The Naked Hermit

Descending into the darkness of a long-abandoned hermit's cave, wading naked into an icy sea to pray, spending the night on a sacred mountain, Nick Mayhew-Smith recounts an extraordinary one-man mission to revive the ancient devotions of Britain's most enigmatic holy places. Based on ground-breaking research into the transition from Paganism to Christianity, this book invites the reader on a journey into the heart of the Celtic wilderness, exploring the deep-seated impulse to mark natural places as holy. It ends with a vision of how we can recover our harmony with the rest of creation: with the landscape, the weather and the wildlife, and ultimately with the body itself. Follow the footsteps of holy men and women such as Columba, Patrick, Cuthbert, Gildas, Aidan, Bede, Ninian, Etheldreda, Samson and others into enchanting Celtic landscapes, and learn the unvarnished truth behind the stories that shape our spiritual and natural heritage.

A travel writer and former Financial Times journalist, Nick Mayhew-Smith spent five years visiting seven hundred sacred sites to write his bestselling book Britain's Holiest Places (Lifestyle Press, 2011). It was turned into a six-part television series shown on BBC4 in 2013. Nick was nominated Writer of the Year by BBC Countryfile in 2012.

Acknowledgements ix Timeline xi Map xiv Introduction 1 1 Sacred trees 19 2 Celtic nature theology 40 3 The naked hermit of Mount Sinai 62 4 A company of birds 86 5 A desert in the sea: hermit islands 107 6 In for the chill: sacred bathing 132 7 The serpent's lair: harrowing caves 166 8 Misty peaks 189 9 Lessons from the Celtic shore 210 Doxology: Creator 219 Notes 220 Bibliography 233 Copyright acknowledgements 240 Index 241