Healing at Saint Onenn’s Holy Well, Brittany
words + photos by Elyn Aviva
It was a place you couldn’t find unless you’d already been there—or unless you found someone to take you there, someone with permission to cross from here to there….
While my husband, Gary, and I spent the day in Paimpont, our traveling companions visited a holy well in the nearby village of Tréhorenteuc. By chance, they had met someone in a bookstore who told them about it and led them to it. They had dangled their feet in the water and meditated, one by one. It was a lovely place.
Eager to visit it, I asked them where it was. Just up the road from the bookstore—easy to find, they assured us.
The next day Gary and I drove to Tréhorenteuc and followed the road out of town. Soon the pavement ended and the road narrowed. We nearly high-centered the car as we crept over humps on the farm lane that led to the top of a hill. We were sure that at any moment we’d see a sign announcing “Ste Onenn’s Well.” After all, our friends had walked there from town. How far could it be? Maybe it was over to the right, in that clump of trees. Or just over the horizon.
Half an hour later, defeated, we carefully turned the car around and drove back into town. We parked and walked back up the hill. And down, and up again. I followed a trail into the woods. No luck.
We walked over to the tourist office and asked for help.
Claudine looked at us uncertainly. “It’s on private land, not open to the public.”
Elyn Aviva
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;)
