Category: Ireland

Blue sky and wispy clouds hang over the green mountains of Mourne

St Patrick’s Way: The Pilgrim Walk

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Prologue

The day after the eighth full moon of the year, we sailed across the Irish Sea to walk St Patrick’s Way. The trail connects two locations closely related to Ireland’s patron saint: Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, and Downpatrick, St Patrick’s final resting place. St Patrick was born around 400 CE in Roman Britain. He was enslaved and transported to Ireland before escaping his captors. After studying to become a cleric in France, he returned to Ireland on a mission to convert the pagan Irish to Christianity. 

Croagh Patrick, Ireland’s Holy Mountain, is a renowned pilgrimage site where St Patrick fasted for 40 days. We’ve climbed the mountain twice, but to date, we’ve barely set foot in the north, the part of Ireland most associated with St Patrick and home to the entirety of the 132-kilometre St Patrick’s Way. Keen to discover the stories held in the land, we acquire Pilgrim Passports and set out to follow in St Patrick’s footsteps through County Armagh and County Down, weaving our way in and out of villages, through forests, and across mountains that sweep down to the sea. 

A selfie of three walkers outside St Patricks Cathedral in Armagh
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Achill Island: a postcard from the lost world

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A walking festival draws us to Achill Island on Ireland’s wild and beautiful west coast.

On the first night of the festival, we meet walkers from all over Ireland. Among them are Maree & Seamus O’Brien, Brid & Paula (named after the last Pope), the O’Reilly brothers and their nephew Jean-Paul (also named after a Pope) and Michelle, a fellow Camino aficionado. There’s also Anne & Ivan, an American couple keen like us to walk the land of their ancestors and know more of its stories.

Our leader is Tomás, an Irish-speaking archaeologist and mountaineer. Before we start climbing, he advises us to move gracefully up the slope, stop and let the wind pass and be mindful of our fellow walkers.

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Landscape of patchwork green fields on the Burren Way

Walking the Burren Way, Ireland

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The Burren Way in Ireland is a 125-kilometre walking route from Lahinch on the wild west coast of County Clare. It follows ancient droving tracks, greenways and county byways through the heartland of the Burren to Corofin village. A five-day walk across the largest karst limestone landscape in Europe. It’s an immersion in Irish history and culture and an exploration of natural and archaeological riches including neolithic tombs, ring forts, early medieval castles and ancient centres of learning.

Burren comes from the Irish word, Boireann, a ‘rocky place’, a landscape of bare hills and lowlands. A tilted, folded, glaciated land of limestone pavements, hazel scrub, deciduous woodland, rare wildflowers, lakes, turloughs, springs, fens and grasslands. Its cliffs, escarpments and twisted hills are pale grey. On days when the sea and the sky have a shifting soft paleness, the landscape is more ethereal than existent. A subtle and abiding beauty.
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