Gallarus Oratory 

Walking in the Footsteps of Saints: Ireland’s Pilgrim Paths

Long before the Camino de Santiago drew modern walkers to Spain, Ireland had its own dense network of pilgrim routes paths worn down by monks, scholars and penitents making their way to monastic settlements scattered across the island. Many of these routes predate the continental Camino by centuries, tracing journeys to early Christian saints whose names still mark the landscape: Kevin, Brendan, Finbarr, Colmcille. Several are now officially recognised by the Camino Society Ireland and formally linked to the wider European Camino network, letting today’s walkers collect pilgrim stamps just as they would in France or Spain.

What makes Ireland’s pilgrim paths distinctive is how naturally they sit inside the country’s better-known long-distance trails. You don’t need a dedicated “pilgrimage holiday” to walk in the footsteps of these early saints on several of Hillwalk Tours’ most popular routes, the pilgrim path is the trail, or runs alongside it as an optional detour.

The Dingle Way & Cosán na Naomh (The Saint’s Path)

On the Dingle Way, walkers pass early Christian beehive huts (clocháns)  small, corbelled stone dwellings built by monks and hermits from the 6th century onwards, still standing along the trail today along with ogham stones and the iconic Gallarus Oratory, often called Ireland’s best-preserved early Christian church. The trail also runs beneath Mount Brandon, named for St Brendan the Navigator, whose own pilgrim route, Cosán na Naomh (The Saint’s Path), climbs to the summit where legend says Brendan had the vision that sent him sailing west centuries before Columbus.

 Beehive huts (clocháns)

The Kerry Way, Cnoc na dTobar & Skellig Michael

Further south, the Kerry Way brings walkers within reach of two remarkable pilgrimage sites: the Cnoc na dTobar pilgrim path, and visible out to sea and reachable by boat from the Kerry coast Skellig Michael, the 6th-century monastery perched 600 steps above the Atlantic.

Few Irish pilgrimage sites have taken on quite as strange a second life as Skellig Michael. Since its appearance as Luke Skywalker’s island exile in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, the monastery has become something of a pilgrimage site in its own right for film fans a place where medieval monastic silence and modern pop-culture pilgrimage now genuinely overlap. The phenomenon has snowballed into its own local cottage industry: nearby gift shops sell “Skellig Wars” merchandise (T-shirts printed with Go mbeidh an Fórsa leat  “May the Force be with you” in Irish alongside images of the beehive cells and hooded Jedi silhouettes), and the island now draws a steady stream of visitors whose motivation has nothing to do with early Christianity at all. Whatever draws people there, the effect has been to bring renewed attention  and renewed footfall to a site that might otherwise remain a niche interest for historians and hardened hikers alone.

Skellig Michael

Connemara & Mám Éan

Out west, the Connemara & West of Ireland trail passes near Mám Éan (the “Pass of the Birds”), a small, atmospheric pilgrimage site tucked into the Maumturk Mountains quiet even by Connemara standards, and strikingly different in mood on a clear day versus a cloud wrapped one.

St Kevin’s Way Now Part of the Wicklow Way & Glendalough Trails

St Kevin’s Way is no longer offered by Hillwalk Tours as a standalone tour. This ancient pilgrim route which follows 6th-century Saint Kevin’s path from Ballinagee Bridge over the Wicklow Gap into the monastic valley of Glendalough  is now included as one of the featured legs within our broader Wicklow Way & Glendalough Trails itineraries, alongside the Wicklow Way proper and the Glenealo Valley/Spinc loop walk. Walkers can still follow in St Kevin’s footsteps and visit the atmospheric monastic ruins at Glendalough  it’s simply built into a wider Wicklow walking holiday rather than sold on its own.