West Country Pilgrim and travel insurance

I struggled to the top and, as I summited the ridge of the thirty-foot-high cairn, the Atlantic Ocean appeared before me in all its summer glory.  On the

peak, a flat, elliptical area about the size of a large room, I beheld a panoramic view of six counties.  Someone had lit a fire in a small hollow.

Spiced wood bestowed the tang of incense to the air.  I found a flat rock and rested there, staring towards Ben Bulben and the location of Yeats grave.

Then, reverently, ignoring the other hikers that milled about, I opened my book.  I slowly and carefully read Into the Twilight The Ragged

Wood, and The Hosting of the Sidhe.

        The host is riding from Knocknarea

        And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;

        Caolite tossing his burning hair

        And Niamh calling Away, come away:

        empty your heart of its mortal dream

I prayed for the sidhe to emerge once more from the hill-cairns.  I rose and made a last circle around the crest of the cairn, repeating lines like a

prayer.  And then I bounded down quickly, almost too soon, not wanting to draw out this moment of communion until the presence of other sightseers spoiled

it.  I had washed the bad taste of tourism from my mouth and was on the pilgrim??™s path at last.

That night, I lodged at Markree Castle on the outskirts of Yeats hometown.  I walked out into the fields and found an idyllic spot: the castle on my

right, a stream winding through the green wonder of fields, huge elder trees, and rocky hills topped with cairns, the same I had seen earlier from

Knocknarea.  Yellow and white flowers sprinkled the meadows.  Sixteen brown and white horses grazed on the opposite hill near a giant pair of trees that

blotted out the sky, towering over their fellows.  A single brown chestnut stallion with a white blaze on his forehead stood nearby, staring at me as if

unsure of my purpose.  Then, a wedding party honked its way down the long drive to the castle, frightening four beautiful steeds into a gallop across the

hillsides.  Seldom have I seen anything so magical.  I had crossed the threshold of the pilgrim world, where the rituals of our minds produce blessedness.