shewhomust: (bibendum)
There will be more, and not too far off; but for now, it's over and we are back home.

D. researched restaurants in Berwick, and we booked Sunday lunch for the four of us at Audela (so called because it is immediately beyond the Old Bridge, though only if you approach from the south, which on this occasion we didn't). The causeway closed at 10.20 am, so we took both cars, and did our own thing: D. and [personal profile] valydiarosada visited a stately home (Paxton House), while [personal profile] durham_rambler and I visited the Union Chain Bridge for the first time since its renovation, and walked across it into Scotland. Since we still had some time, we drove further into Scotland, to Eyemouth (where once upon a time we used to breakfast after watching the sunrise - but that was long ago and much has changed since then).

Lunch was delightful. They offered a slightly incongruous mixture of haute cuisine and traditional Sunday roast, but I took my own advice, and had two starters: a very rich crab risotto with a sweet and juicy scallop on the top, a piece of chicken confit on an assortment of vegetables (less successful, and over-salt to my taste, which errs in that direction anyway); and a dessert which called itself cranachan but was unlike any cranachan I have met before, more raspberries than whisky cream, with a scattering of some sort of granola, all concealing an intense, ruby, sorbet. A glass of Puglian white wasn't earth-shattering, but refreshing and went well.

After which, Sunday afternoon was Sunday afternoon: I may even have slept, briefly. Later, I sat at the kitchen table writing the previous post, and thinking that the sky was getting darker and perhaps I wouldn't go for a walk after all - and then I saw this:

Rainbow over the sewage pumping station


The building is the island's sewage pumping station, halfway between our cottage and the castle. It seemed like an appropriate 'last photo' (though I may post others in due course...

Yesterday, we stopped at Alnmouth on the way home.
shewhomust: (bibendum)
Sunday already, and our last night on the island: where does the time go?

Yesterday, [personal profile] durham_rambler visited the Castle: we walked out together, towards the blurred shape gradually emerging from the mist. When he took the right-hand path up to the entrance, I continued along the foot of the crag, out to the sea, to the stretch where I might have stood and watched for the sunrise, if I had been willing to get up at four o'clock. The mist thinned enough for me to pick out Bamburgh Castle to my right, and maybe - just maybe - the Farne Islands swimming ahead of me. Off to the left, the daymark on Emmanuel Head was bright (has it been repainted lately?). I thought I would walk along as far as the path down to the Castle garden, and was surprised to find that I was there already.

Cottage garden?


The garden was a riot of clashing colours, poppies everywhere and sweet peas climbing over everything: it was quite glorious, but far from the cool white, blue and silver I thought I remembered. I can't find any reference (here, for instance) to recent changes; they talk about reinstating Gertrude Jekyll's design, but that seems to refer to the layout of the paths and the shape of the planting, rather than the colours... Anyway, I'm not complaining, and I spent a happy half hour admiring it from every angle.

The promised rain arrived yesterday evening, and we had thunder and lightning overnight. And that's yesterday.
shewhomust: (ayesha)
A couple of small irritations, which need to be written about, apparently, just to get them out of my system:

Customer service fail I: Majestic )

Yesterday [personal profile] durham_rambler and I did not leave the island, but went our separate ways, wandering about each at our preferred speed and distance. I went down to St Cuthbert's island:

St Cuthbert's island


and spent a peaceful while sitting on a bench listening to the seals mooing to each other on the far shore - and trying and failing to spot the oystercatcher(s) I could also hear.

Customer service fail II: the Crown & Anchor )

I did not get up at 4.00 am to watch the sun rising: but D. assures me that it did so, before the mist closed in. Another solstice past, and the nights begin to grow longer.
shewhomust: (bibendum)
I went out yesterday evening after dinner. The day had cooled, and the sun was low and golden. I walked round the harbour and along the pier, and met only two couples: we said hello to each other, and were smug that the crowds had gone and that we were still here enjoying the best of the day.

A proper shed


Meanwhile, [personal profile] durham_rambler had discovered from FaceBook that Kate Fox was also staying on Holy Island, and had made a date to meet her this morning at the Causeway Café, which is a van that parks, as it happens, just adjacent to our garden. So we were able to scoop Kate up and bring her back here to sit in the garden and drink tea, and talk more than we have, at a guess, in the last twenty or thirty years. We are always pleased to see each other (well, I'm always pleased to see her, and when we saw her a year ago she seemed pleased to see us, but it'ms usually incidentally to doing something else, so we don't get time to chat. She had brought with her her little book On Sycamore Gap, in case, she said, she ran into someone she wanted to give one to: and she seemed as pleased to have given us a copy as we were to be given one.

So that was an evening and a morning well spent.
shewhomust: (Default)
[personal profile] durham_rambler and I both had baths this morning. That's probably the most exciting thing that has happened all day, especially for [personal profile] durham_rambler, who cannot remember when he last had a bath: given a choice he takes the shower every time, whereas I mix and match. Our cottage has two bathrooms, but since [personal profile] valydiarosada prefers the level access of a shower, we took the one with a bath, and an understanding that we could also use the shower. Today, though, D. and [personal profile] valydiarosada were making an early start to visit their friend in Edinburgh, so I determined not to be intimidated by the bath, imposing though it is:

All mod cons


Once I had discovered all its funny little ways (including the cunningly hidden plug, can you spot it in the picture?), [personal profile] durham_rambler also took the plunge, and emerged unscathed.

The rest of the day has been quiet: too hot for my liking. There is a heat warning out, apparently, though not for the north east of England. Doesn't matter, I am on holiday, and entitled to take things easy. We crossed to the mainlland, and shopped at Belford, where there is both a farm shop and a Co-op; we lunched on crab sandwiches at the Ship; we strolled around the village, decided we were too hot (and too full of crab sandwiches) for ice cream; we came home and did more nothing-in-particular...

It's my turn to cook tonight: I should probably get started.
shewhomust: (Default)
After all the busy-ness and the not-ready of the last week, we are on Lindisfarne and are spending the week here: yes, I'm a bit disoriented by the week starting and ending on Monday, but that's when the cottage was available. So D. and [personal profile] valydiarosada drove up to Durham yesterday, and we had dinner together, and this morning they set off and visited Wallington (which is almost on the way) and we finished our packing and were away from home by one o' clock. And we all met again on the island at four, which is when we were allowed into our cottage.

We are staying at St Oswald's Cottage - in fact, that picture of the kitchen looking out of the door is very much the view I have as I sit typing this at the kitchen table, though it makes the room look more spacious than it is. The cottage was designed by Lutyens to accommodate the couple who were caretakers at the castle. It is bigger on the inside: you enter through the kitchen, but beyond the living room there is a passageway which leads to the first bathroom and a spacious bedroom; and behind a door there is another passageway, leading to a single bedroom; and another door leads to another bathroom, and another enormous bedroom beyond that.

So that's all very grand. And I am sitting here while D. bustles about the kitchen making dinner. Tomorrow it will be my turn to cook, but with luck by then D. will have found out where everything is (or warned me about what we don't have). I have no thoughts about how we will spend the week - well, not quite, I do have some thoughts. Also later in the week there will be more visitors. But meanwhile, I shall be lazy.
shewhomust: (durham)
Friday's talk was organised by something called the North-East England History Research Cluster (this, I think) and was announced as the first in a series, of which the second will be about Sam Green. The first topic was a complete contrast, but also a subject I find interesting Rethinking late 1st Millenium Durham & Lindisfarne.

Since the speaker was David Petts, from the Department of Archaeology, and specifically since he was running the recent excavations on Lindisfarne with DigVentures, I was expecting him to focus on the archaeological evidence, which has produced unexpected signs of monastic life on Lindisfarne after the arrival of the Vikings. And that certainly fed into his argument, but the focus was very much on the historical record (and on physical objeects which were already known). He began his story, as is proper, with the life of Saint Cuthbert. I have read a lot of Lives of medieval saints in my time, as a literary genre, but it takes a historical mind to point out that one reason why Cuthbert became so important is that the Synod of Whitby had taken the Northumbrian church into the orbit of Rome, and Irish patrons like Aidan were no longer appropriate - the community on Lindisfarne needed a new patron, and there was Cuthbert, dying just when they needed him.

The 'origin story' of Durham Cathedral is that when the Vikings raided Lindisfarne in 793, the monks gathered up everything portable (including Cuthbert's remains) and fled, initially to Norham, then wandering all over the North, until they finally came to Durham, a previously empty site. Even discounting the miracles by which the saint made it clear that this was his chosen resting place, the decorative details like the maiden with the dun cow, this doesn't entirely work. You wouldn't, for example, run away from the Vikings by retreating a mere 15 miles up a navigable river. Archaeology is turning up evidence of a continued presence on Lindisfarne, but even before the recent dig, catalogues of Saxon crosses have for some time been pointing to continuity.

Back in the autumn, I visited the local museum in Chester-le-Street, and among the things I learned from the presentation there was that the community of Saint Cuthbert had extensive land holdings, and that the period of wandering may have been more a case of visiting their various properties. David Petts said the same thing, though he didn't confirm that Chester-le-Street was one of them: "I haven't given this talk in Chester-le-Street yet," he said. I'd love to be there when he does. What I wrote at the time was:

... because those monks didn't just break their journey in Chester-le-Street, they stayed for over a hundred years. They built a cathedral here, before anyone had even heard of Durham. The earliest translation of the gospels into English was written here by someone called Aldred, who inscribed his glass between the lines of the Lindisfarne Gospels. King Alfred made a pilgrimage here (as did Athelstan, Canute, and several Scottish kings).


And I concluded "It's very refreshing to have your perspective so thoroughly shaken up." It is, indeed.
shewhomust: (Default)
What the builder thought he said: We will remove one window at a time, so you will never have multiple holes in the front of your house.

What the client thought she heard: We will remove one window at a time, so we'll put each room back together before moving on to the next.

Well, we live and learn.

We came home from the residents' association last night, ready for a comfy chair and some silly television, and discovered that all the furniture in the sitting room was still huddled together under a dust sheet, and that most of the room was full of the wooden frame of the bay window. I opted for an early night, with a book: if the room hasn't been cleared by tonight, we will rearrange the furniture for the weekend, and let Monday bring what it will...

We spoke this morning to the boss builder, who wanted us to make decisions about cladding. He hopes to be finished by the end of next week, with the exception of that cladding, which can be dealt with from outside. So it looks as if we have another week of this, minimum. I try to take one day at a time.

There's a lunchtime lecture in the History department (about Lindisfarne) which we could attend by Zoom, but are currently planning to go in person, once [personal profile] durham_rambler emerges from this morning's Zoom meeting. Life goes on.
shewhomust: (mamoulian)
In the Guardian, an article by writer Benjamin Myers considers how Durham - his "home town" - has changed "during 14 years of Tory rule". It's one of a short series on the theme, which strikes me as a little random, both the question itself and Myers's answer, but never mind. I liked: "Gone is the Marks & Spencer where I first discovered escalators and hummus."

There are a number of differences between the print and online versions of the article, starting from the headline, but let's not go down that rabbit hole; this post isn't about that, although the "escalators and hummus" made me feel (slightly) more tempted by Benjamin Myers's novel Cuddy.

This is Cuddy:

Cuddy


- more formally, Saint Cuthbert of Farne, as depicted by Fenwick Lawson, and stationed at Lindisfarne Priory. While I was waiting to show my card for admission to the priory, I overheard the custodian answering the ladies ahead of me: yes, that was where the bodies were found, the altar would have been just over there. And yes, the ruins had been in the care of English Heritage for quite some time, but it wasn't impossible to get in at night, you could climb over the wall from the garden of the pub, people did occasionally ... I wasn't unduly alarmed by this talk of bodies on altars, because I was pretty sure we were talking about a series of crime novels set on Holy Island: I had read the first few chapters of the first one, as a free sample somewhere, and felt no urge to get hold of and read the rest of it.

When my turn came, I asked the custodian, who confirmed that this was, indeed, what they were taoling about. He had read the books, he said, because he made a point of reading books about Holy Island, but he hadm't thought much of them. His preference was for non-fictionm he explained, but - and he produced his current reading matter - right now he was reading Benjamin Myers's Cuddy, and finding it quite dense going. But he persevered.

I was disproportionately cheered by this unscheduled book talk, and had to bite my tongue not to launch into enthusing about my own current reading (there were more visitors behind me, awaiting admission). I had already started Madeline Miller's Circe, which I had bought a dew days earlier in Berwick: I had been looking for her The Song of Achilles, which [personal profile] boybear had recomended, and found this instead. Without that pointer, I probably wouldn't have been tempted: the back cover quotes The Times: "Miller's Me-too era, kickass portrait of a woman trying to defy the men and Fates array against her ..." and I am not drawn to the feminist-retelling, all history must be the same, version of the past. I enjoy the strangeness, not the familiarity. Which only reinforces my belief that you should never look at the back cover until you are at least halfway through the book, because while Circe is, I suppose, as described, it also presents the Gods and Titans of myth in a way that was both entirely new and entirely familiar. I don't know enough about Greek myth to know how much is invention, how much has a Classical - or post-Classical - source, but it felt entirely convincing: as if it was both a single organic invention and the result of deep knowledge of its source material. It is, in short, one of those books that you want to talk to people about.
shewhomust: (bibendum)
D. was the only one of us who got up to watch the sun rising. Friday wasn't actually the shortest day, the solstice had already passed, but the sunrise was a good one, and D. was very smug about it. He showed us the photos he had taken, and this is one of them:



I spent a lazy Friday visiting the beach with the view of St Cuthbert's island, sitting in the sun listening to the seals on the far shore. There's an exhibition in the old lifeboat house, about the Holy Island lifeboats. I wandered back through the priory, and found everyone else at home -

- and after talking it over, we agreed that we had enjoyed our week, that we would like to come back next year, and that St Oswald's Cottage looked very inviting. So we have booked it.

And on Saturday we came home.
shewhomust: (bibendum)
On Wednesday, after a short wander around the island and a little light shopping, I was mostly back at base: I bought postcards, I wrote (some of) them.

Yesterday, though, we did something new, and visited Ad Gefrin. Rather than try to compose my own one-line explanation, here's the headline from their website: Ad Gefrin is an "Anglo-Saxon Museum and Whisky Distillery in the heart of Northumberland."

Not far from the Northumberland town of Wooler is - if I have got this right - an Iron Age hill fort called Yeavering Bell. It's a wonderful name, and it is derived from the Celtic 'gefrin', hill of goats. This is not what we visted. Between the hill and the river is another archaeological site - well, actually the whole valley is rich in archaeology, but there is one particular site, spotted by aerial photography in 1949 and excavated in the second half of the twentieth century, which has been identified as the summer palace of the kings and queens of Anglo-Saxon Northumbria. We didn't visit that, either, but the museum and distillery which we did visit is not far away, and celebrates that palace. And when I say 'celebrates' I mean that it has a magnificent new building, and that it goes overboard on the Anglo-Saxon theme. All the notices are in two languages. My favourite is:

Bike Store


More pictures - )

ETA:Recent discoveries... )

tl:dr; The site remains an interesting and omportant one, but was not, in the Anglo-Saxon period, altogether as shown at the museum. Bede, on the other hand, is a more reliable historic source than you might expect.
shewhomust: (bibendum)
By Tuesday we could no longer postpone going shopping on the mainland - but that was fine, I wanted to go to Berwick anyway. In particular, I wanted to see the Lowry and the Sea exhibition at the Maltings.

This was not quite as straightforward as it sounds, for two reaons. One is that it isn't easy to find parking in central Berwick; the other, which I didn't discover until [personal profile] durham_rambler had dropped me at the Maltings, where the car park was full, and driven off in search of an alternative, is that the exhibition isn't actually at the Maltings, but at the Granary Gallery. Why yes, we do know where that is: in fact, that is where [personal profile] durham_rambler had found parking, valid for two hours. No matter. It was a lovely sunny day, and I wanted to explore the sreet of quirky shops we had passed on our way up to the Maltings (West Street, for future reference, and a good place to shop for cards and gifts). More shopping in Bridge Street, which is where we were parked - the Green Shop, an old favourite, and Slightly Foxed Books, a new one - and our two hours were up, so we relocated, and went off in search of lunch.

- I interrupt this narrative, because it is ten to ten, and [personal profile] durham_rambler has just pointed out that this is the moment of the actual solstice, and the nights are now beginning to draw in. Sunset tonight is still four minutes away, but we have turned a corner -

After lunch, though, we made our way to the Granary Gallery, which is on an upper floor of the Youth Hostel, the building on the right in this picture:

Dewar's Lane


- appropriately enough, if you compare this picture. A small exhibition, but an interesting one. It starts with a seaside scene in Lowry's familiar style, crowds of people enjoying a day out at the seaside (though it was painted in 1943, and I wonder if it really looked like that in wartime) and then heads off into unexpected territory: silvery Impressionist seascapes, pencil drawings of battleships, uninterrupted expanses of sea and sky... the information boards emphasised a psychological, autobiographical reading of all this emptiness. One drawing titled 'Self portrait as a column in the sea' make it hard to argue with that.

In the evening, we discovered that there was a concert in the village hall on the island, so we went along to hear Andy and Margaret Watchorn playing a variety of pipes (but mainly Northumbrian smallpipes) and fiddles (mostly fiddle as we know it, but also nyckelharpa). A pleasant surprise.
shewhomust: (bibendum)
The weather, as forecast, is mixed: patches of beautiful sunshine, and sudden showers. Monday morning did not look promising, so we started with a visit to the Museum, which is in run by English Heritage as an introduction to the Priory, and has been much revamped since our last visit, three years ago. It is distinctly a museum of two halves - three, if you count the gift shop, and you probably should. You enter through the historical section: information boards about Northumbria's golden age, the kings and the saints and the coming of the Vikings.. a fine collection of carved stones, and one tiny piece of blue glass, the size of a child's thimble. When you have passed through this gallery, you find yourself in a darkened space hung with representations of Holy Island, dominated by a multimedia piece by Olivia Lomenech-Gill, whose images of wild creatures form a sort of nature trail through the museum. It's a map of the island, mashed up with drawings and collaged treasures and scraps of text from Katrina Porteous's poem The Refuge Box (extract here) which plays on a loop in the gallery. Did I like the image? I couldn't really see it as a whole. But I enjoyed getting right up close to the glass and looking at all the little details:

You want it, that island..


Between the two... )

After the museum, a quick visit to the Priory, cut short by the rain. We took refuge in the church, and then made a dash to the Post Office and bought supplies for lunch. In the afternoon the sunshine lured me out, solo this time, and I wandered down to the harbour, where the rain caught me again, and I sat it out in the shelter of the Window on Wild Lindisfarne, watching the swallows swooping past - and under, for the one brave swallow who had nested there. By the time I got home, the sun was hot.
shewhomust: (bibendum)
Yesterday's Guardian had a story about a series of photographs of the mantelpieces of creative people. As I type that, I think how sickening it sounds, but the initial photograph was rather jolly. So, even though I usually skip these house-design articles, I read on. It's a personal project, and is quite open about being inspired by the photographer's mother's mantelpiece in the first place, but even so, I was growing irritable about the extent to which these creative people were the friends and family of the photographer. However, now that you have been warned, I did quite enjoy these photographs. In particular, scroll right down almost to the end for Virginia Ironside's show of hands.

[personal profile] durham_rambler consulted the tide tables, and declared that this morning we should visit the castle: this gave us the longest possible overlap of castle open, causeway closed, and so the best chance of avoiding the crowds. When did Lindisfarne start to be so crowded? There have always been visitors, of course, but I was quite shocked by the crowds we had to negotiate yesterday, driving through the village. Anyway, [personal profile] durham_rambler's strategy worked, and for much of our visit we had the castle to ourselves (and some very discreet staff).

The display in the castle has been radically altered since our last visit. This is not surprising. We were last on the island three years ago, in the aftermath of Covid, and they seem to have been restricting visiting: my diary says "The castle is already fully booked for the week, but we have a slot to visit the priory tomorrow." So the last time we were in the castle must have been in 2018, in the aftermath of major building works, when the interior was mostly bare, but for an art installation. Now the furniture has returned, and as previously represents the period when the castle belonged to Edward Hudson. There is more emphasis on the process by which Edward Lutyens transformed the shell of a Tudor fortress into a holiday cottage like no other, but there is still room to show the results of that transformation. Information boards quote guests, particularly Lytton Strachey, who was not impressed: "Three miles of sand, partly underwater with posts to show the way - rather alarming to the nervous... then an abrupt rock with a building on it". He visited more than once, though, so it must have had some appeal:

Eating lobster and drinking champane


In the upper gallery - which I remember as a music room, often full of the cello music played by Madame Suggia, a frequent guest of Hudson's - there is Embodies Cacophonies, a light and sound installation by artist composer Liz Gre. A video downstairs explains something of the background of the piece, which was intriguing: the thing itself less so. Trails of fairy lights heaped up and hanging from the ceiling; gauzy hangings; music triggered by the movement of visitors (perhaps this was one thing which would have worked better if we had not had it to ourselves)...

We left the castle and reached the Ship with five minutes to order our crab sandwiches before they stopped serving lunch. Then home through the rain, pausing only to buy some biscuits, to dry off and make coffee...
shewhomust: (bibendum)
It is midsummer week, and we are back on Lindisfarne. There was the usual flurry of not-ready-ness, but in the end things worked out. We even made it to Midsummer Phantoms, which was early this year and so didn't fall while we are away. And although I didn't actually pack anything until today, I had done enough preparation that we were away at one o' clock, and reached the island before D. and [personal profile] valydiarosada, who had made detours for shopping and sightseeing.

Another year, another cottage: this year we are in Britannia Cottage (not the house on the green with 'Britannia' blazoned across it, but the rather more compact cottage at right angles to it). We are immediately across the road from the mead factory, which has already proved handy, when D. discovered there were only three wine glasses; he was able to buy another in the shop there. Now he is in the kitchen cooking dinner, and there is a constant running commentary of "lemon squeezer - lemon squeezer - isn't there a... parsley - oh, I forgot the parsley - [personal profile] shewhomust, did you bring any olive oil?"

Yes, I did. Also black pepper and a corkscrew. So far, I have discovered that I have forgotten the olive oil spread for my breakfast toast, and the motion sensitive nightlight. Of these, the latter is the worse omission, especially since the bathroom is downstairs. Oh, well, we will cope. Now I should probably go upstairs and unpack.
shewhomust: (bibendum)
- just flew by: after that post from Berwick, I didn't switch my computer on again. The next day (Wednesday. I think) we crossed the border, dipped into Eyemouth but didn't stay, lunched at St Abbs and went on to explore Dunbar a bit more. Thursday was our last day on the island, so a last change to do all the things we hadn't yet done: I spent the morning on the beach by St Cuthbert's island, listening to the seals singing, and the afternoon orchid spotting in the nearer reaches of the nature reserve. I didn't go far at all, but my knee is still complaining (get used to it, knee, we need to walk more). All three pubs were fully booked, so we dined on takeaway paëlla from the Ship, and unfolded the table indoors, because it was raining (first meal of the holiday not eaten at the table on the patio). It was still raining this morning, and a cold, mean wind, so we didn't linger on the journey home; a visit to the farm shop at Blagdon, and home to lunch.

I took many, many pictures, of course. Here's St Cuthbert's island in a sea of daisies:

In a sea of daisies
shewhomust: (bibendum)
Sunshine on the Tweed


We have had a lovely sunny day walking around Berwick, and I'm going to go and be sociable now instead of writing all about it. This picture seems to sum it up, though (that's the Royal Border - railway - Bridge, in case you wondered, and no, it isn't the border).
shewhomust: (bibendum)
The solstice was duly observed this morning: I was not the only member of the party to declared themself too old for this, and sleep through it, but D. valiantly went out to the traditional vantage point (where he found C. and family, who are staying in the Old Granary). The sun did its trick of gleaming at the very edge of rising, and then vanishing into cloud as it cleared the horizon. There may even have been a little rain thereafter. Nonetheless, dawn had been observed to happen, and honour was satisfied.

Much later [personal profile] durham_rambler and I took a walk in the same direction. Through the meadow, past the foot of the Heugh, where we were buzzed by swooping swallows; along the harbour and past the castle, looking very stark and dramatic without the scaffolding it was wearing three years ago. [personal profile] durham_rambler took the right hand path (hoping for seals) and I the left, and we met at the bridge and went together to the edge of sea:

The bay of many cairns


Each time we visit I think we have reached peak cairn, and each time it seems that I am wrong. The National Trust puts up signs asking people not to build more; I don't know whether I like them or hate them, but I'm fascinated by the clusters of stacked stones, each one carefully crafted, individual, and all the same. Beyond them just visible is the white pyramid on Emmanuel Head, the daymark of which they are such faint echos. We didn't walk that far, but turned left along Crooked Lonnen, and back to the village.

We lunched on crab sandwiches at the café attached to the Post Office, then bought ices from Pilgrim Gelato - 'gelato', of course, means 'we can't call it ice cream because it's vegan', and their branding emphasises that it is 'free from' a whole litany of things which doesn't include sugar. [personal profile] durham_rambler's salted vanilla was bright blue, and my toffee apple was more successful with the toffee than with the apple, but we both enjoyed our dessert.

This evening we have a dinner date with a former colleague of [personal profile] durham_rambler's, at the Ship: in order to get the booking, we dine at 5.30.
shewhomust: (bibendum)
I went out again after dinner to enjoy the last of the light. Evenings can be spectacular here, but this one was just gently pearly and calm. I walked round the church to the lane which leads down to the beach - and took the footpath into the field for a better view of St Cuthbert's island, but didn't carry on all the way down (there were dog walkers on the beach, but that's not why, I just didn't). A white froth of sweet cicely in the fields, and now and then a taller plant reaching for the moon:

Sweet Cicely and the moon


This morning [personal profile] durham_rambler and I took up his booking to visit the priory, before the causeway opened. We didn't have it to ourselves, quite, but it wasn't crowded, and we drifted around at our leisure, then spent some time sitting on a bench chatting, next to the sculpture of St Cuthbert.

The view from the priory


Think of this as the flip side of yesterday's photo, the view back from the priory across the poppies to the castle, past the harbour and the house we rented the first few times we stayed on the island, long ago ...
shewhomust: (bibendum)
Well, I'm on holiday...

A leisurely breakfast with today's paper, a short stroll round the village to see what's open, what's new, what's still the same. The pubs are quite busy, or rather, given the need to maintain distances, the pubs tend to be full up without actually being busy. But there are a couple of cafés where we should be able to find lunch, not to mention a stand outside the mead factory offereng crab sandwiches. The former shop is scaffolded, and a sign in the window says 'reopening soon' (I hope this is true). The castle is already fully booked for the week, but we have a slot to visit the priory tomorrow. It seems to be a good year for poppies:

Poppies in the meadow


I don't remember there being poppies in that meadow, and wonder if someone planted them deliberately, but I like the effect.

Home to lunch, more newspaper, a book and a cup of tea, and it's time to cook dinner already! Where did the day go?

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