Words & Photos John Kernaghan and Pamela Martin
ARMAGH, Northern Ireland – As you walk the streets of this ancient town, you see two unmistakable landmarks sharing one name: St. Patrick.
From the lesser hilltops or in gaps between 400-year-old dwellings, St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cathedral shows on one high perch. St. Patrick’s Church of Ireland, a Protestant Cathedral, is revealed on another, firmly planted since 445.
It takes a mighty man to inspire this almost fairy-tale face-off in Ireland’s ecclesiastical capital.
The portions of St. Patrick’s Way, the 130-kilometre trail we would travel in his footsteps, fleshed out the story of the mission which inspired these churches and many others around the world.
The biggest part of his mission would take place in the lands we covered by foot, bicycle and paddle – a lyrical landscape of impossibly-green drumlins featuring a quilt of pampered pastures under bright-blue skies.
His journey from slave to saint pushes aside the notion of funny hats and green beer celebrating him every March 17.
Patrick was abducted from then Roman Britain by Irish pirates as a teen and sold into service as a shepherd on Slemish Mountain, about 90 kilometres from Armagh. There, alone on the wind-lashed height, he found God and the strength to escape home, where he studied and formed his mission to convert Irish Pagans to Christianity.
He returned with a small band of followers and landed at Strangford Lough, a short distance from where his footsteps would lead us.
So take our hands and walk his Way, multi-pronged paths alive with earthy scents and backed by a birdsong score old as time.
To understand the Ireland Patrick faced on his mission, Navan Centre & Fort near Armagh sets the tone of Pagan times in a sweeping setting of buried earthworks, settlement sites and sacred spaces covering 7,500 years of activity. Navan, excavation reveals, was at its height before Christ’s time, a gathering point for Ulster’s legendary heroes and later a rallying point for Irish kings.
We got our first stamp in our St. Patrick’s Pilgrim Walks passport here, then repaired to Armagh’s ancient streets and tours of the majestic, twin-spired Catholic cathedral and the more dour Protestant place of worship.
Both entry walkways were polished by millions of their parishioners’ footfalls. Another passport stamp marked this segment.
Afterward, we bent to other devotions: the notorious Irish sweet tooth indulged by the pastry genius at Blackwell House, an upscale country inn near Scarva in The Armagh Hills.
On a sugar high, we eased on to e-bikes with Mourne Bike Tour guides for a bracing pedal alongside the Newry Canal and flanked by marsh and forest. Centuries-old stone canal bridges provided photo ops.
By now, the mystique of this land was settling into our bones, even if we were electric-powered pampered pilgrims.
As we headed into the market town of Newry, the knowledge Patrick had planted a yew tree not far away as an expression of his faith deepened the meaning of our path.
Next, the coastal piece of the Walks took us to Newcastle at the foot of the moody Mourne Mountains, a few more passport stamps to our credit.
The seaside town has a magnificent long and deep sand beach that leads to dunes where free-roaming ponies reside. Its inland flank opens to Tollymore Forest Park and a trail that loops above the treeline to the stone Mourne Wall, then snakes through deep forest and along the rippling Shimna River.
As it happened, The Death of Robin Hood, starring Hugh Jackman, was being shot at the time, though no sightings were reported.
We were led by Elaine Kelly and Martina Purdy, two former novitiate nuns assigned to a parish that was soon closed due to a dwindling congregation. “It happened on Shrove Tuesday.
I was pancaked,” said Purdy, who grew up in a Toronto suburb and was a BBC correspondent in Northern Ireland.
The guiding gig, and working as a creative force at the Saint Patrick Centre, was her salvation.
The Centre in Downpatrick was our penultimate destination, where the rich Irish tones of actor Ciaran Hinds gave Patrick voice, reading from his Confessions.
Our final steps led to Patrick’s grave, a humble spot of interment for a man who inspired a world-wide party.
