N ick and I are standing by the old Norman tower on the sacred isle. “We would come on the pilgrimage when we were kids,” he’s telling me. “Walk all around the island with thousands of others.
All the cousins and friends doing the stations of the cross.” The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.
Learn more. We wander behind the tower, and in the trees are ribbons, cards and photographs. “It’s a bit pagan now,” he says, “but still very popular.
” He’s a volunteer, helping to establish a new footpath, the Wexford-Pembrokeshire Pilgrim Way, which links south-east Ireland and Wales. I’m on my third day along the new footpath and have discovered that my route coincides with this more traditional Roman Catholic pilgrimage site at Our Lady’s Island near Rosslare, a venue that attracts around 50,000 pilgrims every August. Pilgrimage in all its forms is back in fashion, having been out for several centuries, at least for much of Protestant Europe.
In Britain, the obsession that had driven believers on the road to the holy city of Jerusalem, and its many substitutes, had been on the slide since King Edward I “Longshanks” landed back at Dover in 1274, the last Christian monarch to attempt recapture of the holy city (interfering in the Middle East is nothing new: his main achievement was to burn some huts near Nazareth). Martin Luther subsequently dismissed any idea that visiting a sa.