Pilgrimage Day on Iona

To be a pilgrim is to set aside time to go to a sacred place for a spiritual reason. All of us left our homes in Australia, Ireland, Canada and the United States to spend a week on Iona learning more about Celtic Christianity and finding a more personal connection to the Divine. Part of that week was a walk round the isle. These photos cover my day. We started in the nunnery with a song: Mother I feel you under my feet, Mother I hear your heartbeat.

During the day we had times of silent reflection and times of chatting along. We crossed fields and a golf course? Yup there is a golf course for very brave golfers, who can handle sheep on the course.

In the morning we hiked out to St Columba Bay, the place where he landed in 563! It’s a rocky place. But we were encouraged to take a piece of Iona home. It was a good thing we were also encouraged to leave our backpacks at the top of the hill. This meant we didn’t take took many rocks home. There was still miles to go on our walk.

After lunch at St Columba Bay we headed to the other end of the island and The Well of Eternal Youth, associated with St Bridget. It’s the last photo on the bottom the grid. A small pool fed by a spring. We were encouraged to dip our hands and splash our senses: eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. The view from up there on the top of the island was quite something. Nice to see the abbey in the distance, we were close to the end!