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Pilgrims return to island 50 years after first trek

Jo LonsdaleNorth East and Cumbria
Northern Cross A black-and-white photograph of 19 young people standing around a wooden cross, four of them appear to be standing on something as they are higher than the others. To the right you can see the outline of Holy Island Northern Cross
The first Northern Cross pilgrimage took place in 1976

Half a century ago, a group of friends who had all completed student pilgrimages gathered together with maps and open minds to find a new route. They settled upon Lindisfarne, an island steeped in Christianity off the Northumberland coast, and the Northern Cross was born.

To mark the 50th anniversary of that first journey, some of the original group will once again walk barefoot across its vast tidal sands on Good Friday.

"We did the Student Cross [pilgrimage] to Wolsingham, which was set up after the war, but once we'd graduated we weren't students any more," one of the group, Tim Feline, says.

"We thought 'right, we're going to carry on, we're going to build another pilgrimage.'"

The group considered places like Iona, Canterbury and Brownsea Island before settling on Holy Island, which was home to St Cuthbert and where the world famous Lindisfarne Gospels were created.

"We wanted to experience some of the beauty of northern landscapes," adds Ken Williams, another of that founding group.

Northern Cross A group of walkers head towards a stretch of Hadrian's Wall Northern Cross
The first Northern Cross pilgrims walked along roads but later they used footpaths including sections of Hadrian's Wall

A sub-group was formed to establish links with parishes along the route they had chosen, which would begin in Penrith, Cumbria.

As was the tradition with Student Cross, the group decided to carry wooden crucifixes "which was OK until we had a 23-mile (37km) leg going up and down," Tim Feline chuckles.

"The first couple of days it poured with rain. 'What have we done', we thought," his wife Jacquie Feline says.

One of the principles was that it was affordable and open to people of all faiths and none, so the group usually slept on the floors of villages or church halls.

Jacqui Feline A snapshot of about 30 people all barefoot carrying crosses with their trouser legs rolled up walking on wet dark sand Jacqui Feline
The Northern Cross pilgrims walk barefoot across the sand to Holy Island

Williams says one of their early concerns was making sure they had a pub lunch stop. In fact, "they went out of their way" for one.

"In the old days we walked along roads, in the 1970s you could, but eventually we moved to footpaths which we never would have done at the start."

Maggie Mason, 72 and from Kendal, Cumbria, walked for the first time in 1977 and has completed many more since.

Although Easter weekend on Holy Island was always "a real high", she also remembers some tough times walking through snow storms and sleeping on stone floors when she could be "a bit grumpy" if someone was snoring.

"I have seen a fellow walker sink waist deep into a bog," she says.

"I have also had hypothermia after crossing the sand because I was the back marker and one person was going very slowly."

A group of people are sitting round a table praying and in the corner there is a cross against the wall.
Although prayers and reflection are part of every day, Northern Cross is open to people of all faiths and none

One thing they all remember is the kindness and generosity they encountered.

"People would arrive with cakes and biscuits or they would say 'come into the farmhouse, we have one or two things' and there would be this enormous spread," Tim Feline says.

Some, like Helen Holmes in Sharperton, Northumberland, host year after year.

"It's part of my Easter too," she says, taking an enormous piece of salmon out of the oven as she prepares for the arrival of more than a dozen hungry walkers.

"They're just so remarkable, to give up a week to do that, it's not easy at all you know," she adds.

Helen Holmes is a woman in her 60s or 70s, wearing jeans and a white shirt and standing by a trough of daffodils
Helen Holmes has provided lunch for pilgrims for more than 20 years

As time went on, other legs were added from other parts of northern England and Scotland, among them Newcastle, Melrose, Lanark, Hexham, Carlisle, Edinburgh and a children's leg from Haddington.

At its peak, 100 people walked across the sand on Good Friday guided by the poles of the Pilgrim's Way, the ancient route to the island.

Pete Coppola A small girl wearing a pink jacket and with long brown hair is holding a cross and looking up at it. Next to her is a man who is also holding the cross. They are standing at the coast with the sea behind themPete Coppola
For many years there was a children's leg which began in Haddington in Scotland

Some people come year after year, others do it just once.

Among the newcomers in 2026 is 30-year-old Theo Carpenter, from Newcastle, who is walking with his mum Anne Carpenter.

Although it is his first time, his grandmother completed it on many occasions.

"She had three great loves in her life, the Queen, pilgrimages and God and her family, of course, he says.

"I wanted to do this because of her and because Lindisfarne is so beautiful".

A cheerful looking man with a grey beard and hair is standing by a gate. Three other people are visible behind, one has a cross on his shoulder. It is very muddy
Pete Coppola, in the front of the image, first completed a Northern Cross Pilgrimage in 1979 and he still walks every year

Despite a resurgence in interest in pilgrimages, the numbers taking part in Northern Cross have dwindled in recent years, but one constant has been Peter Coppola who first took part in 1979 as a 20-year-old on a new route from Edinburgh and who still walks every year.

"There is such a magic to being on Lindisfarne at Easter, I spent one year in my parish down in Kent and it just wasn't the same."

"Am I going to keep going?

"The answer is yes, I don't know how many more years I've got in me, but I'm not stopping any time soon."

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