A PILGRIMAGE route will be launched by the Church of Scotland tomorrow, 500 years after it was last travelled by thousands of worshippers.

The 72-mile Forth to Farne Way will take modern-day pilgrims along pathways and through places linked to Christianity’s earliest days in Scotland.

Several ancient Celtic saints are associated with sites along the route, including St Baldred, St Cuthbert, St Aidan and St Ebba.

The route from North Berwick to Lindisfarne will be launched in Whitekirk, East Lothian, one of its many locations that attracted thousands of pilgrims in the late Middle Ages. The first group will then walk a section of the route to North Berwick.

The pilgrimage tradition was lost after the Reformation in the 16th century, when people rebelled against selling pardons for sins and making money from sacred objects like pieces of saints’ clothing, locks of hair or bones.

The Rev Joanne Evans-Boiten, minister of Athelstaneford, Whitekirk and Tyninghame, who initiated the effort to develop the new route, said: “Thousands of people came to Whitekirk because of a very famous holy well. That is why we have such a large church in such a small place.

“The story is that Agnes, Countess of Dunbar, had sustained injuries defending Dunbar Castle when it was under siege. She visited a hermit near Whitekirk and he told her to go to the holy well and drink the water.”