Today it rained.

Continuously.

Nearly all day.

But it was only a very short walk through the rain to St Mary's Church for today's co-celebrated eucharist.

For the penitential rite, the Gamble brothers and Kevin acted the Tale of Mike and Jonny (a revised version of the story of Cain and Abel). In today's story, Jonny (Abel) isn't murdered, but gets a black eye from his brother after Dad (Kevin) prefers Jonny's gift of a brand new car over Mike's of a model car. Mike realises his has been unfair to his brother and seeks forgiveness. The drama was narrated and directed by Ant.

As usual, the service included much enthusiastic music making from all. Several Taizé items were included in honour of Brother Roger, the leader of the Taizé community, who was brutally murdered in front of his congregation earlier this week.

Saint Edith, depicted on this banner in the church, was, apparently born in Kemsing. Father David told us that Saint Edith was able to predict when there would be a good flow of water from the local springs. He spoke of the significance of water, how it is necessary for life and how it can also destroy life, for example the Asian tsunami. On a less significant scale, as walking pilgrims we love water to drink, but generally are not so happy when it falls in large quantities from the sky, as today.

And here we are, a little later, sheltering from falling liquid, while filling ourselves with it.

The front markers had an unfair advantage in their attempts to outwit the poor back markers who have to follow on behind us all taking down our (soggy) arrows. A BT phone engineer was happy to help put up the higher of these two.

“You're wet and feeling chilled. A train would be nice and warm and take you quickly to your destination” - Get behind me, Satan.

At St Bartholomew's, Otford, our second church of the day, Tineke related today's theme of generosity to the plight of Eastern European countries hoping to join the European Union. She asked us to consider that we should be generous in extending membership to them and asked that we think prayerfully about these issues at this pivotal time in the life of the EU.

We set off through the rain once more.

But only for a quarter of a mile to Trinity Catholic church.

Maureen spoke of the generosity shown to her during her travels in the Far East, and how families would provide food, drink and hospitality to complete strangers without question. She suggested that the world would be a much better place if this was a more common practice.

An example of generosity was the drinks and biscuits provided for us by the parish to sustain us on our way.

Even without the rain, we had been warned that today's walking would be challenging. These challenges were a series of hills.

Our route crossed the congested M25 and reminded us of the rat race that is still going on in normal life. We may have been wet and with aching limbs, but we were happy.

At our pub stop we were joined by John and Lesley and kids.

Backmarking in this weather is a horrible job and the backmarkers received resounding applause on their arrival at the pub. Shown here is a dripping wet Howard.

Today's front-marking team were Terry, Tony, Sarah and Peter, here setting off from the pub.

Our next church, St Katharine's, Knockholt, was only a mile from the pub. Several of their parishioners had walked with us for part of the day and because of the weather, invited us to eat our rolls in the church and kindly provided us with tea and coffee. Today we were blessed with the generosity of others.

Attempts were also made to dry out soggy arrows.

Francis led our prayers and gave us his thoughts on today's theme.

Okay, it didn't really rain all day. Eventually, by late afternoon, the sky began to brighten, the rain lessened and eventually stopped.

But, there were still those hills to climb.

Pilgrims, though, take it all in their stride and end the day smiling.

This evening we are in a Catholic Church hall. It doesn't have showers, but does have a different facility we love: a bar.