Saturday 22 September, and the weather was still fine,
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| 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 be seen from the air
in Google maps. Close up, many "ring and cup" markings are visible:
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| 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:
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| 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.)
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| cairn as mini-castle? |
We were really enjoying the beautiful weather: sunny, breezy, not too warm, but not yet “brisk”.
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| 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.
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| castle seen from Jekyll's garden |
Finally, back to the village and a look round the priory.
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| the angled arch is part of the ceiling vaulting |
The castle is just visible through this window:
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| a view of the distant castle |
The red sandstone has weathered over the years into the most remarkable patterns.
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| 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.
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| distant seals in the sunlight
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Then, just by the causeway on the way back, we saw a seal relatively close up.
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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.
Heh -- you must have very narrowly avoided running into me -- I went down to Berwick to meet up with family that weekend, and we were at Lindisfarne for most of the day on the 22nd. Did you have a wander around the lime kilns?
ReplyDeleteSmall world! We had a look at the outside of the lime kilns, but didn't go in. According to my photo log, we were loitering outside 12:10-12:15, before going off to look at the cairns.
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