Day 6. Lindisfarne to Budle Bay

 

When I was a young teenager I read a novel by Gordon Honeycomb, called Dragon Under the Hill. You old-timers out there will remember him as a news reader from the 1970s. It was this book that gave me the desire to visit Lindisfarne some 45 years ago....and in November 2019 that wish was fulfilled with a day visit to the Island with my Irish friend Sarah. That's when I first heard the seals sing in a striking November sunset. 

I re-read the book recently, it gives a great snapshot of the sexism of the 70s, whilst telling the tale of a boy and his father acting out an ancient struggle between Viking and Anglo-Saxon. The Island is now generally referred to as Holy Island, from the Latin Insula Sacra used from around the time of rebuilding of the Priory in the 11th Century. I'm sure Aidan and Cuthbert would be happy about this, but I prefer the old English name Lindisfarne, Lindisfarena, named by the people of Lindsay, now Lincolnshire, when their influence spread this far north.

The Vikings ransacked the original priory in 793 and again in 875, and after its grand rebuilding in the 11th Century, the Border Wars between the Scots and the English, badly affected the local economy damaging crops and limiting income from tithes. The Scots made a raid on the Priory in1325, but focused their attention on the bakery and brewhouse - obviously had their priorities! And then came the Dissolution of the Monasteries and monastic life on Holy Island came to an end in 1537.

Today I head out to the nature reserve on the North of the island, the place where the young boy in Dragon Under the Hill discovers the Viking hoard and stirs up the past, and that I visited with my friend Karen in February this year. No Viking hoard today, just big skies, lots of orchids and loads of Six-Spot, or are they Five-Spot, Burnet moths. I bump into the lovely, friendly young mum who served me in the Heritage Centre shop, she's carrying her smiley young son in a back-pack and walking a black Labrador, she's full of infectious life and vitality, as we stop to chat on the track and she asks if I've tracked down a taxi.

I have, and the lovely Gordon from Croft Cabs at Belford collects me from the Island to whisk me over to Budle Bay. It turns out he drives cancer patients from the area down to Newcastle for specialist treatment. We talk of the cumulative affect of chemotherapy, the need to live life and how one of the women he drives is so bright and bouncy; 'Just like you,' he says.

I sink into my cottage hideaway, down a track and just feet from the beach and the sea. Sarah and I discovered this place on Google maps - what a gift - we first came here last November, then I came again in February, with another friend, Karen. I thought I might not get another visit...but here I am in June. The wind whistles down the beach just as it does in winter, but I'm warmed by the sun as I walk the beach edge and paddle in the sea. It feels like home.