THE JOHN SCHORNE PEREGRINATION - 27 MILES by Michael Mooney,

ABOUT THE CHALLENGE -

This walk of some 27 miles takes a circular route around the gently rolling, lush countryside of mid- Buckinghamshire, country which John Schorne would have known well and from which many pilgrims to his well and shrine would have come.

Despite its proximity to the County town of Aylesbury and to the new city of Milton Keynes this is an area which has a remote feeling to it. It is studded with villages and hamlets of ancient churches and thatched houses which seem to give the impression that nothing much has happened in a couple of hundred years.

This impression is reinforced by the number of ridge and furrow fields
encountered, ridge and furrow being the "fossilised" landscape remains of medieval ox ploughing.

Apart from visiting North Marston (where Schorne was rector and where his holy well may still be visited) the walk passes -

*  the finest surviving house built by England's greatest architect, Sir Christopher Wren.

* the house occupied during World War 2 by Czech intelligence officers who planned the assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich, the Nazi dictator of occupied Czechoslovakia.

* a Civil War siege site- you can still see the musket ball holes made by Cromwell's troops in the church door!

* the historic house in which Florence Nightingale spent much of her later life.

* the tallest windmill in Buckinghamshire.

* the church where the rector was the father of the great Shakespearean actor Laurence [Lord] Olivier.

A5 Guide. Wrapped in a plastic cover.

Special embroidered cloth badge - "the man who captured the devil in a boot", and signed certificate, for successful walkers.

Walkers added to my Walkers Roll of Honour page.