The Isle of Iona

Home of Scotland’s first monastery

Approaching the Isle of Iona by ferry from Mull. All photos by Tim Ward.

I opened my eyes and saw, in the bright morning light, the white head of a sheep, its dark eyes staring straight down at me, less than a foot away from my face. She was chewing a mouthful of grass. It must have been perplexing from her perspective to see a human head lying out on her breakfast field. The rest of me was stuffed into a blue pup tent that I had folded down like an envelope on top of myself, with just my head sticking out. The wind had come up so fiercely during the night I feared it would uproot the pegs and send the tent tumbling over field and into the sea — with me inside it — so I had battened it down, flat.

That tête-à-tête with the sheep remains my most vivid memory from visiting the Holy Isle of Iona in 1980. Back then, I was a zealous young Evangelical Christian, keen on discovering the European roots of my faith. I was also traveling on a shoestring, so roughing it overnight in a sheep pasture was nothing unusual for my 21-year-old self.

I had found the story of St. Columba — the Irish monk who came to Iona in the 6th century — deeply resonant. Columba left his homeland and crossed the Irish Sea in a small open boat with only 12 monks. On this tiny, remote island, they built Scotland’s first monastery and he became its abbot. From this tiny toehold, Christianity spread throughout all…