The Catholic Diocese of Galloway annually holds a pilgrimage to St. Ninian's Cave on the last Sunday in August. There are also youth pilgrimages, and a Christian Aid walk.
In the eighth century, Bede wrote of Whithorn as shrine established three centuries before he wrote : "an episcopal see, called after S. Martin the bishop, and famous on account of the church where he rests in body, along with many other saints..The place belongs to the province of the Bernicians (Northumbrians) and is commonly called The White House. It received this name because he built the church there of stone, not a common practice among the Britons".
The shrine was visited in later centuries by Scottish kings and queens : Kenneth II, Kenneth III, Robert the Bruce seeking a cure for leprosy, James III and Margaret of Denmark, and almost every year of his reign, James IV. Our tradition of welcome is 1500 years old : come and experience it!
