Some people are drawn to pilgrimage walks for religious reasons. Others for more secular concerns – such as a bit of exercise or a rewarding pint at journey’s end. Brigid’s Way caters for all tastes. That’s fitting since Brigid herself means different things to different people.
Celebrated in both Christian and pre-Christian history, she has been reimagined in recent years as a pertinent symbol of Irish feminism. The Brigid’s Way path was conceived a little over a decade ago as a means of connecting Ireland’s foremost landmarks of worship for Brigid. Its starting point is her birthplace, a holy well in Faughart, Co Louth.
From there, pilgrims meander south, ticking off sacred sites and eventually, by the ninth leg of the trail, they reach the Curragh. There lie the plains Brigid famously acquired from the king of Leinster when she cast her miraculous, ever-expanding cloak. As well as relevant landmarks, the shape of Brigid’s Way is informed by the swanlike Cygnus constellation, a prominent fixture in the sky at the time of her birth.
Guided walks of these carefully plotted trails take place once a month between February and October. On this Sunday in August, on walk seven of nine, we are somewhere in the belly of the swan. We set out in northwest Kildare at Donadea Forest Park, a reasonable 14km from this leg’s destination, Robertstown.
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Siobhán Madden and her father, Paddy, share leadership duties. Siobhán’s role is to contextualise the pilgrimage and guide us towards a spiritual connection with Brigid. It is a glorious morning, and the forest introduces itself in dappled light, which pokes through greenery and landing on the moss and mulch of the forest floor.
Paddy’s expertise is more parochial, leading walkers through a maze of historical points of interest. He tells the story of the park’s long-time owners, the Aylmer family, zoning in on Gerald George Aylmer, who inherited the 15,000-acre demesne over 200 years ago at the age of 18. In Paddy’s telling, Aylmer is to Donadea Forest Park what Gaudi is to Park Güell in Barcelona.
Aylmer shaped the place in his image, constructing a wall around the estate and digging a lake. He even built an ice bank, which now looks like a large bunker buried beneath a conspicuous mound of soil.
Jumping between centuries, a 9/11 memorial sits just off a stony path in the park, erected to remember Irish-American firefighter Sean Patrick Tallon, whose father was born nearby. Tallon died in the North Tower of the World Trade Center while responding to the September 2001 attacks in New York.
Just to the right of the sculpture is a grey stone pulpit, sitting idly in the shadow of the trees and decorated with a Celtic cross. By luck or design, it is a fitting picture. Cill Dara translates to “church of the oak”, referring to the church Brigid founded in the shadow of an oak tree when she acquired her land in the Curragh. Here is the intersection of history and mythology, and for all we know, one of the Donadea oaks is about to deliver its own sermon.
We pass a small section of Slí Mór, one of Ireland’s ancient roads, that brings us to St Peter’s Church and an adjacent mausoleum housing some of the Aylmers. There are more sprawling tales. An older church on the site was thought to have been built by St Patrick. In fact, Domhnach Dheá, the Irish for Donadea, is likely to be a reference to Patrick, given he is associated with old churches in Ireland that carry Domhnach (the Lord’s Day) in their name.
Moving off-road, we clamber and scrape our way through the forest, encountering nettles, more brilliant light and a pet cemetery for animals that spent years enjoying this walk. Paddy’s work is done when we hop a small wall to exit the forest and fall into a single-file formation along the edge of a main road. The obstacles are gone now but the ground is harder beneath our feet.
In contrast to the wildness behind the wall, the human impact of tarmac and cut grass is stark. We come through the village of Staplestown and a smattering of hulking, stand-alone new builds all following the same design. There is a church, a small garden centre and a Japanese restaurant embedded in a GAA club. By all accounts, it has been a hit with locals.
Just to the south lie the towns of Clane and, in an ill-fated attempt at nominative determinism, Prosperous. Robert Brooke, an Irish-born British lieutenant-colonel, tried to establish a textile industry in the area with a focus on cotton manufacturing in the late 1700s. It was a disaster, but Brooke’s choice of name lives on and provides fuel for a local joke, that a Prosperous man should marry a Clane woman.
Quieter roads follow, lined with ferns, meadowsweet, thistle and butterflies. Cars shuffle past curiously and infrequently. With so much packed into the morning, it feels like a long stretch to our halfway point, Ballynafagh Lake, which was built in the 18th century to supply water to the Grand Canal. Here, the ground is soft and spongy, inviting boots deeper; Siobhán recommends going barefoot.
On the banks of the lake, she shares poetry in the realm of pilgrimage as we break for packed lunches. Some walkers dip their toes in the water and others seek a spot of shade. Gentle efforts are made not to disrupt the serenity of the moment. One of the poems, its author unknown, uses the edge of a leaf as a symbol for life and adventure, encouraging readers to push beyond the comfort of the stem.
Later, Paddy tells me how it resonated with him, recalling a seanfhocal, “is fearr lúbadh ná briseadh” – it is better to bend than break. Part of the joy he derives from the pilgrimage, he explains, is rooted in a deviation from safety and comfort. In his mid-70s, Paddy jaunts through the trail handily, stooping occasionally to inspect interesting stones and flora.
Though Ballynafagh is only the halfway point in terms of distance, the rest of the journey is direct and goes by quicker. Some of the pilgrims have completed other routes along the Brigid’s Way path and some, like me, are just joining in for the day. Over the final kilometres, there is as much opportunity to chat as there is to spend time with your own thoughts. Motivations are different for each of us, but a feeling of community is unavoidable.
Factoring in the stops, we have been going for close to six hours when we turn the corner into Robertstown. A small, scenic village, it delivers on the promise of Ballynafagh Lake, built to overlook a glistening stretch of the Grand Canal. Feeling tired but with a sense of accomplishment, we fall in the door of Charlie Weld’s pub. Some pilgrims have fallen further back as the day has worn on, and it takes a few minutes for the entirety of the group to convene. Settled, it is hard to know what part of the swan we are drinking in.
A framed newspaper article on the wall reveals a relevant detail about Weld’s. For the past 130 years it has been run by four generations of women. It is a fact that might yield a smile of approval from a certain patron saint.
Irish Caminos:
- Walking the Boyne Valley Camino: Sunburn, sore legs and a sprint across the N51
- The Irish Caminos: stunning St Finbarr’s Path is the result of ‘volunteers scraping, working, sweating together’
- The Irish caminos: Climbing the ‘passage of the birds’ - a Connemara rival to Croagh Patrick
Series concluded
