have walked anywhere in years, and I did not look at my phone once.

(a) How many churches and chapels does the route link? (b) Why was the writer walking the route? (c) Give one thing that walkers traditionally do when they reach the well.