After the celebration of the Eucharist in St George‘s chapel, eighteen of us set out in a beautiful new coach for the annual Easter pilgrimage, stopping at St Alban‘s, West Leigh to pick up twenty six members of the church congregation. Then off to Walsingham.
The morning was uneventful, the time being spent renewing old friendships. After stopping at South Mimms service station for a welcome break, we set off again at approximately 1.pm for what we naively thought was the second leg of a straight forward journey to Walsingham. This was my first pilgrimage and I was so enjoying the feeling of expectation of an unusual weekend; when a terrible smell invaded the coach - diesel fumes! We were travelling on the A1M, it took a few minutes for the driver to find somewhere to stop the coach, eventually pulling up on the hard shoulder of a slip road at a junction. This time the fumes were making people feel sick and beginning to worry about a fire risk. Not to worry though, as we all piled out and moved a little way from the coach, no one was hurt and no fire started. Those who were agile enough, including Ruby, climbed to the top of the embankment to get away from the smell. In the meantime the driver set to work to contact his firm and also the coachmakers.
Three hours later we were still there, although did we but know help was at hand in the form of ladies who had passed the time by going for a walk. They were spotted by motorway police in a patrol car! Then things got moving as, of course, it is an offence to stay by the roadside on a motorway because of the danger. First of all they expected to be able to arrange a temporary repair of the broken fuel line so that they could escort us to a garage and arrange for us to continue in another coach. Sorry friends that is not going to work. How about a tow for the coach? Not this time: there didn‘t appear to be any way that the truck could hitch to the front of the coach. Eventually a replacement coach arrived and we were assured it would take us on part of the way, where a further coach would continue for the rest of the journey. No such luck! After a journey of about fifteen minutes to the South we arrived back at the point we had left six hours earlier. I don‘t think that any of us could quite believe it; and by this time Yvonne was looking very fraught as if all of this was her fault. She had spent a lot of time trying to let the Shrine Management know what was going on and to make sure that we would not be locked out for the night. But were we downhearted? Yes of course we were, but nobody complained.
After supper at the service station we boarded another coach for the rest of the journey. This seemed to go very well until we were on the road near Newmarket, when lo and behold, red tail lights appeared in front of us stretching into the distance. We couldn‘t quite believe it as it then it took one hour to travel approximately one mile, eventually we reached Walsingham at around midnight. How good it was then to see the lights in the Shrine and have Father Martin Warner, Jeremy and Keith waiting for us. What a warm welcome they gave us and how nice to be able to make our first visit to the Holy House before being shown to our rooms.
As this was my first visit to Walsingham, I hadn‘t known what to expect, but I wasn‘t prepared for the overwhelming sense of peace in the whole Shrine area. It even seemed to pervade the room. Then two days of being with friends, walking, laughing together and above all joining together in worship, I now know what I have been missing all these years. I suppose that there are sites, as at Walsingham, where Christians have worshipped for hundreds of years, that God does put His special blessing on these places.
Home again on Sunday evening, although unfortunately missing one of our pilgrims, as Sue Andrews and Nicky had had to arrange for a taxi home on Sunday morning as the exhaustion of Friday had taken its toll on Sue and she was in no fit state to endure a further long coach journey. She tells me, that she began to feel a little better by midweek and that she was able to visit the Shrine on her own on the Saturday afternoon to experience some of the blessing that the rest of us enjoyed in such full measure.
written by Winifred Mancz
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