Bardsey Island, or to give it its Welsh name, Ynys Enlli, ynys yn y lli, the island in the current.
There's a little bit of magic about the whole of Llyn, the Lleyn peninsula, in north-west Wales. First of all, it's a long, long way from anywhere but itself, and it's only a destination : nobody goes there on the way to anywhere else.
Walking west from Caernarfon, it's hard not to imagine yourself on some type of mythic journey : you leave the battlements of the castle behind you to cross the empty spaces of Yr Eifl, the mountain you can see early in the video : and then you're into a landscape of clifftop paths, deserted beaches, old mine workings, seals bobbing up and down offshore coming to take a look at you, and the sea all around.
Like any long walk on your own, however many maps you carry, it's all a bit disorientating, and the objective may be to lose yourself anyway.There seems to be more sky, and more light, than inland. Signposts are in both languages, but point to places you've never heard of anyway, and just as easily point to Ireland or Patagonia. The sheep and gulls are happy with either language.
You climb down the steep forested hillside past the waterfall to the language centre at Nant Gwytheryn ( Vortigern's Valley ); up the other side to Pistyll with its overgrown churchyard, and along the beach at Porth Dinllaen to the Ty Coch inn, which I've always thought of as the pub at the end of the world ( the golf course at the end of the world is just behind it ).
And after three days, just when you're running out of land and the sea seems all around you, you get to Aberdaron, with its poets' church and the strange old churchyard running down the hill to the beach... and the next day you walk over to the next cove to meet Colin, the Bardsey boatman. And suddenly this feels like the end of a pilgrimage that you didn't know you'd started, crossing Bardsey Sound in a small boat to a holy island.
And Bardsey is known as the island of 20,000 saints - which I guess, in medieval times, just meant "a very big number" : at any rate, it seems a lot for a rock perched in the Irish Sea, a mile wide, a mile and a half long, the lighthouse at one end, the mountain at the other, the ruined monastery and a couple of farms in between. In winter there are only 7 people on the island, although in summer it fills up a little more : no electricity or running water ( water has to be raised from the wells ). It's home, bizarrely, to 60 % of the world population of Manx Shearwater ( a big seagull ), who fly south to winter in Patagonia and then back north, every year, to Bardsey. And as for the seals - well, just look at the photos.
Colin gives you four hours on the island before you have to return to the landing-place for the crossing back, but that's plenty of time to do pretty much everything : walk to the lighthouse, watch the seals, scramble up on the mountain, even time for a cup of tea at Cristin, one of the farms. But the point of the place is that there's not much to do, so you have to stop doing. And then you're back in the little yellow boat, bouncing across the sea back to Aberdaron, and the rest of your life.
But the experience stays with you, I'm not sure why : maybe because it's an island, maybe it's the sheer effort required to get there, perhaps the way that there's nothing really to do when you're there except walk from one end to the other and back, then sit and watch things...a place of deep calm. I quite fancy trying a week or so there one day ( not sure if I'll be able to convince Sofi about the no hot water bit, never mind the backpacking... )
The main website for more info is http://www.enlli.org/
The route I followed was more or less the same as the one devised by this company : http://www.edgeofwaleswalk.co.uk/ . They also have a pretty amazing video, for anyone who wants to see more : http://www.edgeofwaleswalk.co.uk/video.htm
