Dare I utter the words “hidden gem”? Especially when referring to Bray, Co Wicklow? I think I dare.
The Camino de Santiago de Compostela is a network of pilgrimages across Europe which leads to St James‘s Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. I know scores of people who have done it for spiritual, physical and craic-centric reasons. They all come home with a sort of knowing air of, “It’s fabulous. It’s a pity we don’t have that kind of walking infrastructure here.”
We do in fact have that kind of infrastructure here, albeit on a much smaller scale.
There are two Camino routes in Ireland, one from Tralee to St James‘s church in Dingle, and one from the Bray seafront to St James‘s Gate in Dublin 8. Cut to me having half a notion to travel abroad to try the Camino, and then deciding that there would be no harm in availing of a free trial at home.
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My two walking companions want to do the route backwards, going from St James‘s Church in the Liberties to the Bray seafront. I’m pretty adamant about finishing five minutes from my house in Dublin 8, flopping on the couch and ordering takeaway, but Hugh and Colm win me over with the promise of a dip in the Irish Sea at the end of the long road.
It will become apparent as you read this that we are not masters of logistics. In the first instance, we had agreed to set off from St James‘s with our Irish language pilgrim passes at 11am. With the best of intentions, we depart from the grey stone steps of the church at midday.
Delays aside, the first 10 minutes are extremely rewarding and flat. We pick up stamps in St James‘s Church, St Audoen’s Church and Christ Church. Gleeful, we stop for coffees and a lemon slice. We maybe peak too early.
The first logistical hiccup involves bicycles. Colm has a fanatical relationship with cycling; there’s nothing he loves more. If the bicycle and I were drowning at the Bray seafront, Colm would be cycling to my funeral.
He insists on cycling to meet me at our starting point. The issue is, he then doesn’t want to leave his treasured possession locked outside St James’ unattended for hours on end.
As a result, he decides he’ll walk with it some of the way, deposit it at the first convenient Dart station, and collect the bike en route home. It is not a surprise to anyone who knows him that he walks and wheels it for the entirety of our 30km passage. So there are four of us in our walking party.
We start in St James‘s Church, which is the home to the Camino Society Ireland. Here you can buy your passport, pick up a map and get further information about what you’re about to get yourself into.
We then walk through Dublin 8 past Christ Church, cros the river to see the Famine memorial, zigzagged back over the Seán O’Casey Bridge, and amble happily over Grand Canal Dock and along the river Dodder until we hit Sandymount. From Sandymount onwards it is navigational plain sailing and we hug the coast till we reach our final destination.
The second big issue is that the three of us are chatterboxes. Every available opportunity to stop and chat – about the weather, the Irish language, saving the ocean, then saving the planet, anything at all – is seized. We have made eight stops by the time we reach the halfway point of Dún Laoghaire and are too late to collect our stamps at the tourist information office and the James Joyce tower.
“But sure, it’s about the journey rather than the destination,” says Hugh. Although this is true, I had been feeling pretty goal-orientated clutching my stamp book.
It is at our ninth stop, in Dún Laoghaire, when I start to get impatient. “Right lads, we need to pick up pace,” I say.
The result of this is nine stops pre Dún Laoghaire, two stops post Dún Laoghaire. But even with our second-half urgency, we still arrive at the pebbly beach on the Wicklow border at 8.30pm, some 8½ hours after kick-off.
With two kilometres to go until we reach the Victorian sea resort, Hugh cheerfully asks me: “What is the name of the church? Could you pull it up on Google there?”
“St James‘s, I assume,” I say naively. After a couple of quick clicks on my phone I realise that there is no St James’s in Bray. The church we are supposed to get our pilgrim passports stamped at is 1km behind us – Crinken (St James) Church in Shankill.
At this stage of the walk I am sweaty, tired, sunburned and hungry. To go backwards feels like an impossible feat, a huge psychological loss.
However, the stamps are saved from the jaws of exhaustion. Colm is the human incarnation of a Duracell bunny and he gladly agrees to cycle back and collect our stamps from Crinken Church.
Hugh and I sit at a bus stop with a man whose car broke down with our own broken bodies and wait. We have to eat our words having made fun of Colm for wheeling his bike all day and it turns out they aren’t tasty.
By the time we reach Bray, it is past sunset, and the moon is rising. Hugh is too exhausted to even swim in spite of advocating for this orientation of the route for that exact purpose.
I slowly (oh so very slowly) side shuffle down the shore with my tired feet and plunge myself into the shallow water. It is enormously relieving. Suddenly I am focused on being cold rather than sore and it feels brilliant.
We hobble from the beachfront to an excellent Pakistani restaurant called Daata, where we devour hearty bowls of creamy and spicy curry, fluffy rice and sweet naan. We are fit only for bed, but just before catching the Dart, we crawl to the famous Harbour Bar for one delicious pint. The beads of condensation drip down the side of the pint glasses like sweat, the music is bluesy and the chairs are plush. It is the single greatest achievement of the day that we manage to peel ourselves away and get the last Dart home.
The Verdict
The Celtic Camino felt like an adult Famous Five excursion – complete with picnics, swimming, hiking and lashings of ginger beer – although the only adventure was our own knack for creating artificial elements of inconvenience. I’d happily recommend it to anyone, but perhaps with better timekeeping and hiking in the opposite direction.
A couple of things to keep in mind:
- The route is 30 kilometres-ish in total, but it can be broken up into segments. You could do the Dún Laoghaire to Bray stretch, for example, or just the city centre part to practise.
- Even if we hadn’t taken 8½ hours to complete our journey, it still probably would have been better to plan to start earlier. It’s long whatever way you dice it but if you want to reach all the stamp venues early enough to collect the seven stamps along the route, it’s best to go in the morning.
- Lastly, wear sunscreen and comfortable shoes. Given that it’s an urban trail, most essentials such as water and snacks can be purchased en route. The only non-negotiable item I’d advise you bring with you is sun cream – and lots of it.
Further information about the Bray Celtic Camino Coastal Route can be found at bray.ie.
