3 day-long walk honours Tuam and Bessborough babies
A three-day commemorative walk to honour the memories of the children who died at Mother and Baby Homes in Cork and Galway took place last weekend.
The walk, which covered 215km, began from the site of the former St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co. Galway on Friday 21 August, and finished at the site of the former Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork on Sunday 23 August.
Led by Galway campaigner Anne Ronayne Fahey in partnership with Little Light of Love, the walk took participants through towns and villages in Galway, Clare, Limerick, and Cork.
Arriving at the gates of Bessborough, they then held a small vigil at the memorial on the site.
Anne Ronayne Fahey said: “It was a beautiful event, and we got a lovely reception from everyone down at Bessborough. It’s going to take me another few days to properly absorb it.
“It was such an outpouring of love, from people that we had never met before, but who it feels like we’ve known forever,” she said.
She said that the group intend to look into doing similar walks to other sites, but that these have not yet been confirmed.
Fahey previously hiked up Knockma, a hill in east Galway 796 times between 2023 and 2025, once for each of the children recorded as having died at the Tuam home.
The walkers carried with them a lantern which has formed part of remembrance in Galway since 2020.
A Little Light of Love, a relay of walkers between Mayo and Galway, organised walks from Jack’s Old Cottage in Islandeady, Co. Mayo to the site of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home between 2020 and 2024, until the site was closed for excavation and exhumation.
Of the walkers last weekend, representatives of the groups said: “Yesterday, we were so incredibly proud to stand there and welcome them to Bessborough.
“To see them arrive after everything them had given, endured, and achieved was truly emotional.
“We know that the beautiful lantern they have brought to Bessborough will continue to shine with hope,” they said.
Dublin City councillor Noelle Brown (Social Democrats) who was born in the Bessborough home, and who also attended the event, said that it was a “really beautiful” experience.
“It was the first event related to Bessborough where I have not left completely emotionally distraught,” she said.
Campaigners have been calling for the site at Bessborough to be purchased by the state and turned into a national park and remembrance site, after planning for an apartment development was granted for the site in July of this year.