“FROM where shall my help come?” cried the Psalmist in despair, riven by uncertainty and doubt.
If you’re burdened with the problem of where to book a holiday this summer, it might be worth employing the poet’s tactic yourself. For, in both instances, the answer could well be the same: look to the hills.
Standing at the foot of an enigmatic landmass in the heart of Wales, and gazing up to the summit, I certainly felt in need of divine assistance to get myself moving.
As holidays go, my exploration of Bannau Brycheiniog (the Brecon Beacons) turned out to be up there among the best of them, although the persistent drizzle and low cloud fringing the summit on day one cast shadow on my hesitant soul.
Yet this is Skirrid, a holy mountain, and it soon beckoned me on to its healing flanks. Known as Ysgyryd Fawr (“The great split”), this is the sort of natural landmark crying out for stories to be written, since the split in question refers to its dramatic broken summit. Skirrid’s twin peaks loom over the amiable town of Abergavenny, in Monmouthshire, a perfect base for walking the surrounding hills and mountains.
Local lore has it that the mountain cracked at the moment of Christ’s crucifixion, either by lightning strike or the earthquake mentioned in Matthew 27. A landslip during the last Ice Age is the rather less poetic explanation for its fragmentated peaks. Yet sacred landscapes generously bear the weight of any number of legends, lending their spirituality to all who come.
My first encounter with Skirrid is certainly etched in my memory: a pilgrim’s exercise in atonement and apology. Both these feelings were directed towards the mountain itself, since I had disgracefully omitted its sacred contours from a guide book I had written about “all” the holy places in Britain in 2011, dismissing the legend of its peak as implausible.
Some ten years later, I had so revised my view of landscape lore that this holy mountain now seems to me to embody the very essence of spirituality. I climbed with a convert’s zeal for venerating the natural world as God’s greatest creation.
A gentle path beside fields soon turns into a relatively short but brutal section of climb. Steps supplied by the National Trust hardly dulled its penitential significance as I worked my way through bracken and brambles.
And then, it stops as suddenly as it began, the path easing into a long, steady ridgeway walk leading eventually to journey’s end. Here, the clouds swirled around me, parting to reveal the greenest of valleys, and glimpses of the surrounding peaks.
Every hill climb is a story written in footsteps. And Skirrid is not the only mountain in the area to inspire a memorable response. Another walk to the south of Abergavenny takes you up the blistering slopes of the Blorenge, a hill easily visible during my ascent of Skirrid. Blorenge’s moorland heather rising above the meandering River Usk is thought to be the purple-headed mountain that drew praise for God in the hymn “All things bright and beautiful”.
A third striking summit, to the north-west of Abergavenny, is Pen-y-Fal, or the Sugar Loaf. Its perfect conical shape does look vaguely as if a giant has upended a sugar dispenser over the landscape, albeit dyed a very Welsh shade of green.
Bare though they look from the streets of Abergavenny, these hills are dotted with sites of interest, their burial cairns in particular echoing distant rituals that long predate the arrival of Christianity. Perhaps the Bronze Age folk were drawn, as we are today, by the holiness of a hill. It’s a curiosity that so many of their monuments are sited just below the summit — Stonehenge the most famous example — but Blorenge has a cairn beside its peak.
There have been many churches built confidently on the summits of dramatic mounds in south-west England and southern Wales, Glastonbury being the most iconic. Yet nearly all have fallen into picturesque ruin. It’s a gentle and meandering train of thought that brings us back to the top of Skirrid, where you will see a rather small collection of stones beside the trig point. Here are the barely recognisable traces of its own hilltop chapel once dedicated to St Michael, its door pillars standing at knee height.
Even the archangel’s fiery protection seems unable to conquer the spiritual power of a peak. Sanctuaries in the landscape set apart by nature, they belong to nobody, but also to everybody. I found reconciliation on Skirrid’s misty summit, and a sense that all other endings are possible.
Travel details
The best starting point for a walk up Skirrid is the National Trust car park on the B4521, about two miles north-east of Abergavenny.
The town’s tourist information centre is located at Town Hall, 61 Cross Street, Abergavenny NP7 5EH, with full information on local walks; also available online at: visitabergavenny.co.uk
Nick Mayhew-Smith, with Guy Hayward, is author of Britain’s Pilgrim Places: The first complete guide to every spiritual treasure (Lifestyle Press Ltd, 2020), a traveller’s guide to holy sites across the UK.
Other holy hills around Britain
Pendle Hill, Lancashire
Unusual as a landscape sacred in such Reformed tradition, Pendle Hill is famed for the part it played in the birth of the Quaker movement. In 1652, George Fox climbed it one evening, and had a vision of a glorious harvest of souls awaiting conversion in the fields below. The footpath starts at Pendle House Farm, Barley Lane, Barley BB9 6LG.
Nick Mayhew-SmithMynydd Carningli (the Mount of Angels) in Pembrokeshire, at dawn
Carningli, Pembrokeshire
The “rock of angels” is well named; for it was on its summit that the Celtic missionary St Brynach spent the night in the company of his heavenly companions. These days, pilgrims are likely to be greeted by a cloud of butterflies, and spectacular views over the Irish Sea. A route starts on Feidr Bentick Lane, from nearby Newport, from the A487.
Cross Fell, Cumbria
One of the harshest landscapes in England, Cross Fell sits on a windswept, boulder-strewn plateau, a place of natural peril that helps explain the large cross-shaped structure on its summit. Legend has it that St Augustine of Canterbury himself blessed this blasted peak, driving out the devils from a landscape nicknamed “Fiends Fell”. Take maps and plan your route carefully.
St Catherine’s Hill, Winchester
A gentler and thought-provoking hill is St Catherine’s, located to the west of Winchester, and offers fine views of the city and cathedral. On site are the ruins of chapel dedicated to its patron saint, and a rare mizmaze: a labyrinth carved many centuries ago. To this day, many pilgrims walk its sinuous lines. A path up the hill leads from the car park on Garnier Road.
The Whangie, Auchineden Hill, Stirlingshire
If heading to the west coast of Scotland this year for some holy-island hopping, a detour to the strange rock formation on the side of Auchineden Hill gives pause for thought. A huge chasm has been cut through an outcrop of rock that is said, in legend, to be lashed by the devil flicking his tail. The path starts from Queen’s View car park on the A809, just over a mile north of Carbeth.