St Kevin's Way - Pilgrim Path in Song

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Place Story

About St Kevin's Way - Pilgrim Path

St Kevin's Way - Pilgrim Path is a marked walking route through the Wicklow hills in County Wicklow, leading to Glendalough and the ancient Christian memory of St Kevin. The main route begins in Hollywood, with another route starting at Valleymount. Both paths meet at Ballinagee Bridge before continuing toward Wicklow Gap and descending by the Glendasan River into the Valley of Glendalough.



This historic pilgrim path is closely connected with Glendalough's early Christian heritage. In the sixth century, St Kevin founded a monastic settlement in the valley, and after his death in AD 618, Glendalough became one of Ireland's important monastic centres. Today the Monastic City is remembered through its round tower, medieval churches, old crosses, graveyard, lakes and mountain setting.



For modern walkers, hikers and pilgrims, St Kevin's Way offers a slower and more meaningful way to approach Glendalough. The route passes through fields, stone paths, open hills, river valleys and mountain landscape, allowing visitors to experience County Wicklow's natural beauty together with its Christian and monastic history. It is not simply a trail on a map, but a journey through one of Ireland's most memorable pilgrim landscapes.

LOCAL MEMORY

The memory behind the St Kevin's Way - Pilgrim Path song

St Kevin's Way - Pilgrim Path keeps alive an older way of approaching Glendalough: not as a quick stop by car, but as a valley reached slowly, through distance, weather and landscape. The walk helps visitors understand that Glendalough was not only a monastic site at the end of a route, but a place people travelled toward with purpose - for prayer, reflection, memory and devotion.



The modern marked trail does not need to claim that every step follows the exact medieval line. Its value is that it preserves the shape of pilgrimage: leaving one place, crossing hills and fields, passing through Wicklow Gap, following the Glendasan valley, and arriving at Glendalough on foot. The body becomes part of the experience; tiredness, weather, silence and distance change the way the valley is seen.



There is also a practical local memory in the route. St Kevin's Way depends on waymarkers, farmland access, respect for private land, weather awareness and the discipline of walking through a real Irish landscape. It is held together not only by history, but by landowners, walkers, local communities, pilgrim groups and the continuing attraction of Glendalough.



For visitors today, the path becomes a quiet lesson in Irish Christian heritage. It connects St Kevin's memory with the lived geography of County Wicklow: hills, fields, stone, water, river valley and monastic ruins. To walk it is to understand that Glendalough's story is not contained only in towers and churches, but also in the old human movement toward the valley.