A group of pilgrims walk on August 14, 2011 through the countryside to the Marian shrine of Czestochowa, in southern Poland, for the August 15 Feast of the Assumption. Thousands of people from across deeply Catholic Poland set off on foot today to a shrine which houses one of the country's most important religious symbols, the Black Virgin of Czestochowa. The trek to the fortified monastery of Jasna Gora in the southern town of Czestochowa is held every year to mark the Feast of the Assumption on August 15. AFP PHOTO / JANEK SKARZYNSKI