St Oswald's Way Wander and Wonderings

  Yesterday, Susan, a friend who has been travelling and walking with in the past week went home to Nottingham and Rachel, another friend, who'll be joining me for the second week, won't arrive until tomorrow. So today I have the cottage on Budle Bay to myself. I woke early, about 4.30am, the view across the bay to Lindisfarne is so beautiful I can't bring myself to draw the blind in my bedroom, so |I wake with the dawn. Early waking has become a bit of a routine for me anyway, five or six hours sleep the norm, I don't know why, and mostly I don't fuss about it.  In true Hobbit tradition, I may have 'first breakfast' in bed, then fall back to sleep, before getting up for 'second breakfast' and starting the day. But, here on Budle Bay I'm out of the cottage by five, without breakfast. The tide is right in, filling the bay with water, and I cut through the dunes walking through head high ferns, the morning air full of the scent of wild roses and vo

  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 nor

   And so I come to Lindisfarne, the official start of St Oswald's Way, which ends at Heavenfield, but I think this is the wrong way round and has more to do with offering a coherent system of Pilgrimage trails, rather than accurately depicting the life of St Oswald. Heavenfield was the site of Oswald's first great battle, where with inferior forces he defeated the Welsh invader, Cadwalla, and took back the throne of Nothumberland, whilst Lindisfarne represents the fulfilment of Oswald's ambition for Nothumbria to become a Christian kingdom.  Having regained the throne, Oswald sent word to Iona, where he had lived, in exile with the Irish monks and priests, after his father was killed in battle. Oswald asked the holy men of Iona to send a priest to help him fulfill his mission to lead the people of Northumbria back to Christianity. The original candidate, a rather pious man, found the Northumbrians abit too rough and ready and returned to Iona, suggesting it was a lost caus