The Pilgrims’ Way starts in Winchester and Southwark before converging at Otford.

Both starting points have a St Valentine resonance.

On the edge of Winchester the PW passes through the remains of Hyde Abbey. Here one of the treasured relics was the head of St Valentine which had been given by Canute’s Queen Emma, mother of Edward the Confessor.

The community observed a Valentine octave which meant that the celebrations continued for just over a week .

Hyde Abbey’s seal depicted St Valentine holding his head.

[The relic was lost at the Reformation when the monastery was dissolved. There may have been three Valentines so although San Anton in Madrid displays a ‘skull and bones of St Valentine’ and Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome has a head there is no confirmed connection with Winchester.]

This highlighting of Valentine in Winchester was long before he became associated with love or romance.

Those responsible for that connection and triggering today’s popularity are to be found in Southwark.

Southwark Cathedral ‘s most splendid tomb belongs to John Gower.

His Ballades ‘Saint Valentin l’amour et la nature’ and ‘Saint Valentin, plus qe null Emperour’, written about 1390, make him one of the first to suggest Valentine had a connection with love.

This was nine years after his friend Geoffrey Chaucer is writing in his Parliament of Foules ‘…this was on Seynt Valentyne’s day/Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate’.

St Valentine, patron of engaged couples and young people, joins St Christopher and St James in being patron of travellers.