St Dwynwen’s Day: A walk with ancient Celtic lovers for the Welsh Valentine’s Day

25 January marks a day for romance in the Welsh calendar. David Atkinson heads for a very special fifth-century church to celebrate

St Dwynwen’s Church on Llanddwyn Island (Getty/iStock)

It’s not the most obvious place for a cwtch (Welsh for a hug). But a ruined church on a remote headland by a windswept beach will be the must-visit place for Welsh lovers on 25 January, despite the cold weather.

This date marks St Dwynwen’s Day, the Welsh equivalent of Valentine’s Day. Some love-struck locals may give cards, while others may exchange carved Welsh lovespoons to declare their affection. I’m joining a few hardy souls and taking a socially distanced stroll to Llanddwyn Island, a remote peninsula off the southwest corner of Anglesey, to visit the ancient stone church founded by Dwynwen in the 5th century.

Dwynwen is the patron saint of Welsh lovers, her tragic tale of lost love appealing to the melancholy of the Celtic soul in a country known for its ancient burial sites, lost-in-time myths, and fondness for arcane Bardic poetry. Her story is reminiscent of the ancient legends first published in the 12th century in the Mabinogion, the book of Welsh folk tales.

Dwynwen was, according to Welsh folklore, the most spirited daughter of King Brychan Brycheiniog of Brecon. But when her father forbade her marriage to Maelon, the son of a rival king, Dwynwen pledged to devote herself to God if she could be cured of the pain of her unrequited love. She crossed the mountains of Snowdonia in search of spiritual isolation, and eventually settled at the fringes of post-Roman-occupied Wales in Anglesey. She is said to have died around AD460, leaving a site of pilgrimage for young lovers to seek her saintly blessing.

Age of the saints

I’ve come to north Wales for an all-weather walk, tracing a windswept, seven-mile circular route from the car park at the Newborough Warren National Nature Reserve. Llanddwyn Island lies just beyond the village of Newborough (home to the well-known Marram Grass restaurant) and offers heart-leaping views of the Menai Strait and the mountains of Snowdonia beyond.

The walk starts with a forest trail, the corsican pines and silver birches alive with red squirrels and roosts of ravens. I then start to drop down through the sand dunes to Newborough’s Blue Flag beach, the tide-washed pebbles forming a tapestry of mineral-infused colours among the seaweed and driftwood.

After yomping along the beach for a couple of miles, I approach a weathered sign that marks the perimeter of Llanddwyn Island, where the headland is sometimes cut off by high tides. An ancient Celtic cross on the horizon beckons me onwards, and I climb the stone steps through a series of elaborately carved gates, swirling with Celtic designs, to enter the inner sanctum of Dwynwen, where she first founded her church.

Today that church may be ruined, but it still feels imbued with the spirituality of Wales’s age of the saints, and has a presence that compels visitors to run their fingers along the ancient stone altar. As the weather closes in, I find wave-smoothed pebbles tucked among the stones, messages of loves lost and won scrawled upon them.  

The church has been an important place of pilgrimage since the Middle Ages, with the medieval love poet, Dafydd ap Gwilym, first popularising Dwynwen’s story in the 13th century. But Dwynwen has also enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years, with younger people adopting her symbolism as part of their Welsh heritage. The site is now protected by Cadw, the historic environment service of the Welsh government, to ensure the ancient monument remains intact.

“Dwynwen has always been important to the people of Wales, her story deeply intertwined with the landscape of the country, much as other Welsh stories that have stretched through the centuries,” says Adele Thackray, Cadw’s manager of lifelong learning.

Heading home

As the weather closes in, I find wave-smoothed pebbles tucked among the stones, messages of loves lost and won scrawled upon them

I finish by exploring the wider island. Nearby, on the wave-crashed tip of the headland, a small, stoic lighthouse, Twr Mawr, faces off the elements, and a couple of pilot’s cottages are manned by Natural Resources Wales during summer months to research the local ecosystem. One of the cottages has a fittingly stark exhibition about Dwynwen, a wood-carved effigy depicting her with long, flowing robes and cascading ringlets. Outside, Ffynnon Dwynwen is an ancient well favoured for fortune telling – the rapid movement of the resident eels is said to be a sign of whether your relationship will endure.  

By now the wind is blowing a biblical gale, and the dog-walkers are cowering inside a small shelter, as I hike the trail back towards the beach. Llanddwyn may feel like the ends of the earth but its innate sense of ancient spirituality remains almost tangible against the winter chill.  

So forget St Valentine. If you’re feeling the love today, then there’s nowhere more poignantly romantic in Wales for a cwtch — one that comes with the sacred blessing of an ancient saint.

More information

Go to Visit Wales; Go North Wales; and Cadw.