Irish Chaplaincy blog: (I Ain't got no) Barmouth Blues

Which is most beautiful: the Connemara coast or Cardigan Bay? I was discussing this with Chris, a Traveller from Galway, as we stood on the seafront at Barmouth. It's the little seaside town in North Wales where I spend a week every August, staying in the same place with the same group of people.

It all began in 2000: a millennium reunion for people who had met in the 1980s at the Sheffield University Catholic Chaplaincy and SVP (St Vincent de Paul Society). Our student SVP group was involved in various kinds of visiting, including a geriatric hospital and a cancer hospital; and we also organised parties for the children of Travellers (those were very lively affairs, and before I started at the Irish Chaplaincy it had been my sole contact with the world of Travellers).

I especially enjoyed my weekly visits to the elderly, most of whom were in various stages of dementia. It was perhaps the first insight for me that in any kind of social outreach the person supposedly giving seems in fact to be receiving at least as much. Also important for me was to be doing that in a faith context. Our SVP group would meet each week to pray together and to talk about how the visits had gone. It set the direction for what I was to do in my life: later joining a L'Arche community, where I spent 28 years, and then coming to the Irish Chaplaincy.

Deep friendships had been formed (and some marriages made) at Sheffield, and the Barmouth week was a hit from the start. The core of the group has been several couples, and our children in turn have developed close bonds with the other children that they've seen from year to year. We're fortunate to be able to stay in the big Jesuit Holiday House, which has views of the steep, sheep-filled hills to the back, and the spectacular Cardigan Bay to the front. It even has a sandy beach (as long as the tide is out!). There were 20 of us there this year, with some couples and some of the older 'children' unable to come. One year we reached 43, which was technically more than the house can hold (sssh, don't tell the Jesuits!), but we squeezed in somehow.

To read on see: www.irishchaplaincy.org.uk/i-aint-got-no-barmouth-blues/