NEW PILGRIM ROUTE

A couple in their 80s walked a 150-mile pilgrimage walk they have developed in honour of the founder and patron saint of Glasgow.

Bill and Christine Jack have mapped out an off-road route that St Kentigern, also known as St Mungo, would have likely travelled between Dumfries and Galloway and the city in the 6th century.

They set off on the inaugural journey from Annan, close to the missionary’s seat at Hoddom, on Friday October 9 and hoped to complete the route in 10 days.

The route passes Moffat, Peebles, Biggar, Lanark and Bothwell, finishing at Glasgow Cathedral where the missionary’s burial crypt is located.

It took the couple, from Bothwell in South Lanarkshire, who are 82 and 81 respectively and have seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren, about four years to create the route. It has been plotted with marker posts adorned with the Kentigern Way logo, a salmon.

Dr Jack said: “The idea for the walk originated about four years ago from a chance remark by the Rev Jim Gibson who was our minister at Bothwell Parish Church at the time.

“He had returned from a holiday with parishioners, walking part of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in Spain and he suggested it would be possible to create a pilgrim route along the Clyde Valley to Glasgow Cathedral.

“This fired our imagination and we started researching the life of Kentigern/ Mungo and established the connection with Hoddom.”