Okay, fine, the last posts explain what a LEJOG is, but why do it?

A goodly number of the people do this trek to raise funds for a charity. Those are the people who post and boost videos during their trip. LEJOGers who aren’t trying to reach more potential donors don’t have the same need to publicize their efforts. But there are other reasons to walk 1,000 miles.

Others might be walking to recover their physical or mental health. Others might be re-visiting places they lived earlier on. Maybe they’re having an adventure between university and work. Perhaps they are stretching their horizons after retirement. Or they could just be visiting sites of historical interest, something else that Britain has a bounty of.

Then there are people who come at this with a personal, fun twist (beyond choosing a ‘different’ route). For them it’s a lark. Maybe they wear a costume. Or carry a musical instrument. Or try to sample a different local brew every day, or something like that.

My own personal twist is that I am making this 1,000 mile walk a pilgrimage.

For me, this is another reason to walk the cycle route rather than walking mostly through wilder places. That is, there are more churches in towns and villages than up mountaintops and in lonely moors.

And I’m drawn to old churches, especially ones still serving as places for common worship, their original purpose. British churches can commonly be multiple hundreds of years old, whereas in the US where it’s pretty rare to find a church building from the 1600s or before. The extreme example is St. Martin’s Church in Canterbury, Kent (southeast England, for you North Americans). It was built before 597 and is still in use as a church today. That’s roughly 1,000 years before Europeans were settling in America. By comparison, the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine, in Florida — the oldest US church building in continuous use — wasn’t established until 1565.

So I’m hoping to see, visit, and pray in places where Christians have worshiped for a very long time. The Christian Church is widespread geographically and chronologically. My pilgrimage across the United Kingdom will put me in closer touch with this Church and with the Lord of the Church. That’s my answer to why I want to walk this walk.