Having reviewed the successful conclusion of the Heart of England pilgrimage in August, September’s AGM looked forward to our plans for 2025, the 50th anniversary of the first Arundel and Brighton Diocesan Walking Pilgrimage.
Summer Pilgrimage
Our original aspiration had been to repeat 1975’s “beating the bounds” but that proved too long and after a series of iterations we adopted a proposal for a route which visits each of the Moderated Parishes in the A&B diocese. This proved something of a mathematical optimisation challenge, getting to all 11 parishes with our regular constraints of time and distance, but we have a viable route, one which includes a number of places never or rarely visited before by the pilgrims.
Our vision for 2025 is that people from the local communities will join us as day pilgrims in their own areas, for as far as they wish or feel able.
Although the route is based around our Catholic diocese, we have not forgotten our ecumenical credentials and, as we always do, we will be involving and visiting church communities of all denominations as we progress through Surrey and Sussex.
The proposed route (subject to finding suitable accommodation) is shown in the table below. Moderated parish names are shown in square brackets (see https://www.abdiocese.org.uk/diocese/pastoral-plan)
| Date | From | To |
| Sat 9 Aug 25 | Horley [Crawley] | Reigate |
| Sun 10 Aug 25 | Reigate [Redhill] | Epsom |
| Mon 11 Aug 25 | Epsom [Epsom] | Weybridge |
| Tue 12 Aug 25 | Weybridge [Weybridge] | Frimley |
| Wed 13 Aug 25 | Frimley [Woking] | Farnham |
| Thu 14 Aug 25 | Rest Day | Farnham |
| Fri 15 Aug 25 | Farnham [Guildford] | Haslemere |
| Sat 16 Aug 25 | Haslemere [Guildford] | Petworth |
| Sun 17 Aug 25 | Petworth [Cathedral] | Arundel |
| Mon 18 Aug 25 | Arundel [Cathedral] | Worthing |
| Tue 19 Aug 25 | Rest Day | Worthing |
| Wed 20 Aug 25 | Worthing [Worthing] | Brighton |
| Thu 21 Aug 25 | Brighton [Brighton & Hove] | Seaford |
| Fri 22 Aug 25 | Seaford [Lewes] | Eastbourne |
| Sat 23 Aug 25 | Celebration Day | Eastbourne |
| Sun 24 Aug 25 | Eastbourne [Eastbourne & St Leonards] | Home |
Any plan is a compromise, and we can’t visit every corner of the Diocese; the proposed route is half in Surrey and half in Sussex and includes the far north of the Diocese where we’ve rarely ventured before.
April Reunion
We also decided that there should be an extraordinary reunion (on a date around 31st March, the 50th anniversary of the start of our first pilgrimage). Just a placeholder at present – anyone who could host such a reunion please make contact!