In his new book Pilgrimage: Journeys of Meaning, Peter Stanford explores how pilgrimage provides the modern age with a means to take a longer, slower and hence more profound look at life, stretching all the way back to when the first pilgrim put one foot in front of another. In this extract, he describes how the ‘Camino effect’ has rippled its way to a forgotten trail in the North Wales countryside
The Abbey ruins on Bardsey Island, North Wales. © History collection 2016/Alamy Stock Photo
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm on your face, the rains fall soft upon your fields
and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.
This traditional Celtic blessing has been adopted by the North Wales Pilgrim’s Way. It sums up both the spirit in which walkers take up the challenge it offers, and the ever-present connection to an earlier age that the route provides to all-comers. In early Christianity, the wind at your back would have been readily understood as the Holy Spirit, but for the new generation of pilgrims there is no requirement to talk of the visible in terms of the invisible. What is openly expressed, though, is the ambition that this trail should be regarded as the ‘Welsh Camino’. In 2009, Jenny and Chris Potter had walked the Camino in Spain. On their return to North Wales – where Chris served as an archdeacon in Saint Asaph, which boasts the smallest Anglican cathedral in Britain, built on the site where another Celtic saint, Kentigern, established himself as a bishop in the sixth century – they were inspired to explore the history of the neglected pilgrim path that passed right by their doorstep.
It has been thanks to their efforts – a perfect illustration of the ‘Camino effect’ rippling outwards – that a route was identified, mapped, tested out in 2011, waymarked, and then officially opened in 2014, complete with its very own pilgrim’s passport, which can be stamped at churches, shops and pubs on the way. In some places the trail mirrors the one original Celtic pilgrims would have taken, its identifying landmarks being small, low-lying ancient churches and sacred wells that are scattered all over the North Wales countryside, along with distinctive Celtic crosses such as the tall, thin tenth-century ‘wheel cross’ in a field at Maen Achwyfan in Flintshire on the route near the village of Llanasa (‘the enclosure of Saint Asaph’). It features intricate knot patterns in its weather-beaten carvings, as well as a shadowy figure on the lower panel. Their exact meaning is lost in the mists of time – like a lot of things with Celtic Christianity. Meanwhile, one suggestion for this ‘wheel cross’ being in such a lonely location is that it marks what was once a hermit monk’s cell, built to be far away from any distraction save nature and God.
Place names that begin with Llan- generally indicate a sacred past, but there are so many of them in North Wales it didn’t really help in pinning down a definitive pilgrims’ route. So, notably at Abergwyngregyn around the halfway point, where the route joins the already established Wales Coast Path, the Pilgrim’s Way opts to make use of existing infrastructure. If this is not a perfect recreation, then it does successfully link four key locations from 1,300 years ago: Holywell, Gwytherin, Clynnog Fawr and Bardsey. The first three share a close association with two presiding presences on the pilgrimage, uncle and niece Saints Beuno and Winefride.
Penmaenmawr stone circle, photo © Hansjoerg Lipp (cc-by-sa/2.0)
Like so many other Celtic monks Beuno, who died around 640, came from a privileged background. He embodied the missionary spirit that was a key part of vocation. His personal pilgrimage was as much about finding souls to convert as it was seeking personal enlightenment. After ordination in Bangor, now a popular starting point halfway along the Pilgrim’s Way for those on a tight time schedule, he spent his days travelling all around North Wales, bringing people to a God whom he saw in every bit of the dramatic natural environment around him, bounded as it is by the sea on one side and the spectacular mountain range that includes Snowdon, Wales’s highest peak, to the other. Often when he moved on after such a mission, he would leave behind a simple church building and a well. Water had special significance to Celtic Christians, who used ‘triple immersion’ in baptism ceremonies (in contrast to today when a tiny scoop of water is deemed sufficient). And Beuno was never happier, legend recounts, than when praying half-immersed in cold water, punishing his body to bring his soul closer to God.
Water also possessed healing powers, he believed. The pagan roots of this typically Celtic belief are plain. Indeed, one of the features of the North Wales Pilgrim’s Way is that it encompasses, alongside Christian churches and crosses, pagan holy sites such as the stone circle at Penmaenmawr (pictured above), and the 4,000-year-old yew in the churchyard at Llangernyw. On account of their extraordinary longevity – making them a symbol of (near) eternal life – yews held a special place in pre-Christian belief systems. Springs and wells, too, as well as groves of trees, were believed to be sacred, and became the backdrop to pagan rituals. Emerging Christianity sought not to confront and wipe away such patterns of worship, but rather to merge them in its own approach to the divine. Some anthropologists refer to this process of assimilation as ‘baptizing the customs’.
