It was a long Good Friday, tiring but uplifting, on a spring pilgimage through God's own country.

UP in Swaledale, which many with good cause might consider God's country, the only church and the only consecrated ground was for several hundred years until 1580 at Grinton, just below Reeth.

If someone were to be buried, therefore, the body had to be carried up and over the hills, an all-weather expedition which - with suitable breaks for lamentation and liquid refreshment - could take up to four days. One way and another, a pretty serious undertaking.

It became known as the Corpse Way, 12.5 miles from the head of the dale at Keld and since 1999 - except for years with foot-and-mouth in them - the path of a Good Friday pilgrimage for Swaledale's united churches.

Before that time, the 12 o'clock service at St Andrew's, Grinton, might have attracted two or three watchful souls. Last Friday around 120 took some part. "If something feels good, it can very quickly become a tradition," said the Rev Gillian Bobbett, the dale's United Reformed Church minister.

The column, back-packed and big booted for the occasion, set out alongside them.

We began at 9am with a short service at Keld URC, the first church there built in 1791 by Edward Stillman who walked to London on a funding mission, claimed sixpence expenses for the journey and ministered to Keld for 48 years.

Tim Tunley, Swaledale's vicar, announced that this year there would be no two-way radios. "You're going to have to talk to one another," he added.

Mr Tunley, who claims to look younger than he is, is also a keen cyclist who'd planned in Lent to give up both alcohol and driving around his huge and hilly parish.

The first achieved ("apart from an accidental glass of wine in France"), he had to abandon the second because of a trapped nerve in his neck.

Keld, delightful on a God's in his heaven sort of morning, also has a holiday centre run by the URC, a poignant little war memorial built into a dry stone wall and a square-set wayside house that until around 1950 was a pub called the Cat Hole which enjoyed (it is said) a rather colourful reputation.

It was then bought by a strict Methodist, one of the evangelising Aldersons, whose first act was to apply for the building to be delicensed.

From the village there's a sharp climb up Kisdon Hill, the sort of steep and rugged pathway which Mrs Willis probably had in mind when writing Father Hear the Prayer We Offer. Atop it we said the first of 14 Stations of the Cross - each a Bible reading and a text from Prayers of Life, written by the French pastor Michel Quoist.

Someone also breathlessly recalled Henry Ford's dictum that exercise is bunk, but since old Ford was a jumped-up car salesman, he would have said that, wouldn't he?

Many carried ski poles, said to be wonderful for going down hill but lending an effect whilst walking of Douglas Bader reaching for the sky.

After three miles we hit the stone built, film set village of Muker, and a service in St Mary's at which Jane Harris, the Methodist minister, reminded yet again that it wasn't just another happy Easter stroll.

Muker may be best known for its silver band - Jack Middleton, one of its members, effortlessly on the pilgrimage. Clarice, his wife, is both former Muker conductor and regular Gadfly column correspondent, principally on apostrophe abuse though she is also (said Jack) something of an expert on ancient Greek.

Spirits were high, the Swale in April rarely lower. The riverside path between Muker and Gunnerside was easier, save for the large number of narrow stiles built to make life difficult for fat old sheep and no easier for similarly shaped journalists.

Ivelet Bridge was passed, too, humped like something from Rudyard Kipling's wildest imaginings and said to be haunted by the headless ghost of someone peremptorily precipitated therefrom.

At Gunnerside we stopped for lunch and for a short service at the Methodist chapel, like all the others manifestly and meticulously cared for and with a large Sunday School banner in the corner - "formed around 1800".

The organist played Jesus Christ is Risen Today, which whilst commendably optimistic, might have been considered a little premature.

There was another climb to Rowleth Wood, the path cut into the side of the hill so that a lady supposed they were walking like a haggis and when asked to explain said that haggises always had one leg shorter than the other.

Beyond the wood were the isolated ruins of Smarber chapel, built in 1690 for Swaledale's lead miners, closed in 1896 but still used once a year - next Friday in fact - for a memorial service.

More cross purposes - Isles Bridge, Scapa Wath Bridge, the new swing bridge officially opened by William Hague - and down, stroke of five as planned, into Grinton churchyard where faithful journeys had ended so many centuries earlier.

The final service wasn't until 5.30, before which we enjoyed the most wonderfully welcome pint of Jennings' ale in the Bridge Inn - subscribed for the first time in ten years by Mr Stuart Boulton, the photographer - and a hot cross bun in the church, the glorious Cathedral of the Dales.

Before 6pm the pilgrims progressed homewards. It had been a very good Friday.

* The annual Smarber service in the ruins of the lead miners' chapel is on Friday, May 2, at 7.30pm, but in Low Row URC church if very wet. The Swaledale and Arkengarthdale Christian Heritage Weekend is on June 14-15 - details of that one on 01748 886406 or www.argonet.co.uk/gmb/heritage