retrospective holiday diary day 3: Lindisfarne

Saturday 22 September, and the weather was still fine,

sunny holiday weather

so we decided to take advantage of the sunshine, and do Lindisfarne.

Although Lindisfarne (Holy Island) is an island, it is accessible by causeway when the tide is low, so we could drive there and back. The road wouldn’t be open until 11am, so first we took the opportunity for a little archaeology: Neolithic rock carvings near Routin Linn (or Roughtin Lynn, or many other variants). The rock itself can bee seen from the air in Google maps. Close up, many "ring and cup" markings are visible:

today, we'd call that graffiti and vandalism

Then off to Lindisfarne, over the causeway, to the car park, and taking the hopper bus to the foot of the castle. First the tromp up to the castle itself:

Lindisfarne castle

Then we walked along to the shore, where we saw masses of carefully crafted little cairns. (We resisted the temptation to build one of our own.)

cairn as mini-castle?

We were really enjoying the beautiful weather: sunny, breezy, not too warm, but not yet “brisk”.

why is the sky that funny colour?

We walked round the back of the castle, and popped in to Gertrude Jekyll’s walled garden. Probably not one of her best, but then the location isn’t exactly perfect.

castle seen from Jekyll's garden

Finally, back to the village and a look round the priory.

the angled arch is part of the ceiling vaulting

The castle is just visible through this window:

a view of the distant castle

The red sandstone has weathered over the years into the most remarkable patterns.

natural carvings

On the way back to the mainland, we stopped off at the sand flats, and walked out a little way out, to get a better view of a load of seals sunning themselves on a sandbank in the sea.

distant seals in the sunlight

Then, just by the causeway on the way back, we saw a seal relatively close up.

closer seal, with a curlew at the back left,
and what a bird-savvy friend tells me is probably a juvenile oystercatcher at the back right

Marvellous day.