Pilgrim’s Journal — Pembrokeshire: Church Door Cove

Some places call us back.

Others quietly call us onwards.

During my first visit to Pembrokeshire, I was looking online to see what else there was to explore when another place unexpectedly appeared among the suggested searches.

Church Door Cove.

I laughed.

How could I possibly ignore a name like that?

Having unknowingly begun my Pembrokeshire pilgrimage beside a natural church, the idea of returning to walk through a natural church door felt almost irresistible.

It seemed too perfect not to follow.

So when I returned to Pembrokeshire on my second visit, Church Door Cove became my first destination.

As I approached along the coast, I could already see the great opening carved through the cliffs.

Nature had shaped an immense stone doorway where sea and sky met.

Without giving it much thought, I smiled to myself.

It felt only right to walk through it.

Pilgrims have passed through sacred doorways for centuries.

This one simply happened to have been carved by the sea.

Descending the long flight of steps felt strangely fitting. It was as though the landscape was inviting me to enter gradually, just as St Govan's Chapel had done a few weeks before.

There, I had sat before the natural arch, where a burst of sea spray had reached me and later revealed the vesica piscis upon my camera lens.

This time, I wasn't just sitting before an arch.

I was walking barefoot through cool rock pools, passing beneath one.

As I walked through, my attention was immediately drawn to the rock all around me.

The inside of the natural doorway was lined with shells.

Everywhere I looked.

Hundreds of dog whelks.

I actually laughed out loud.

"So... perhaps I got a little carried away."

Only a few weeks earlier, I'd carefully lifted a single dog whelk shell from the mud outside St Govan's Chapel, wondering at the beautiful symmetry of finding a hermit's shell outside a hermit's chapel.

I'd never found one before, so I had assumed it was quite a rare little discovery.

Standing there surrounded by hundreds of them, I felt a little silly.

In fact, I never even thought to photograph them.

Looking back, I'm glad I didn't.

It reminds me how differently I understood that moment.

For a moment, I wondered whether I'd simply attached too much meaning to the first shell.

As I write this now, another thought surfaces.

The shell hadn't become less meaningful because there were hundreds more.

If anything, its meaning was still unfolding.

The first shell hadn't been special because it was rare.

It had been special because it had opened my eyes.

Now I could see them everywhere.

Only this time, I wasn't looking at a shell left behind.

I was surrounded by living dog whelks, each carrying the same beautiful spiral I'd first encountered outside St Govan's Chapel.

Living their best life.

A congregation of breathing spirals gathered around nature's holy portal.

Perfect, really.

I didn't see that perfection at the time.

If I'm honest, I walked away feeling slightly deflated.

I'd become so attached to the shell I found outside St Govan's Chapel, and to the beautiful symmetry of finding it where I did, that I completely overlooked what was actually being offered.

It wasn't another shell.

It was the one who creates the shell.

Looking back now, that feels infinitely more beautiful.

The spiral I had so lovingly held in the palm of my hand hadn't ended with an empty home.

Here, the Earth had quietly introduced me to hundreds of living dog whelks, each patiently carrying that same spiral through life.

Somehow, the conversation hadn't become smaller.

It had come alive.

I just didn't know it yet.

Eventually, I turned to leave and headed towards the staircase.

I began climbing the long flight of steps back towards the clifftop.

After only a few steps, something else caught my attention.

I stopped, turned around, and walked back down.

Beneath the metal staircase, set into the concrete that anchored it in place, someone had carefully arranged a little smiley face from beach pebbles.

I couldn't help chuckling.

I found myself silently thanking whoever had placed it there.

It immediately lightened my mood.

Whatever I had been carrying a few moments before gently dissolved.

I ascended the steps with joy.

Looking back now, I see something else as well.

Almost without realising it, my attention was beginning to settle on something it hadn't before...

Pebbles!

I thought nothing of it at the time.

Only now do I realise those little stones smiling beneath the staircase were, in their own way, introducing the next chapter of the pilgrimage.