Day 3: Bulcrana to Carndonagh
Distance: 15.7 miles (63.1 total)
Total ascent: 1295ft (5018 total)
Time: 5 hrs 28 mins
There are lots of good reasons why a skinhead with an English accent should probably refrain from trying to tell the Irish how to run their country, but nevertheless... This is a Bank Holiday weekend here in the Republic of Ireland, in honour of St Bridget. Now, St Bridget is one of Ireland's three patron saints, along with St Patrick and St Columba. Of those three, only two get a Bank Holiday, Patrick and Bridget. Obviously I'm already slightly put out that Columba gets overlooked in this way, but there's another consideration that's also being overlooked. Whilst St Bridget's Feast Day is February 1st, St Columba's is June 9th. My Irish friends I ask you, would you really rather have a Bank Holiday weekend in February than in June? I think we all know the answer to that.
After yesterday's especially long leg, I was delighted that today was one of the shortest; not least because it meant that I was able to tuck myself into a bar with the obligatory Guinness only fifteen minutes into the Scotland vs Italy Six Nations match... although there were moments when hitting the road again would have been more comfortable.
The day almost started well. Chatting with the waitress at breakfast I couldn't help sharing my observation that this is a beautiful country, but it's such a shame that there are no footpaths and walking is largely road-walking. To be honest, I'd been hoping that she might let me in on some local secret; there's some app out there, or a locally produced set of maps, which showed all sorts of tracks and trails unknown to the good people at Ordnance Survey. Instead she shook her head gravely and said, "I know, walking, and with the way people drive it's just so dangerous." It wasn't, really, what I wanted to hear.
Nevertheless, its been a really lovely day's walking. It was blowy out there, with none of the blue skies and sunshine that we had yesterday; but the countryside was wide and rolling, beautiful shades of auburn, and largely traffic-free.
One of the things I've been trying to reflect on during this time, is the question of our stories and histories; the narratives we have of ourselves and of others. Ireland's patron saints give us something to think about in that regard. St Patrick's story is perhaps the most reliable, as we have his autobiography, the story of his life in his own words. With St Columba we're on slightly different ground; our main source of information about Columba was written around a hundred years after his death and it's a hagiography, an account whose main purpose is to demonstrate Columba's saintliness. And then we come to St Bridget, whose very existence is questioned by many; it's observed that she seems very like the Celtic goddess Brigid, and it's possible that the early Christians of Ireland simply took the story of this popular goddess and Christianised it.
Does it matter? Does it matter how accurate our 'histories' are? In an earlier post I wrote about one of the sceptical views of Celtic history, which proposes that the very idea of 'the Celts' was a response to growing English political power in the eighteenth century (A Pilgrim's Cairn: Fighting and drinking their way across Europe. Or not.). If we tell ourselves stories about ourselves which help us to feel a sense of purpose and justification, tell ourselves stories about ourselves which make us feel good, does it matter all that much how true they really are?
Two or three days before I set out I had a dream, or a nightmare; I think St Columba would have thought of it as a vision, so let's call it that. In my vision I walked through the night across Mull to Fionnphort, all ready to get the ferry across to Iona. However, for some reason (dreams are rarely good on detail) the ferry couldn't run that day and I wouldn't be able to get to the island, I wouldn't reach Iona; I could see so clearly that flat green strip that was so close that I could almost touch it. I felt that powerful sense of 'this can't be happening'; a feeling that all of us have known at some time or other. And then just as suddenly I felt a great sense of peace. I'd done the hard bit. I'd done my best. Getting to Iona wasn't the most important thing after all. What mattered most was that I had made the journey.
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Thanksgiving:
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