For the past sixteen years, Praying the Keeills Week has offered eight days of varied walks, talks, coach tours and times of fellowship - all in the glorious Manx countryside - exploring, with the help of well-informed guides - our Island's ancient keeill sites.  Keeills are Christian chapels built on the Isle of Man between the  8th and 12th centuries. The earliest ones were small, and built of earth.  Later they were made of stone, and were larger.  It's believed that there were around 200 keeills, of which visible remains of only about 35 can be seen today.  They had a variety of uses - family chapels, wayside shrines, places where a priest would rest whilst travelling round the Island, are a tangible link with our rich Celtic heritage.  Some had a walled graveyard around them, and others were built near a well.  Many can be found in some of the Island's most beautiful scenery , and were described by  our ancestors as 'thin places' where we can draw closer to God.  Prayer and meditation were important to those who worshipped in and around the keeills - and these ancient places of peace and tranquility offer us a chance to step aside from there busy-ness of life, and rediscover what we may have lost.