The Bishop of St Davids, Rt Revd Wyn Evans is to retire on October 4, his 70th birthday.

Elected in 2008, he is the 128th Bishop of St Davids.

His final engagement as Bishop will be the St Davids Diocesan Conference at UWTSD Lampeter on Saturday October 1st, three days before his birthday.

By that time he will have completed a three-year pilgrimage, In the Footsteps of St David, that has taken him to every parish - and every church - in the diocese. The final footsteps will be to the Cathedral, where he was Dean for 14 years prior to becoming Bishop, and the Rectorial Benefice of Dewisland which surrounds it.

He is the first Dean to have been elected as Bishop.

Bishop Wyn admits the Bench of Bishops was not somewhere he aspired to sit: "In 45 years of ministry," he says, "I had always focused on trying not to be Bishop.

"I was happy as Dean and I left the cathedral with things I still wanted to do. But in the circumstances I felt I couldn't say No."

And the circumstances were difficult indeed, following the controversial resignation of his predecessor, Bishop Carl Cooper.

So what were the challenges he faced coming into the job? "The main one was to keep the diocese together; to keep it settled, keep it focused."

Bishop Wyn will be remembered for driving the structural changes in the diocese foreseen by the diocesan strategy, Growing Hope, which emerged from the Church in Wales' 2020 Vision review.

And the Bishop has urged the diocese to select a successor that will be young enough to have the 15 years he believes are needed to complete the work he has begun. "I was always going to be transitional," he said, "but the Anglican Church does not do quick fixes, and nor should it."