Pilgrims

Grand Tour of Wales:  Day 4

The cathedral of St. David's is located on the westernmost tip of Wales, way out on a rocky, windy peninsula down in a hollow of the River Alun.

Founded by St. David, the Welsh patron saint, in 550, the site has drawn pilgrims for over a millennium and a half.  In 1120, the Pope considered St. David's so spiritually important that he decreed two pilgrimages to St. David's was equal to one to Rome.

Reese, down in the hollow.

 

 

The nave (12th century).

Interior of the bell tower.

Beautiful Gothic archways.  As the cathedral expanded, exterior doors were filled in with stone to convert them into interior doors.

Playing a St. David's I-Spy game, given to the kids by the cathedral usher.

I-Spy.

Ghostly remains of the colorful medieval interior, before the white-washing of the Reformation.

15th-century ceiling in presbytery.

Sitting in front of the medieval 'close' (the stone fence enclosing the cathedral complex).

Tombstones propped against the close.

Atop The Thirty-Nine Steps, symbolic of the thirty-nine key tenets of Anglicanism.