The Saint's Road

On the Dingle Peninsula in Co. Kerry is an ancient Irish Pilgrim path called The Saint's Road or Cosan na Naomh in Irish. The Dingle Peninsula is an extraordinary place where the last vestiges of Western Europe clash with the vast expanse of the Atlantic in a final showdown of spray and rocky islands. There is an almost vertiginous feeling about the place; a heightened awareness of the turning of the Earth or the curve of the horizon.

The path meanders it's way across this rugged and breathtaking landscape making its way from sparkling sea to windswept mountaintop, along it's length dotted with Neolithic monuments, Early Irish Monastic sites and Medieval Romanesque Church remains.

Like the Camino, the path has pagan origins; in all probability the pre-Christian Irish worshipped the Celtic god Lugh on top of Mount Brandon which was also originally associated with another pagan deity Crom Dubh who Lugh would symbolically triumph over at the festival of Lughnasa - celebrated at the significant seasonal cross day half way between the Summer Solstice and the Autumn Equinox.

By the latter part of the 1st Millennium AD however St Brendan the Navigator had supposedly banished Crom Dubh from the mountain and Cosan na Naomh had become an important Irish pilgrimage. Pilgrims would arrive by sea either at Dingle Harbour or the beach at Ventry and then walk to the summit of Mount Brandon, stopping off at the various sites of spiritual significance along the way. In later centuries this evolved into a Roman Catholic festival or "Pattern" known locally as Crom Dubh Day, when pilgrims would walk from Cloghane to the summit of Mount Brandon on the last Sunday in July - the same day that pilgrims ascend another Irish pilgrim mountain, Croagh Patrick in Co.Mayo and very close to St James's Day on the 25th July.

Mount Brandon

In Natasha and Peter Murtagh's book Buen Camino! (see Additional Reading page) Peter Murtagh recounts how he climbed Croagh Patrick and then took a scallop shell (a traditional symbol of St James) from an eroded Mesolithic site on the shore of Clew Bay and tied it to his rucksack when he walked the Camino. I thought this had nice symbolism - taking something on the Camino from an early Irish pilgrim trail and since my American friend Eric Kruschke and I had walked the Saint's Road in 2009 and published a book on our experiences (again see additional reading), I felt it would be fun to take a scallop shell from Ventry strand on my next Camino walk in March.

When I started the Camino last September I bought a small purple scallop shell in St Jean Pied de Port. Its looking a bit chipped and battered after bouncing around on the outside of my rucksack, but I've got rather fond of it, so I will keep that on my rucksack, but my work colleague Patricia Morrisroe, who has a holiday home at Ventry has also given me another scallop shell from Ventry which I will also take it this time when I walk in March.

I love it's weather beaten appearance; encrusted with Barnacles and Serpulid worm tubes, I can imagine it lying in the shallow sandy water off Ventry amongst the kelp, its covering of algae gently waving in the shifting currents. I know its many centuries since pilgrims last splashed ashore at Ventry but the scallop shell seems an appropriate encrustation on my own rucksack!