Reviewing my writer's retreat

Bardsey Island, photo taken by me


In my last post for this blog (6 June), I reported that I’d booked myself a solitary writing retreat in North Wales.

And so it came to be. During the final week of June, I stayed by myself in a self-catering cottage called Nant in the picturesque hamlet of Llanystumdwy. Nant belongs to the Tŷ Newydd Writing Centre, the National Writing Centre of Wales.

I’d love to tell you all that I did loads of writing. But all I did, one rainy afternoon, was to look at a few poems on my laptop and do some minor editing. I learnt something from this though: it’s always good to edit one’s work, but there comes a time to leave it alone and start something new.

I learnt something else – that my introvert soul deeply craves time out. My solitary retreat was a tonic to my soul. One morning, I went for a long walk along the thickly wooded banks of the Afon Dwyfor, the mountain river that flows through Llanystumdwy to the sea. The rushing of the glittering water, bouncing off the leaves and accompanied by a constant litany of wrens and thrushes, wrapped me in a symphony of sound. I felt as if I were “inside a song”, to quote Sam Gamgee when he’s in the Elven realm of Lothlórien, in JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. I walked for those two hours in a kind of enchantment. It was gloriously healing, like walking through a living picture of Psalm 23.

I was also able to meet up with a fellow ACWer! It was a delight to meet the lovely Joy Margett, who lives in that area and whose medieval novels The Healing and The Pilgrim have blessed many in the ACW and beyond. We chatted a little about the beauties of the Llŷn Peninsula, which we both dearly love, and its rich Celtic Christian heritage.

Joy mentioned how much Bardsey Island meant to her as an ancient site of pilgrimage and with that in mind, I decided on my last evening on the Llŷn to drive to the furthest end of the peninsula. There I parked my car, on a hill near the Anelog mountain, and climbed a hill opposite to gaze at Bardsey Island in the light of the setting sun. I was all on my own, and it was a lonely place, quite foreboding, although there was a village nearby. I was very aware that I was standing on a high hill with a steep drop to the Irish Sea, with absolutely nobody else around, and with twilight beckoning. Yet I found the loneliness and sense of exposure exhilarating. All around me were beautiful views of the hills of the Llŷn and its wild coastline, mysterious in the evening light.

I have a few stories from my stay on the Llŷn … and I’ll share them next time. I may not have done much writing, but my soul was nourished, and a well of inspiration has begun to well up.

May you, my fellow writers, be nourished and blessed this strange summer. May you find in your souls a space to listen to the ever-flowing, living water of the Spirit of God. May our Creator lead you to green pastures and quiet pools, to bubbling brooks and tumbling waterfalls, to mountain ridges above the clouds. May you find within yourself the words He wants you to share with the world.

I’m an Anglican lay minister: my day job is administrator for the education and learning department of the United Reformed Church. I wrote a devotional for the anthology Light for the Writer’s Soul published by Media Associates International, and my short story ‘Magnificat’ appears in the ACW Christmas anthology Merry Christmas Everyone.