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Highlights of St Aidan's Way - the Way of the Bee
Thursday 3rd July 2025
Cheryl (Pepper) Tettmar
St Aidan’s Way follows in the footsteps of St Aidan’s sixth century journey from Ferns in Ireland to meet his teacher and mentor, St David, in Wales. The impact of the meeting between these two famous Celtic saints was felt far and wide across Ireland, Wales and beyond, leading to the establishment of new churches and monasteries and a flourishing of Celtic culture in the Age of the Saints. The length of the trail is nearly 100km winding through County Wexford from Ferns to Rosslare, where he would have crossed over the Irish Sea to Fishguard in Pembrokeshire. However our holiday offered the highlights of the route, allowing us to enjoy the best stretches of walking which are off the road and spend a little more time in areas of outstanding natural beauty.
From Fishguard there is a 60km walk on the beautiful Pembrokeshire National Park Coast Path to St Davids. This part of the journey is known as St David’s Way and together they form The Wexford-Pembrokeshire Pilgrim Way. It has come to be known as The Way of the Bee because bees have linked Wales and Wexford since the 6th century. When Aidan stayed at David’s monastery in Wales, he looked after the bee hives. It is told that each time he left to return to Ireland, a swarm of bees followed him onto the ship. He returned them to the monastery each time and on the third occasion David understood that Aidan and the bees had a special relationship and let him take the bees back to Ireland. The bee connection thrives today in Ireland at Johnstown Castle, which is a designated conservation area for the native Irish black bee. The bees thrive in wild colonies on the estate and our group enjoyed a wonderful morning with Matt Wheeler, the bee keeper there. He shared his passion, experience and in depth knowledge of these little creatures with us, explaining about their preservation and management without pesticides.
On the holiday this year we had 5 guests, 2 of them new to Journeying. Pilgrims came from as far away as Australia and arrived by plane or by ferry into Ireland. It didn’t take us long to settle into The Ballyvallo Retreat Centre because they have hosted Journeying guests now for 3 years and ensure we have everything that makes us feel at home. Ballyvalloo is a beautiful haven of tranquillity, set back just off the amazing Curracloe beach, so it can be accessed easily and enjoyed by guests at any time. We had some beautiful photos of the sun rising out of the sea this year and star gazers enjoyed being out on the beach in the evening, under a sky with no light pollution.
Our first day of the holiday began at St Mogue’s Well in Ferns. St Mogue is better known as St Aidan of Ferns and Ferns used to be the ancient capital of Leinster, so it is steeped in history and legend. Here, as custom dictates, we filled a small water bottle … not to carry to St David’s in Wales but to the Holy Well on Our Lady’s Island. Ireland is known for its rich history of holy wells and there is an estimated 3,000 or more scattered across the island. These sites, often natural springs or other water sources, have been places of religious devotion for centuries, predating Christianity in some cases, and are deeply intertwined with Irish cultural heritage and spiritual beliefs. On this holiday we also visited St David’s Well at Oylegate, a place of pilgrimage for generations and still revered by many today.
This year there were a few adaptations to the programme to allow us to enjoy more local culture and tradition. We visited an amazing Storytelling House known as ‘Bygone Days’, which is a traditional thatched cottage more than 200 years old, now used by local people as a setting for traditional music and the recounting of stories from the past. Around their roaring fire, we sampled traditional Irish hospitality - cakes and tea that never seemed to run out. However, this year we returned again in the evening for a night of music and storytelling organised for us by John and Eileen Dempsey. We knew we were in for a treat when the musicians arrived and began to unpack their traditional Irish musical instruments. Players from the local community assembled to share folk songs and ballads with us and John had us laughing out loud with his cheeky ballad style poems. On another evening we went into Wexford to find `Jim McGees’, a well-known pub recognised for its traditional, old-fashioned style and warm welcome. Here we got to sample Guinness on draught … a first for many of us.
Another musical highlight was a Taizé evening by the Island of Ireland Peace Choir singing in St Edan’s Church of Ireland Cathedral, considered to be the smallest Cathedral in Europe.
The walking on this holiday was easy and light and the focus was the joy of walking in God’s beautiful creation. There were lots of opportunities to contemplate and just ‘be.’ The landscapes and environments we walked in allowed for different types of reflection: at Skeater Park Trail Head on Forth Mountain we had sweeping views across the countryside and out to sea, in the forest at Raven Point our walk was filled with bird song and the wind in the trees, miles of white shimmering sand and sparkling sea on Curracloe’s deserted beach. Whilst we enjoyed fellowship, fun and laughter throughout the week there were opportunities to enjoy a sense of solitude and being alone with God.
The final afternoon we entered the sacred landscape around Our Lady’s Island, a place of Christian pilgrimage for at least 1500 years. Unlike last year, this year we were blessed with blue skies and bright sunshine as we processed around the island, like thousands of pilgrims before us, stopping at stations. At the Holy Well, we returned the water collected from St Mogue's Well in Ferns on our first day - completing this cycle of holy water in this beautiful Celtic 'thin place’. We completed our walk of pilgrimage along St Aidan’s Way with the short walk to the sea shore, where we spent a little time of reflection and thanksgiving, for the journey we had completed. It was an opportunity to consider the journey ahead when we returned home and the invitation God was extending to us.
It was a wonderful holiday; a time of blessing and renewal and of so much laughter amongst our group of pilgrim friends. Thank you for sharing the journey.