Pembrokeshire isn’t pilgrimage country any more. Things were different in the 12th century when Pope Calixtus II made a special case of St David’s – Pembrokeshire’s pocket cathedral – and declared: “Two pilgrimages to St David’s is equal to one to Rome, and three pilgrimages to one to Jerusalem.”
St David’s is still wonderfully remote, perched on the western edge of Wales, only a few miles from the cliffs that provided the cathedral’s purple, pink and grey stone.
I’ve been going to Pembrokeshire several times a year, ever since I was born, in 1971. At first, my family stayed in Manorbier Castle, an enchanting, rambling Norman building wrapped around a low hill that overlooked a pebble and sand beach flanked by a neolithic cromlech.
Then, in the early 1980s, my parents bought a cottage a few miles away, near the village of St Twynnells, and it is round there that, every year, I make my own daily, mini-bicycle pilgrimages to the nearby churches.
My bicycle pilgrimages never take more than an hour. That means churches within a five-mile range – and there are only half a dozen within that range. And yet that handful of churches never bores me. Their familiarity is comforting; much more comforting is their emptiness. In 25 years of these mini-pilgrimages, I’ve found other people in these churches fewer than 10 times.
I begin with the Norman tower churches that crest a ridge overlooking the sea: St Twynnells and St Petrox. Plain, four-square naves plus straight, crenellated towers: the simplest, robust Christianity made limestone.
Then down the hill to Stackpole Church, buried in a valley, with its side-chapel crammed with the medieval and classical tombs of the Lorts and the Campbells – later the Earls of Cawdor who built nearby Stackpole Court, a Palladian pile sadly demolished in the 1960s.
In the 18th century, the Campbells dammed a stream running by Stackpole and created the Bosherston Lily Ponds – a necklace of pools dotted with lilies. It’s now all National Trust land – and empty most of the year except for a brief peak period in August.
Then it’s back on the bike for what I think – in a completely biased way – is the greatest cycle ride on earth, along the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. Geology has conspired with nature to produce flat limestone cliffs, with arches looping out of them, and 100ft-tall “stacks” stranded off the coast – perfect breeding grounds for guillemots and choughs.
And then, nestling in a cleft of the cliffs at Pembrokeshire’s most south-western point – St Govan’s Head – is a 14th-century chapel.
Here, St Govan, a 6th-century Irish monk, took refuge from rampaging pirates. Magically, the cliff opened up and wrapped itself around Govan to hide him from his pursuers. You can still see his rib marks in the rockface where the stone pressed against him. When my father showed me the marks as a child, I was astounded. I still am.
…….
Back on the bike, along the cliff, past Stack Rocks (more guillemots) and the Green Bridge of Wales, a vast, natural arch …
Now I’m on the British Army’s sprawling artillery range, sprinkled with old tanks, battered by target practice. In 1938, the Army took over this farmland in preparation for the war – and they’ve used it ever since, firing out to sea in a protected marine exclusion zone, which ships steer well clear of. Farmhouses have fallen into controlled ruin. Hedges have grown fat and straggly. But the medieval Flimston Chapel is kept in perfect nick – its tombs to the three Lambton brothers, killed in the Boer War, are still hung with their regimental swords.
And then the last church: St Mary’s, Warren, another medieval tower church with a 19th-century spire – added by the Admiralty as a navigational device for ships out at sea; the church providing guidance in a metaphorical and real sense.
Inside, the church is a unique memorial to the years when the German army used the range from the 1960s to the 1990s. A German flag, a Union Jack and a Welsh dragon nestle next to each other over the nave. The back of the church is decorated with badges from all the armoured regiments that worshipped here. The church donation box – a model of the church – is inscribed with the word “Donations” and its German translation, “Spenden”. The church organist accompanies services on an organ that once belonged to Mendelssohn.
St Mary’s provides a near-perfect testimony to post-war rapprochement between two old foes, and the power of the Church to heal wounds.
I climb on my bike and the steep hill homewards is – almost – pain-free, after an hour of heart-pumping, soul-lifting pleasure.
Harry Mount is author of How England Made the English (Penguin)
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