Day 2. A Slight Detour

 I wandered from St Oswald's Way today, called instead to the 7th Century Abbey at Hexham and the wildness of Hadrian's Wall.

The Abbey was founded by St Wilfrid, he was born into a noble family but at 14 he went to train with the monks on Lindisfarne.  At 19 he travelled to Rome and was impressed by their ability to build in stone, rather than in wood as was the Anglo Saxon tradition. In his early 20s he was made Bishop of Ripon. Rather annoyingly, to me at any rate, in his 30s he helped persuade King Oswy, at the Synod of Whitby, that the Northumbrian Church should follow the hierarchical Christian practices that came from Rome rather than the more egalitarian Celtic Christianity from Ireland. The following year he was made Bishop of Northumbria.

However, he did befriend the East Anglian Princess Etheldreda who was married to Prince Ecfrith of Northumbria, she was 29 he was 15. Eventually Wilfrid persuaded her husband, then King Ecfrith, to grant her a divorce so that she could become a nun and serve God. As a parting gift before she left Nothumbria she gave Wilfrid the lands of Hagustaldesham, Hexhamshire, and in 674 he began to build his Abbey in stone.

What struck me about the Abbey today was its resilience. Two hundred years after its construction it was ransacked and partially destroyed by the Vikings who sailed up the Tyne in 876. For many years the Abbey remained in a state of disrepair, until around 1080 when Eilaf Larwa became the priest and 'shrine keeper' and apparently single handedly began to restore the Abbey. In 1296 and 1297 the Scots attacked the Abbey in revenge for an attack on Scotland by the English, initially looting and pillaging and finally starting a terrible fire that destroyed parts of the building. The heat of the fire was so intense that it melted the lead roofing, the remains of which can still be seen today on the 6th step of the 'night stairs', and their stones turned red by oxidisation. Again the Abbey was restored only to be reduced to a parish church by Henry's Dissolution of the Monasteries, but in 1898 Rev Sidney Savage became Rector and over the next 21 years repaired and restored the Abbey including the incredible rebuilding of the nave.....the building remains, the story continues.

And this afternoon I went to Hadrian's Wall, forgoing the information and detail of Vindolanda and Housesteads, on this my first visit, preferring instead the rollercoaster walk to the beauty and wildness of  Sycamore Gap. I sat on the tree's curving roots as the wind blasted through the hillside, battering human and tree alike. As I made my way back to the welcome of The Sill, via the easier lower route, skylarks sang from the meadow grass, reeds and wild flowers. Suddenly one lifted skywards hovering, singing, a tiny form against the grey heaving sky and as I watched the small bird flew ever higher and higher until the tiny speck disappeared to my view in the scudding greyness, but still the song continued.

Life is fragile and unpredictable, but like the Abbey and the Skylark we are resilient, and the song that continues is one of love.