The ambition of the Walk of Wisdom is a pilgrimage route that goes all over the world: how could it be otherwise for a route that is based on the idea that everyone is part of the same earth. But the world is quite large, so we start with a pioneer route of about 136 kilometers to develop the identity of the route along with distinctive pilgrimage rituals.

Candidate Pioneer Route

We had a candidate pioneer route: the Streekpad Nijmegen around – indeed – Nijmegen. It is a diverse route with floodplains, meadows, hills, a piece of foreign country (Kranenburg, Germany) and many cultural-historical starting points. Nijmegen is also known as a city where sustainability matters and that is one of the core values of the Walk of Walk of Wisdom.  

It is also nice that the city has a history of spirituality due to the presence of a.o. a pilgrim hospital in the Middle Ages and the many monastic orders in the 20th century whose monks studied at the former Catholic University of Nijmegen. It is also the city of the famous brothers of Limburg who 600 years ago made famous books of hours commissioned by rich noblemen – a book on which we will vary with the Seasons of Life: A Contemporary Book  of Hours and Pilgrims(more). 

Owner of Wandelnet: informal permission

But now the news: the Wandelnet foundation in Utrecht manages the route and its route committee has informally informed us that we want to Regional Path Nijmegen as a pioneer path for the Walk of Wisdom. They send another official confirmation. We’ll wait for this one for a while, but what we heard over the phone sounded good: even if we don’t have the money to take over the route yet, we can use it.

If the route starts running and our foundation receives income from friend contributions, we can start talking about a so-called ‘transition’ from Regional Path to Pilgrim Route. 

The way is clear

The approval of the Wandelnet foundation saves us a lot of time: there are already many routes in the Netherlands and it takes years before you have permission from landowners to walk on their property. Now we are assured of that approval – the preliminary work has already been done by Wandelnet – and we are not getting in anyone’s way with our pilgrimage route. 

Because the Walk of Wisdom does not yet have any money, we can also get started to develop the route thanks to the temporary free permission. And that’s good news.