Holy Island and Seahouses
31/7/06 15:01![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darkemeraldsWe spent yesterday on Holy Island. We spent the day before that getting there, on foot, from Berwick-upon-Tweed.
It was a 14-mile walk along some cliffs above the North Sea, then through some pastureland and Fields of Gold, then to the three-mile causeway by which you can get to Holy Island only at low tide. We walked the Pilgrim's Way, out across the slick, slimy flats left when the tide (barely) recedes, and arrived feeling quite grateful to some deity that we could finally sit down for a bit.
One of the wonderful things about this place is that no, they don't raise the causeway above the tide. The island has always been cut off from the mainland at high tide, and that's their way of life, and they leave it alone. It's a peaceful there when the tide's up.
There were re-enactors wielding swords and wearing chain mail in the ruins of the 11th-century priory on the island, and several of them came and drank merrily outside our hotel room window for quite a number of hours.
We walked out again yesterday, and found our way to a bus stop, where we cheated, gave our aching feet a rest, and gave our very sunburned faces and necks a break (where we come from there are lots of trees, you see, and we didn't quite anticipate the lack of cover), and got on a bus for the last five miles.
Today we cheated again and simply got a ride with our host to this next stop. We had tickets on a boat tour of the Farne Islands, a bird sanctuary, and we didn't want to miss it. We saw puffins! Puffins, and cormorants, and kittiwakes, and shags (hee!) and terns. And seals.
Tomorrow, a mild-mannered ten-mile walk to the village of Craster. Wednesday, we finish up at Amble. Then Edinburgh and a fancy-schmancy hotel with actual internet access in the rooms.
It's been grand so far.
It was a 14-mile walk along some cliffs above the North Sea, then through some pastureland and Fields of Gold, then to the three-mile causeway by which you can get to Holy Island only at low tide. We walked the Pilgrim's Way, out across the slick, slimy flats left when the tide (barely) recedes, and arrived feeling quite grateful to some deity that we could finally sit down for a bit.
One of the wonderful things about this place is that no, they don't raise the causeway above the tide. The island has always been cut off from the mainland at high tide, and that's their way of life, and they leave it alone. It's a peaceful there when the tide's up.
There were re-enactors wielding swords and wearing chain mail in the ruins of the 11th-century priory on the island, and several of them came and drank merrily outside our hotel room window for quite a number of hours.
We walked out again yesterday, and found our way to a bus stop, where we cheated, gave our aching feet a rest, and gave our very sunburned faces and necks a break (where we come from there are lots of trees, you see, and we didn't quite anticipate the lack of cover), and got on a bus for the last five miles.
Today we cheated again and simply got a ride with our host to this next stop. We had tickets on a boat tour of the Farne Islands, a bird sanctuary, and we didn't want to miss it. We saw puffins! Puffins, and cormorants, and kittiwakes, and shags (hee!) and terns. And seals.
Tomorrow, a mild-mannered ten-mile walk to the village of Craster. Wednesday, we finish up at Amble. Then Edinburgh and a fancy-schmancy hotel with actual internet access in the rooms.
It's been grand so far.