River Breamish Caravan Club Site, Powburn, Northumberland

I heard the rain overnight, but by morning it seemed to have cleared and we were in for an acceptable day as far as the weather was concerned, but then I have always been a “glass half full” sort of person. Obviously “cloudy and no rain” in this part of the world means no heavy rain, but probably drizzly with cloud very low so as to obscure distant views. We will have to adapt to this new-speak.

After breakfast Chris accepted my Day One tour plan without hearing about the other two days’ schedule I had mapped out, which was a bit odd given that Day Two and Three were interchangeable, to be chosen according to the weather and the mood we fell out of bed in. I did hope that he would not regret his hasty decision.

We headed north on the A697, immediately continuing north on the road we had accessed Powburn, then turned toward the coast at Wooler via the B6525 and the B6353, emerging onto the A1 near Beal which is little more than a once-upon-time railway station. We continued due east and crossed on to Holy Island on the causeway access that is cut off by the tide for five hours a day, and which encourages access for only about the same span. The island is small, just one and a half miles by one, with little perceivable elevation, only enough to keep it from being swamped by the tide. Visitors are directed to the one Pay & Display Car Park which filled up during our short time there. 

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne is a very popular tourist destination, once a destination for Christians seeking miracles and other spiritual fulfilment, now for those curious about what the Christians seeking miracles and other spiritual fulfilment were up to.  This tidal island is a place of immense historic and religious significance sometimes described as the “Cradle of British Christianity”. It was from the monastery on this island that the early missionaries, led by St Aidan and St Cuthbert, spread the Christian faith throughout the whole of northern Britain.

This Anglo-Saxon monastery was established here for three important reasons; it lay within the protective sight of the Northumbrian kings at Bamburgh, at high tide Lindesfarne became isolated from the mainland creating the remoteness a monastic community desired and there was a natural harbour to shelter the largest boats of the day.

However the site has become more famed for its connection with St Cuthbert, whose remains lie in the Durham Cathedral of which I wrote last year, although his story was perhaps omitted from my already wordy blog.

In 651 AD Cuthbert entered the monastery at Melrose across the border in Scotland at the age of about sixteen, where his spiritualty was immediately recognised by Prior Boisel. (I can’t help wondering if this moment were teleported to modern times, whether Cuthbert may instead be considered to have some sort of mental condition. Strangeness or simply being unique in those days was considered very differently).

Just twelve years later Cuthbert succeeded Boisel as Prior of Melrose, and three years after that became Prior of Lindisfarne. He was certainly a high achiever, or just very precocious.

He sought greater isolation and moved to the island of Farne and lived as a hermit for ten years, until he was coerced in to be a consecrated bishop and he then resumed his missionary travels for which he was known prior before his moving to Lindisfarne. He returned to Farne in 686 and died there one year later. Eleven years later he was made a saint and pilgrims flocked to Lindisfarne to visit his grave. His sainthood arose not only from his “wonderful” work, but more from the fact that when his coffin was opened in 598 to “elevate” the bones to a reliquary for veneration, the monks found his body miraculously un-decayed, thus began the cult of St Cuthbert, a cult that was to dominate Lindisfarne thereafter.

Then in the early late 870s, the Viking raids on Lindisfarne forced the monks to flee the island and they took with them, the relics of St Cuthbert. The monks made their way down to Durham eventually arriving in 995 and ready to build the magnificent cathedral there to house the Saint’s remains.

Much later, in the early 12^th century, monks from Durham returned to Lindisfarne to found a new priory. The new stone priory church was built on the site of the previous church and it is the ruins of that we visited today.

By the early 17^th century, the priory had been totally abandoned and its buildings left to rot. In 1613, Lord Walden, the then owner, stripped the lead off the church roofs and other large buildings situated around the cloister. The islanders used some of the stone to build their own houses. The nave and the central tower of the priory church collapsed between 1780 and 1820.

Lindisfarne had been a place and prayer for nearly one thousand years, so the next episode was a bit of a contradiction; in 1540 the Royal Surveyor of Victuals at Berwick leased the priory from Bishop Sparke and the island was turned into a military garrison.

Stone was plundered from the priory to build a Tudor fort, Lindisfarne Castle. The fort was built to safeguard the harbour that sheltered English ships during the war with Scotland. A hundred years later the island was being used as a naval staging post, but once peace was settled between England and Scotland, Lindisfarne Castle was no longer needed as a border fort, but Lindisfarne kept its garrison until 1819. 

The gradual decline of the structures was halted in 1820 when the new owner, Mr Selby, took an interest in the condition of the ruins, however he was unable to prevent the entire west front of the priory church collapsing in the 1850s. In 1913 the ruins came into the guardianship of the Ministry of Works, the predecessor of English Heritage.

We arrived a little before the opening time of 10 am so set off up onto the Heugh, that elevated wall between the shore and the priory precinct, from which we enjoyed excellent views over this end of the island, particularly when we climbed up into the lookout tower now only used for this very purpose.

As we made our way back to the priory, we stopped and chatted for some time with an incredibly enthusiastic archaeologist who with her team had just today started a dig amongst the mud and mystery.

By the time we entered the English Heritage museum and the ruins, there were dozens upon dozens of other tourists doing as we were. Here we learned that the National Trust administered castle out on the point was closed for repair, a fact we had already suspected since most of it seemed to be sheathed in white plastic.

And so we were back out off the island within the three hours we had paid parking for, and on to the Coastal Road. We pulled up in Budle Bay to lunch, sitting in the warmer and dryer confines of the car, but still able to enjoy views of the thousands of seabirds out on the mudflats.

Further on we pulled into the car park at Bamburgh Castle, where we restricted our visit to a quick photo shoot, not willing to pay the entry fee when there are so many other castles, abbey’s and priories in the area we can visit with our membership of English Heritage and National Trust. 

Bamburgh Castle is an incredibly impressive structure, dominating the shoreline and visible for some distance. The original fort was of Anglo-Saxon times, but the current structure was rebuilt in the late 1800s, a Grand Design project for Lord Armstrong, he of Rothbury, of whom we will learn more in the next couple of days.

On we went, detouring off the main coastal tourist route to check out Seahouses, Beadnell and Newton, finally arriving at the village port of Craster where we parked up and paid for parking once more. Craster is the best place from which to access the ruins of Dunstenburgh, a medieval castle and another English Heritage property. We set off on foot north up the coast across sheep grazed grassland and reached the castle after nearly half an hour. Apart from climbing up into the gatehouse, there is little else left; however the views from every point of the ruins are quite wonderful. Unfortunately it was drizzling here as it had been when we were wandering about the Lindisfarne priory.

Once back on the road, we continued as far south as Lesbury, then went into Alnwick (pronounced Annick) to pick up a few supplies before heading west across moorland back to our camp at the foot of the Cheviot Hills.