Or, “How To Get To Portmagee Without a Car”

By Hut2Hut Pilgrimage Editor Amanda Wagstaff

The answer? By train, by bus, and on foot.

Everyone else might complain, but I love Irish public transportation. I’ve been able to get pretty much anywhere using Iarrod Eireann (Irish Rail) and Bus Eireann. Some rural places are a bit tricky without a car though, and Portmagee is one of those.

I left Heuston Station in Dublin at 7 a.m. After a quick change in Mallow, County Cork, I arrived in Killarney, Co. Kerry just after noon. I had a few hours to walk around town before catching a 3 p.m. bus to Caherciveen on the Ring of Kerry, so I helped myself to some Murphy’s Ice Cream and bought a St. Christopher’s medal at the Franciscan Friary. Christopher is the patron saint of travelers, and I thought he might be a good companion on this ‘traveler’s triathlon’ trip: train-bus-walk.

Once in Caherciveen, I started the 3-hour walk to Portmagee via Valentia Island. It takes about an hour to walk from the small town of Caherciveen to Reenard’s Point. Here, you can catch a quick ferry ride to Valentia Island. The Ferry takes about 5 minutes and a return ticket (for a pedestrian) is €2. I met a cyclist on the ferry, who recommended some sites on the island and told me about the different ways to walk to Portmagee:

• The flat eastern coast road
• The middle road through Chapelstown – quickest way
• Or the long western coast road – hill walking, the longest route, but amazing views and sites along the way

Portmagee is a tiny town on the Ring of Kerry, and it might otherwise be overlooked if not for the Skellig Islands just off the coast. Little Skellig is a sanctuary for a huge sea bird population, and its stained-white rocks stand in contrast to the dark grey rock of the nearby coast line. Great Skellig, more commonly known as Skellig Michael, was once the site of an early Celtic Christian monastery and pilgrimage site. Skellig Michael has become more well-known recently due to a certain movie franchise (‘the force’ is with this place, if you know what I mean), and it has become a popular destination for movie fans.

But I was more interested in the pilgrimage to Skellig Michael. Information about the history of Great Skellig and the early Christian monastery is scant, but it is thought that a monastery or hermitage was founded there by St. Fionán in the 6^th century. It has reputedly been a pilgrimage site for centuries, though I can’t seem to find any specific references to when this may have started. Perhaps pilgrimage in the medieval period was so common that there was no need to mention it.

Today, Skellig Michael is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it is maintained by the Irish Office of Public Works (OPW). In an effort to protect the site, only a limited number of people are allowed to land on the island each day. Special permits are given to local boatman each season, allowing them to bring the lucky few to the island. You can find a list of boatman and their contact information on the Skellig Experience website: http://www.skelligexperience.com/other-sea-tours/. The process of booking is very informal: just call around and see if anyone has an opening.

A booking does not guarantee a visit to the island, however, as boat trips are dependent on weather and sunshine is not always a guarantee of calm seas. On the morning of my scheduled trip, I walked down to the pier and joined dozens of other people anxiously awaiting the final word from the captains. The trip was a ‘Go!’

It was smooth sailing to the Skelligs. Our captain was a salty old boatman, not very talkative or emotive. There were about twelve people on my boat and we spent the hour-long boat trip getting to know one another, ooo-ing and ahh-ing over the views, and scrambling over each other to get photographs. As we got nearer to the island, I could see the hint of a trail up the steep slope of the rock. I could also see scaffolding and men in hardhats repairing damage from some fierce spring storms.

Once on the island, we were given a health and safety briefing before climbing the narrow, stone stairway towards the monastery. I fell into line, sandwiched between other visitors, and together we slowly made our way up. The halfway point is a grassy saddle. Here, the crowd was able to thin out a bit, as some people decided to rest while others continued the climb.

The monastery complex is very small, but typical for its time. Early Christian monasteries were usually founded by 13 monks, an abbot and 12 followers, alluding to Christ and the 12 apostles. This was likely the case with Skellig Michael, and it is unlikely that the tiny, barren island could support a larger population. The monks’ diet must have been austere – fish, seabirds and their eggs, and vegetables grown on the ‘garden terrace’ of the settlement. Grains and other foods would have been imported from the mainland, along with fuel for fires, as nothing thicker that a hardy grass shoot can be found on the exposed rocks.

Food may have been scarce, but the rocky island provided plenty of building material. There are three staircases (leading from various landing points), terraces, walls, and ‘clochán’ beehive huts all constructed by the ‘dry stone masonry’ method. I couldn’t help but marvel at these structures. The stones had to be quarried, transported, and carefully placed like puzzle pieces, all by hand. And here they are, more than a thousand years later! Some recent repairs have been made, but overall, the dry stone masonry seems to be pretty hardy against time and the elements.

The biggest threat now is people. As I climbed the stairways and wandered among the beehive huts, I was conscious of every stone that shifted under my step, every rock that I accidentally kicked out of place. I winced when I saw someone lean against a wall and knock loose a stone with a carelessly slung backpack. This is a vulnerable place. I felt like we were unintentionally eroding the physical remains, and that our presence on the island as voyeurs was eroding the sacred nature of it, too.

The masonry isn’t the only thing endangered on Skellig Michael. It is also nesting ground for sea birds, puffins in particular. Puffins build their nests in the ground so adeptly that they are sometimes difficult to spot. We were warned by the OPW staff to stick to the walking paths to avoid unwittingly crushing a puffin on her nest. Of course, people did not stick to the path. The desire to explore is too strong, especially among this crowd, who were already willing to make the difficult and inconvenient journey to this rock 8 miles from the Kerry coast.

This was a disturbing pilgrimage experience for me. Like the others, it provoked some self-reflection, but my thoughts were not positive. I questioned my ‘right’ to be there. And I pondered the tension between travel and tourism – the motivations for travel and the destructive aspects of tourism.

Back on land, I made a beeline for the nearest pub. An Irish Coffee and some thinking were in order. It was only 2:30 p.m. and I didn’t want my foul mood to dominate my experience of the Skelligs and Portmagee, so I made a plan to spend the remainder of my afternoon walking on Valentia Island. I downed my coffee and whiskey and set out across the bridge.

Earlier, I had noted “St. Brendan’s Well” on the map of Valentia Island and decided to make a small pilgrimage there. It was quiet and cloudy, few cars on the road. I could hear music and TV sounds coming from nearby houses, a few lawnmowers, and a donkey.

In my experience, holy wells are easy to miss, but I finally stumbled across this one in the middle of a field. There was evidence of recent pilgrims to the well – small statues of the Virgin Mary, rosary beds, handwritten notes, photographs, coins, and other ephemera in varying states of wear and decay. These were offerings to Brendan the Navigator, a well-loved saint in the west of Ireland. He is known for his missions to present-day Wales, Scotland, Brittany, and beyond. Some even claim that he was the first European to reach North America. Whatever his accomplishments, Brendan seemed like an appropriate saint to visit in a time of travel doubt.

In contrast to my visit to Skellig Michael that morning, my walk to St. Brendan’s Well made me feel grounded and at ease. Walking in silence can have that effect, but the understated well site was comforting, too, perhaps because it suggests a continuity. The human relationship to the holy well as a sacred site is still intact, whereas Skellig Michael has become something of a spectacle. It’s not my intention to disparage Skellig Michael. It is an incredible place with an inspiring history. I was moved by it’s aggressiveness and beauty. Brendan’s Holy Well is the opposite in some ways – anticlimactic, ugly even. But it didn’t seem to matter. Locals (and not-so-locals like me) still come to the site to participate in rituals, whether they attend an outdoor mass with a small group or meditate in solitude.

I ended the day back in Portmagee at the Fisherman’s Pub, where I chatted with a German couple and enjoyed some local fish and beer. I hadn’t resolved my doubts from earlier in the day, but I let them shift to the back of my mind. Some thoughts need time to ferment while you go about the business of living. The next morning, I did the triathlon in reverse: walk-bus-train. I arrived in Dublin mentally and physically exhausted, but I had a smile on my face.