Bardsey Island (Ynys Enlli)

We now turn our steps to Northwest Wales, to Bardsey, the island at the very tip of the Llyn Peninsular. At Aberdaron, overlooking the sea, we find the small cafe known as Y Gegin Fawr (large kitchen) which was for centuries a hostel for pilgrims on their way to the small island just offshore named in Welsh Ynys Enlli (the island of strong currents) and its ruined Abbey of St. Mary. The name Bardsey is thought to be of Viking origin; in addition to Ynys Enlli, it is also known as The Island of 20,000 Saints.

Today the island is a nature reserve, practically uninhabited except for large colonies of seabirds. For many centuries, however, from the 5th Century onwards, Bardsey was a most important ecclesiastical center and a major place of pilgrimage, so important that two visits to Bardsey (some say three) were the equal of one to Rome. Here the first monastery was founded by St. Cadfan, a Breton in 429.A.D. In the early part of the 7th Century, when Ethelfrid of Northumbria destroyed the great monastery at Bangor-is-y-Coed on the English borders, the surviving monks are believed to have settled here, safe on the remote, windswept island (which today still has limited access across the treacherous straits).

The remains of the Augustinian Abbey of St. Mary date from the l3th Century. In the churchyard are the graves of some of the 20,000 saints of legend. As the very first monastic community to be founded in the whole of Britain, and as one of the most visited of the holy places in medieval Wales, the most sacred Island of Bardsey fully deserves its place on our pilgrimage.

It is now time to turn eastwards back through the gentle, peaceful countryside of Llyn, through the majestic mountains called Yr Eifl (the forks) that drop abruptly into the sea (on the summit of which is Tre'r Ceiri (Town of the Giants) that may be an iron age village but which was apparently still occupied in the 2nd Century A.D. We are on our way to the other Welsh religious settlement to have been named Bangor. As usual, however, there are a few very necessary stops we have to make as part of our modern pilgrimage, the first one at Clynnog Fawr.

At Clynnog Fawr, the Church is dedicated to St. Beuno, Wales's second most revered saint after St. David. Completely dominating the present village, the church marks an important place of rest for medieval pilgrims on their way to or from Bardsay. Founded in 6l6 A.D., St Beuno's Church may have originally been monastic, but had become collegiate by the year l29l, though the present building dates only to the late l500's after the Dissolution.

The tomb of St. Beuno was destroyed by a fire in l856 but was restored fifty years later. Local tradition tells us that the stone with a cross was given to Beuno by a Prince of Gwynedd. The church contains a curious dugout chest known as St.Beuno's Chest. Beside the roadside not too far from the church is St. Beuno's Well, a spring where the Welsh l8th C. historian and naturalist Thomas Pennant claimed to have witnessed the healing of a paralytic. After leaving Clynnog Fawr, to continue our journey to Bangor, we soon come to the shores of the Menai Straits (Afon Menai) that separate the island of Anglesey (Ynys Mon) from the Welsh mainland. A short detour off the main highway will bring you face to face with one of Edward I's mightiest strongholds, the castle at Caernarfon.

It is not the castle, however impressive it may be, that makes this spot sacred to the Welsh people. In the town that grew up around it, in an area still predominantly Welsh-speaking in the l990's, there is a high school named after Sir Hugh Owen, a nineteenth-century pioneer in education in Wales. Owen's open letter to the Welsh people in l843 urged acceptance of the schools of the British and Foreign Schools Society, and his untiring efforts to secure a university for Wales led to a commission to promote the idea in l854, the university itself to be established through voluntary contributions.

Owen's pleas to the government for financial help were typically unheeded, and it was public subscription that brought to fruition the centuries-old dream of Owain Glyndwr. In l872 Aberystwyth University opened its doors, followed by the University College of North Wales in l894 at Bangor. Like that of Aberystwyth, the much-loved Bangor college provided the foundations in so many different areas that led to the national revival of Wales, not only in the late l890's, but which is taking a leading part in the current revival of the Welsh language that began in the l960's.