The Holy Isle of Lindisfarne...

I always wanted my experience in York to be a local one - to be a resident and explore York and Yorkshire. Apart from the brief foray down to London I did not feel the need or desire to hive off in other directions. However there was one place in Northumberland that I longed to visit - the Holy Isle of Lindisfarne http://www.essentially-england.com/lindisfarne.html

Lindisfarne (as I call it) or The Holy Isle (as the locals call it) was always going to be tricky to organise. Access to the island is cut off at high tide so visits have to be planned around the tides. Also I wanted to travel up and back in the day rather than stopping overnight, so that was an added constraint. Yesterday I caught an early train from York to Berwick-on-Tweed. Because at this time of the year the bus service only runs from Berwick to the island two days a week (and not yesterday) I took a deep breath and a taxi. Costly, but the driver was a gem who provided not only the means to an end but a wonderful, unsolicited commentary.

For me small islands (Stewart Island, the Chatham Islands...) are magical places. There is something special about the light, the landscape and the isolation. In the distance Lindisfarne is sea-flat with two rocky outcrops, one of which anchors the Castle - the undoubted focal point of the island. The day was cloudy with a hint of rain and a very strong, cold wind off the North Sea.

Once a Tudor fort, the Castle was bought in 1902 by Edward Hudson, owner of Country Life magazine, who employed architect Sir Edwin Lutyens to restore the building. The interior is a maze of rooms  the design of which is heavily influenced by the Arts and Crafts style. Gertrude Jekyll later designed a small walled summer garden at a distance from the Castle.

From the Castle you get views of the island topography. Looking towards the village...

Towards the walled garden and beyond...

It was the founding of the Priory in 635AD by St Aidan (who had come from Ireland via Iona) that gave Lindisfarne the name 'Holy Isle' and its reputation as a spiritual retreat. Here the Lindisfarne Gospels were created between 715 and 720AD http://www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/features/gospels/gospels_tense_past.shtml

I tried to imagine what life must have been like for the first monks in a place so much more remote than it is today, lashed by the wind and sea...What did they do for fuel? There are no trees on the island.

Here three symbols of the island, secular and spiritual, come together...

My favourite part of the island was the little harbour - I'll save those images for another post because they are a photo-story in their own right.