Bangor to Bobbio

I've been circling round Teagasc, the agri-food semi-state institution, since it was An Foras Talúntais. Some of my best academic-adjacent friends have worked or are working there. But despite this leaven, Teagasc is generally conservative, complacent and dull. This long week (18th-25th August) is Heritage Week and Teagasc's Friday agri-zoom call went early with a talk: Discovering Heritage Through Old Routeways - Ireland's Pilgrim Paths by John G O'Dwyer (Chair of Pilgrim Paths Ireland) with promo by Ronan Healy (Project Manager National Heritage Week at the Heritage Council). With a redundancy typical of the feather-bedded Irish semi-states, it requires two Teagasc people to introduce these talks, one of whom is nail-bitingly poor at public speaking; did I say 'dull'?

This year there are 2,200 events comprehending a very broad definition of Heritage: walks, talks, bees, lighthouses, gardening, painting, baskets, céilí, science. Chekkitout? especially for kids?? they've made efforts to be inclusive.

John G has written The Book on Irish (hill) Walks, but more to the point he's written Pilgrim Paths in Ireland - A guide from Slieve Mish to Skellig Michael. He was also one of the main movers to establish St Declan's Way from Cashel to Ardmore which was officially opened in 2021 [Event tomo!]. Dau.II and I clocked the finger posts where the St.Dec crossed the N25 on the couple of pandemic trips we made to&from Cork. Here's a JGO'D mnemonic D.A.R.E.S. to suss pilgrimage:

• D iscovery, self-
• A ppreciation, for grace and favours from the almighty
• R emembering those gone before
• E scape from the press and stress
• S implify, simplify [Thoreauprev]
  

Oddly enough, in the question session on Friday, O'Dwyer professed to know nothing about Turas Columbanus despite the fact that the local-to-me part of that trek has finger posts all over Co Carlow.

 

"All over" because the route zig-zags back and forth across the county after it lurches away from the River Barrow at Borris or at Clashganny heading for Mt Leinster and Myshall before rejoining the River at Bagenalstown. We cross the Turas 3x getting to our nearest Aldi. This turns a lovely flat [kingfishers, dragonflies, swallows, otters, buzzards, fish] 12 km walk along the towpath of the Barrow navigation into 36 km of schlep along country roads shared with litter, boy-racers, tractors roaring past with trailers of livestock shitting themselves on the way to termination. There are no verges on much of this voyage, let along footpaths; so you must be prepared to plunge into nettles and briars or meet your maker plastered on a front bumper like an extra in Herzog's film about driving-while-txtn. Much as I deprecate sanitizing the Camino de Santiago by taking all the hard bits out; I can't approve of paying for and setting out a set of laminated pilgrim story-boards linked by finger-posts without contemplating how pilgrims are going to navigate with reasonable safety. 

Turas Columbanus follows the life story of St Colmán aka Columbanus starting at Bangor, Co Down and jinking hither and yon until it finishes in Bobbio between Milan and Genoa in N Italy. It takes in pretty much everywhere where legend has it that Columbanus laid his head or knelt at a tomb. Fermanagh, Cornwall, St Malo, St Coulomb [no surprises there?] Rouen, Luxeuil-les-Bains, Soissons, [Hildegard von] Bingen,Tours, Nantes, Schengen, Koblenz . . . all over.

When they / we do the Camino de Santiago, most pilgrims acquire their "credential" = passport at the start of their journey, and get it stampe at each refugio and hostel. Although there are many Camino to Santiago, they all finish at the City of God. In Ireland it's more of a free-for-all. Several Saints, several destinations. Presenting your credential at an office in Santiago gets you your Compostelle: a document asserting that you've walked at least 100 km in the right direction.  Ballintubber Abbey in Co. Mayo has taken up this bureaucratic mantel: taking €5 for a passport and €15 for your personalized Teastas Oilithreachta:

Whoa! and, like, Whoo-hoo. There's our own St Fursey hanging out with more famous saints like Patrick, Kevin, Brendan, and Finbarr. Maybe Ballintubber will up-date their docs to include St Declan of the Déise. At least we know where to walk in his footsteps. I cannot get any handle on a Camino Fursana, but hazard a guess that it involves Headford.

Time was that tourists came to Ireland for the fishing - they said in 1990 that every rod-caught salmon added £1,000 to the economy (B&B, pints, car-hire, dinner, céilí, souvenirs). But we sacrificed the salmon on the EU altar and shat in all the rivers, so that was the end of that. Folks like John G O'Dwyer are starry-eyed about the possibility of making up the deficit in the rural economy through pilgrimage. May the road rise to meet them!