Reading Abbey 1-Day Pilgrimage – 5 miles – 1 day – Sonning to Reading Abbey (via Shrine of Caversham). The pilgrimage along the River Thames to Our Lady of Caversham and then onto Reading Abbey was a popular route for the whole of medieval society – from kings, queens and nobles, to freemen and peasants. This route starts at Sonning, once the site of an Anglo-Saxon Cathedral with a memorial to the 10th-century Bishops who lived and prayed there. At Caversham, there is the confluence of the Thames and the Kennett, one of Britain’s purest chalk streams, and it has four pilgrim sites to visit- St Ann’s Church, the shrine of Our Lady, St Ann’s Holy Well and St Peter’s Church. You finish at Reading Abbey ruins, an Abbey which would have cost £500 million  in the equivalent money of 1121, built by Henry I, who may be buried there (see readingabbeyquarter.org.uk).

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