A walk for the body and soul

A new pilgrimage in the northwest stretches for 250km, with stop-off points in a range of multi-faith centres and heritage sites. Rosita Bolandjoins the walking tour.

'The hermits are very hard to get hold of. They're not answering their phone the last few days," announces Colum Stapleton, as he holds a mobile phone to his ear, halfway up the scenic narrow road in south-west Sligo known as Ladies Brae.

When I think of hermits in Ireland, I don't think of them as being at the end of a phone line, albeit one that temporarily goes unanswered. I think of the millennium-old beehive huts on Skelligs and a lifetime of solitary asceticism lived out on that famous splinter of stone in the Atlantic. But these are modern hermits: the four-person community of monks that live in Holy Hill Hermitage, at Skreen in Co Sligo. This is also where we modern pilgrims are going to be staying tonight, on day three of the inaugural Pilgrim's Progress walk, which Stapleton has organised.

Dubliner Colum Stapleton has been living in Sligo for several years, and runs the Gyreum, a 30-bed eco-hostel in the shape of a cairn near Riverstown. As well as being a highly unusual and ecologically-friendly place to stay, it also offers to host events such as archaeology weekends, solstice celebrations and weddings.

Two years ago, Stapleton walked the Spanish Camino Santiago de Compostela, and the experience focused his mind on a new project. He wanted to find an original way of combining certain historical sites in the northwest area with the many multi-faith centres in the region. Within a reasonably short distance from his base at the Gyreum there are, for instance, Buddhist and Hare Krishna centres, as well as a Knights Templar Preceptory, a Poor Clare convent, St Patrick's Purgatory at Lough Derg, and Holy Hill Hermitage.

What Stapleton eventually came up with was the idea of an Irish Camino: a circular walk of 250km, that goes via several places either of cultural or spiritual importance. The itinerary for the "Pilgrim's Progress" walk is carefully thought out, imaginatively combining both eco-tourism and cultural tourism.

Having designed a walk which focuses on multi-faith centres, would Stapleton consider himself to be a spiritual person? "I'd consider myself to be a wondering person," he replies.

I've picked up the walk on the third day, at Kilvarnet, close to where the previous day's pilgrimage has finished, near Temple House, where Europe's most westerly Knight Templar Preceptory is located. Stapleton had originally planned for a full quota of 24 pilgrims on the fortnight's walk, setting up accommodation and boat-journeys en route (part of the route is via boat).

The idea was that people could either walk the entire route, over the fortnight, or join for a day or a few days at a time. But it's the first year, the weather has been notoriously bad all summer, and he's still working out ways to promote the pilgrimage, both nationally and internationally. While there were seven people walking the previous day, when I arrive for my day and night on the Pilgrim's Progress (the Paddy's Pilgrimage was another name Stapleton considered), only Stapleton and Friederike Huber (19), from Tuebinger in Germany are on the road for this leg. Other people will join along the way.

"When I started planning this, I thought that there would be 24 of us on this road today. Realistically, it'll probably take about seven years to really get established, but hopefully only three," Stapleton says, as we start on the day's walk that will bring us to Holy Hill. "My idea is that initially the walk would be guided, and then if it gained a place in the national and international psyche, that people could guide themselves, and go at their own pace. I see the kind of people doing this walk being as eclectically different from each other as the people who do the Camino are."

Huber recently finished school, and is taking six months in Ireland to try to decide what it is she wants to do next. She discovered the Gyreum and information about the walk on the internet. "I am not sure whether to choose between business and economics or classical music," she tells us, as we walk on. "So, part of the reason I am in Ireland is to think about my future." She plays classical violin, and is wondering if there is a way she can combine two such different areas of study in her future professional career.

The walk in its current state follows many minor back roads and existing paths.Very few cars pass as we walk along Ladies Brae, by the Ardnaglass river, with Knocknaree at our backs, and the Ox Mountains to our faces. We stop for lunch at a pretty spot by the river, and over cheese and pickle sandwiches and cereal bars, we start talking about whether or not we believe there is an afterlife.

This is the kind of conversation I would usually only have late at night, and even then, on rare occasions, but we're on pilgrimage and so a whole range of topics easily open up.

Huber says she does believe there is one, Stapleton says that he only really decided that there isn't an afterlife after his dog died earlier this year, which in turn prompts a conversation about whether it's possible for an animal to have a soul or not - or indeed, if humans have souls.

While it all sounds terrifyingly earnest, in truth, the ad-hoc conversation is lively, entertaining and provocative, and as we start walking again, I find myself thinking about the nature of pilgrimage and how there are as many definitions of it as there are types of people and their beliefs.

ONE OF THE KEY factors of the walk is the nature of the overnight locations. "The night stops are hugely important," Stapleton says.

"Otherwise the walk might as well be some nicey-nice way-marked way. What I wanted was for us to stay in these multi-faith places and engage in some way in their particular rituals."

So, later in the pilgrimage, walkers will hear Lisadell's Anglican vicar reciting some of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, before walkers bed down for the night in the Church of Ireland Edwardian Scout Hall there; they'll hear Bible readings at a Scots Presbyterian church south of Enniskillen; observe meditations at the Hare Krishna Temple at Inish Rath in Fermanagh before having a vegan meal and staying there; listen to afternoon psalms at the Poor Clare convent at Drumshanbo and have tea; and hear mantras at the Tibetan Buddhist retreat centre at Jampa Ling, near Bawnboy in north west Cavan before the evening vegetarian meal.

Holy Hill, some 13km from where we started the day's walk, is an eclectic collection of buildings on several lovely acres in rural Skreen. The hermits have been here 10 years, and in that time they have renovated an 1840 manor house, stables and outbuildings, as well as building several small hermitages, or stone cottages, which anyone can rent by the day or week, to use as places of retreat. There is a sister hermitage in the US and monks come and go between the two communities. They describe themselves as a "Catholic monastic community of men and women who embrace a vowed life, according to the primitive Carmelite ideal".

At present, the four monks at Holy Hill are US-born: Sr Brown, actual sisters Patricia and Ceil McGowan, and Fr John Meoska. "You could call us apostolic hermits," Sr Brown explains. "We try to live half our life in silence and prayer, and the other half in outreach work."

Originally, when Stapleton envisaged there being the full quota of 24 on the pilgrimage, the agreement was that pilgrims would arrive in silence, eat in silence, and depart the next morning in silence, thus being as non-disruptive as possible. With only three of us, it's not necessary this time. By 5pm, we're sitting at the back of the community's small wood-panelled chapel. There are 11 of us there, including those currently using the private hermitages. There are spoken prayers and canticles, and several extended periods of silent prayer, which are intensely, fiercely silent: not a single exterior or interior sound. It's so quiet, Stapleton falls asleep, much to his later embarrassment.

Later, there is a simple supper of pasta-based soup, brown bread and cheese, in a sunny dining-room with wild flowers on the table. Only two of the monks eat with us: they rarely eat communally.

Later again, Sr Brown shows us their 6,000-volume library, which is full of nooks and alcoves, and where future pilgrims will sleep on mattresses for the night - no shortage of reading material, should insomnia occur.

I leave the small party of pilgrims next morning. By the time you read this, the pilgrims - whatever their numbers are by then - will be at St Patrick's Purgatory, on Lough Derg.