The Hallowed Path by Athol Bowden is a journey into Britain’s sacred geography, retracing a nearly 300-mile route from Glastonbury—Avalon’s earthly echo—to the tidal island of Anglesey, once the last stronghold of the druids. Blending history, travelogue, and spiritual meditation, Bowden follows traces of a path long thought lost, walked centuries ago by mystics, saints, and monarchs.
The route winds along ancient ley lines and forgotten greenways, through cathedral ruins, haunted moors, whispering stone circles, and yew groves heavy with legend. Each stage was once said to embody an elemental trial—earth, fire, water, air—transforming pilgrims through vision, penance, or sacred forgetting. Today, only fragments remain: scraps of oral history, a vanished vellum map, a poem buried beneath a Welsh cairn.
As Bowden re-creates the journey, he uncovers both the physical remnants of the path and its deeper meaning, weaving together Celtic and early Christian history, landscape writing, and mythological insight. The Hallowed Path asks whether the route’s literal existence matters—or if belief itself is the truest map, one that still hums quietly in the hollows of the British land.
The Hallowed Path: A Walk from Avalon to Anglesey
Athol Bowden