Friends of murdered journalist Lyra McKee have started a three-day peace walk from Belfast to Londonderry.
Hundreds turned out at Writer’s Square in Belfast on Saturday morning, many wearing T-shirts in her memory and carrying flags with messages of peace.
Ms McKee, 29, was shot in the head by dissident republican group the New IRA while observing clashes with police in the Creggan estate in Londonderry last month.
Snow Patrol frontman Gary Lightbody is due to join them on the last leg on Monday ahead of a rally at Derry’s Guildhall.
Lyra’s Walk logistics and location manager Brenda Gough urged anyone who sees the walkers to show their support.
She thanked all the community groups which have offered support with water and snacks for the walkers en route, and the Samaritans who will send counsellors into the camp sites each night.
“We had over 300 walkers registered, obviously life happens, but the main body of walkers have turned up,” she told the Press Association.
“The aim was to have a very mixed representation of the whole community of Northern Ireland and everyone has stepped up.
“This type of movement attracts people who have a lot of empathy and compassion, and don’t hold prejudice.
“We do have some walkers who have played their part in the Troubles, they are here to support us and show that change can happen.
“That is the ethos of this, we want people to address themselves and not the politicians, because we have the politicians that we vote for, we are responsible for our government. We can’t just blame them.”
The start point of Writer’s Square is beside St Anne’s Cathedral where Prime Minister Theresa May, Irish President Michael D Higgins, Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Northern Ireland’s political leaders were among the mourners at Ms McKee’s funeral.
“Starting at Writer’s Square was Sara Canning’s (Ms McKee’s partner) idea, she said Lyra was a writer and so the start point should be Writer’s Square,” she said.
“It’s beside St Anne’s Cathedral where the funeral was, so yeah, we are starting off where we last saw Lyra.”
During the funeral a priest asked Northern Ireland’s politicians why it took the death of a 29-year-old woman to unite their parties.
The latest talks process designed to restore devolved political powersharing was launched soon after the murder.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here