In Search of Island Chapels

David Gleed recommends a visit to Ramsay

Out there, on the horizon, islands beckon. They always do, even on seemingly uninviting, wet, murky days. There’s something mysterious and enchanting about them, something to be discovered... and getting there is always such an adventure!

There’s a spiritual pull too. These are places on the edge, distant from the mainland, where creation is raw and the gap between heaven and earth can seem wonderfully thin.

It will come as no surprise that on many of the islands over the centuries, small chapels and hermitages have been built and, where the pull has been particularly strong and land space available, larger churches and monasteries.

Arriving at the site of an early hermitage or chapel, perhaps now with the passage of time no more than a mound of stones with only the vaguest outline indicating its original use, and as one stands and lets the place sink in, one becomes aware of an echo reaching back over the centuries, linking then with now on a shared journey, as real then as it is now.

I remember a summer’s afternoon walking the coast path between St Non’s and St Justinian’s, during a pilgrim holiday in Pembrokeshire. Turning a corner along the closely cropped grassy path, the Sound of Ramsey came into full view and there beyond, on the other side, the island of tomorrows adventure, Ramsey Island – now that was good staging!

It’s only a short distance, but the crossing to the island must nonetheless never be taken lightly. The waters can be dangerous with jagged rocks and a whirlpool racing around (usually) submerged, Horse Rock. On my first visit some years before, the skipper insisted on taking us across the whirlpool – the sort of thing you probably only want to do once!

A bird sanctuary sensitively accommodating of both human and bird life, Ramsay Island has been in the care of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) since 1992.

Pilgrims have been coming to Ramsey Island since at least the second century when St Tyfanog built a small hermitage here, most probably alongside the stream in the tiny valley just up from the landing stage, not far from the farmhouse, now home to the island’s two full-time wardens. My hope on this visit was to gain a clearer understanding of the exact location of the hermitage. But time had done a thorough job in scattering the stones and while we might have an idea of it’s likely position, I was really none-the-wiser than on previous visits, but that was fine… maybe next time…