IN CELTIC CROSS COUNTRY

Many of us have done the annual jaunt to Cornwall. We’ve joined the throngs on the M5, gasped at how long it takes to get to Watergate Bay, and reassured the kids that yes, we will spend a day at the Eden Project.

But do we notice anything else? Like the villages you see signs for, named after saints you’ve never heard of? The occasional Celtic cross you whizz past on the road, or the strange formations you see as you traverse Bodmin Moor?

Celtic Cornwall

All these are a sign that there is another side to Cornwall – more mysterious, and more ethereal. The people we have come to call the Celts attached great religious importance to the region, partly because they believed seashores and estuaries were important borders between this world and the afterlife.

Such beliefs were not completely crushed when Christianity took over, because, for a while at least, this area kept its own religious identity – one where, among other things, women were treated as equal in