Celebrating our first year
Gifts to celebrate you joining a Hope Walking pilgrimage this year and Buen Camino for 2023
Peace and joy of the Christmas season to you dear Hope Walking Pilgrims
Thank you for choosing to journey with Hope Walking this year. It’s been a busy and fulfilling one since founding Hope Walking to offer walking holidays, modern-day pilgrimages for all spiritualities and walking-talking therapy for grief and loss with the valued assistance of Visit Kent’s EXPERIENCE team.
Since then we have hosted dozens of guests on our+ walks starting in January with short half-day pilgrimages to Canterbury Cathedral, partnering with our friends at the British Pilgrimage Trust.
Rather longer in May, with our first Via Francigena 20-mile challenge in May’s National Walking Week and again in September’s Kent Pilgrim Festival, when we offered our first more gentle six miles for women walking through grief and loss to Womenswold in the same week.
“What a great day I had on Saturday. Faye was a fantastic guide: enthusiastic , fun and full of really interesting information. A truly wonderful time that will long stay with me.”
LINDA“My thanks to you for a fabulous time last weekend. The walk was incredibly stimulating, the company just right and your wisdom, vulnerability and great sense of fun bound the whole two days together brilliantly.”
LOU
“I just wanted to say a big thank you for your professional and highly sympathetic and educational guidance on the Via Francigena. You were a mine of information and also the frequent stops were good for me as I have rather delicate knees and they were fine afterwards! Also for arranging the delicious lunch and history of the church at Womenswold, with opportunity to reflect and light a candle.”
JULIA
Partnerships
Autumn saw us partner with global travel company Walking Women to offer their very first pilgrimages with the launch of our first two-night pilgrimage in 4* style along The Way of St Augustine.
Our New Year walks are coming online this week starting mid-January, so do join us again if you can. Our first two are in Kent and we have more coming up to Peterborough Cathedral in February and March, then Yorkshire and Lindisfarne. Simply drop us an email to register interest in any of these.
Coming soon
14 January 2023: Pilgrims’ Way 9 miles White Cliffs Camino from Folkestone to Dover supporting the Jo Cox big Winter Walk
15 January 2023: 6 miles from Shepherdswell to Womenswold return - women’s remembering and loss walk
4-6 February 2023: 20 miles Way of St Augustine
Giving back
As a social purpose company, we always donate a tenth of our profits and time to good causes.
I am a trustee of life-changing national anti-trafficking charity Causeway, so our first charitable donation in your name this Christmas has included transforming a garden at one of our city safe houses.
Our second donation this Christmas is taking eco cook bags out to Lesotho, South Africa in January with our friend and Africa’s Gift charity founder, Dr. Ken Dunn MBE.
This is a community development visit I had planned three years ago, but sadly my father died the day before I was due to fly. (Learn more)
Now I will be distributing more cloth slow cookers to save a woman or child who dies every 20 seconds of inhaling smoke from the fires they cook on. If you would like to donate or gift one for Christmas, Mother’s Day, or a birthday… we can send you a lovely gift certificate.
Discover more about the eco cook bags made by women in Lesotho’s new shared-wealth company Eternal Flame Worldwide.
Finally, old mobile phones and laptops are gold dust in this part of Africa, so if you or your business has any cleared ones you no longer need, I would be delighted to put them in the hands of some very grateful people in your name.
Every good wish for a restoring, peaceful Christmas and a new year filled with moments of joy and fresh adventures.
As we say on pilgrimage, ‘Buen Camino’- good journey.
Faye
