Merchants and Pilgrims Way, King's Lynn to Ely

Merchants & Pilgrims Way — King's Lynn to Ely, 60 miles, 6-7 days

Three rivers, two ruined priories and two great churches. The route begins on the quays of King's Lynn, the Hanseatic port whose Custom House and Minster of St Margaret saw merchants and Walsingham pilgrims come ashore together, and follows the waterfront to where the Nar joins the Ouse.

The Nar is a chalk stream, a habitat rarer globally than rainforest, and the Victorian parson Augustus Jessopp called its valley "Norfolk's Holy Land". Walking it upstream through Setchey and the edge of Shouldham, you pass the magnificent 14th-century gatehouse that is what survives of Pentney Priory. Then Narborough, where a Victorian mill ground bones into fertiliser that were imported from either the battlefields and burial grounds of Europe or from 'nar'whals of the sea. Beyond lie West Acre and Castle Acre, Norman castle, Cluniac priory, and a named stage on the London-to-Walsingham Camino.

Turning south past South Acre's St George's Church, the way takes to the old droves, Petticoat Drove among them for Cockley Cley and Oxborough, where a half-ruined church stands beside moated Oxburgh Hall with its priest hole. Field paths lead to Stoke Ferry and the second river, the Wissey: down past the perpetually steaming sugar works at Wissington to Hilgay, then across to the Great Ouse, which runs level and wide to the Isle of Ely and the Ship of the Fens.

Almost all of it can be walked off-road. Ten miles a day suits a pilgrim's pace, leaving time for churches, songs and pauses.

Please note: accommodation is currently sparse between Stoke Ferry and Littleport, so plan that stretch ahead.

More Information

Stoke Ferry was the home of Kit Hesketh-Harvey (1957–2023), who devised this route and who bought and tended the village's redundant church of All Saints, writing in its old vestry. There is pilgrim accommodation in Kit’s old house, www.micklefields.co.uk and his church reopens for musical performances next year. We walk this route in his memory.