Of history and holidays
AFTER first visiting Holy Island (Lindisfarne) in Northumberland when I was 18, I thought at 67, as we were in that neck of the woods, it was about time I went back.
This time with Joanie Lucy in tow, I was excited to drive across the mile-long causeway and share the history of the place, including the story of the quite remarkable hand illustrated Lindisfarne Gospels, unfortunately housed in London, the ruined abbey and iconic castle.
We love our history, with Joanie having a special interest in old churches and graveyards.
Lindisfarne Priory was one of the most important centres of early Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England, and it is still a place of pilgrimage today.
St Aidan founded the monastery in AD 635, but St Cuthbert, Prior of Lindisfarne, is the most celebrated of the priory’s holy men.
Buried in the priory, his remains were transferred to a pilgrim shrine there after 11 years and found still undecayed.
From the end of the 8th century, the isolated island with its rich monastery was easy prey for Viking raiders.
In 875 the monks left, carrying Cuthbert’s remains, which, after long wanderings, were enshrined in Durham Cathedral in 1104, where they still rest.
Only after that time did Durham monks re-establish a priory on Lindisfarne; the evocative ruins of the richly decorated priory church they built circa 1150 still stand, with their famous ‘rainbow arch’ - a vault-rib of the now vanished crossing tower.
Following the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, the Castle was built in the 1550’s using stones from the demolished Priory; the cheek of it.
The castle sits on a prominent volcanic mound known as Beblowe Craig, seen here behind one of the islands most imaginative storage sheds, created by cutting a boat in half; there’s around 10 of these either side of a rough track near the harbour, a Northumbrian Hobbiton.
As we headed off the island, alas a little late as the tide had come in and we had to wait an hour, and then a further half hour as some idiots thought Canute-like that they could defy the tide by stealing a march on as the rest of us patiently waiting in line.
It ended badly for them, and I confess we laughed our socks off.
Back on the mainland as we waited for a train to scoot past the level-crossing I hatched a plan; if we turned left at the T-junction, we could have visited the bird-packed Farne Islands, while a right would see us in Edinburgh within the hour, a place Joanie has always wanted to visit.
There is more history than you shake a stick at, not least Mary Queen of Scots blood stained bedroom floor at Holyrood house, and enough graveyards to keep a ghoulish girl happy for a year.
I asked, and Joanie said ‘right’, unaware that Edinburgh was so close.
A happy girl she was, as Booking.com sorted us the Radisson Blue on Canongate, the very heart of the City and at the top of the Royal Mile.
By rights the streets should have been packed for the Fringe Festival, but an eerie Covid-quiet had descended, and an attendant mist fudged the night time view as we walked back to the hotel after food.
With two nights booked, I am happy to report that no ‘dead-end’, or kirk-yard, missed our attentions, and we even booked onto a guided night time tour of said burial grounds, enjoying the company of Adam Smith, the so-called Founder of Capitalism who wrote ‘The Wealth of Nations’.
Smith is ensconced in the graveyard of Canongate Kirk, built between the years 1688 and 1691.
Edinburgh Castle, the Holyrood Palace and the Scottish Parliament are all included within the parish, and he is joined in repose by the philosopher Dugald Stewart, poet Robert Fergusson, and Robert Burns’ famous mistress ‘Clarinda’.
There is also the gravestone, moved here from Holyrood, of one David Rizzio, close friend and confidante of Mary Queen of Scots, and it is his blood which reputedly stains the wooden floor of her bedroom after he was stabbed 57 times by Lord Darnley and a number of other Lords.
As for wildlife, you may be surprised to hear that there is plenty in Edinburgh.
Further along the Firth of Forth towards Leith, you can spy otters and kingfishers, and the occasional barn owl.
But for our two days I saw three pigeons, one staling and two house sparrows, and nothing else.
The real wildlife put in an appearance at the Balmoral Hotel Whisky Bar, when a boisterous Texan, with all due respect, ordered a double ‘Pride 1974’ by Glenmorangie at £350 a nip. Yep, that was £700.
He knocked it back in one and left shouting, ‘Put it on my room’.