How has the weather been this month on your walk to Canterbury?

St Bartholomew’s Day is Saturday 24 August which is forty days after St Swithun’s Day.

An old saying claims that if it rains on 15 July it will rain for 40 days but if it’s fine it will be dry for forty days.

You will find a St Bartholomew’s church at Hyde Abbey as the Pilgrims’ Way leaves Winchester and at Otford in Kent where the two branches of the Pilgrims’ Way come together.

St Bartholomew is one of the Apostles and his relics are on an island in Rome’s River Tiber. An arm was for a long time at Canterbury Cathedral having been given by Queen Emma whose own remains are in one of the newly restored chests in Winchester Cathedral.