Interim report from Lindisfarne

[shewhomust]

As I explained last year, it is our custom to celebrate the summer solstice on Lindisfarne. We have done this for many years, and for the past several of them, we have done so muttering that we are getting too old for this driving up overnight and home the following morning lark, we need somewhere to sleep.

This year, finally, we did something about it: and having weighed up the cost of bed & breakfast for four or more, the potential willingness or otherwise of proprietors to countenance coming and going and indeed demanding breakfast at odd hours, not to mention the sheer indeterminacy of the fifth member of the party - having weighed all that up, we rented a house for a week. durham_rambler and I went up for the weekend, and discovered that the address, which we had not recognised, belonged to a house within the dramatically isolated building near the harbour, which we had often seen: it would be hard to miss it. The picture shows Herring Houses from the Priory: the middle of the large block is "ours".

We arrived in time for a late lunch at the Ship, crab sandwiches in the garden while thrushes and blackbirds hopped around - I was surprised how rich the island was in garden birds, and how few gulls we saw. A stroll around the village, home for Doctor Who, and out again in the late evening light: there are already photos on Flickr, and there will be more, though not of the seals who eyed us from a distance and then struck out for St Cuthbert's Island.

Sunday's walk was a circumnavigation - no, a circumambulation - of the island, an undertaking comprising a degree of elasticity. Picture the island as two blobs connected by a narrow neck (here's a map - scroll down to see it): even the larger, with the Priory, the Castle, the village, is quite small: but the whole lies on sands which are covered to a greater or lesser extent by the sea, depending on the tide. How wide you draw your loop determines how long your walk is, as does how closely you try to follow each inlet. There was some debate about fractal mathematics, but it was resolved amicably enough in time for a picnic lunch on the dunes, just as the promised rain was beginning. Across the dunes, through valleys richly studded with wild orchids, past the remains of a Saxon village, to the obelisk, which seems to have been repainted recently, and floated white against the pale sky. And then the Castle was in sight, and home not long thereafter.

Monday - yesterday - was back to work day, but since the tide kept us on the island until midday, we fitted in a visit to the Priory. I commented to the custodian, who was picking up litter, that if he extended his pincers another six inches, he could bag and bin the pigeon which was pecking around our feet; and he explained that there were about four racing pigeons which had taken up residence over the last few days, presumably lost and waiting collection. They were easily distinuished from the wild population because they were, indeed, so tame that you could reach out and pick them up. Meanwhile, the high arcades of the west front formed an elegant pigeon loft.

And then home, to pick up the threads, do some work, hand the keys on to David who will arrive to collect them any time now. Tomorrow he will see the sun rise on the island on the actual solstice (in the rain, says the forecast); we will drive up in the evening, after desperance'z ghost story session, and watch the sun rise, in the traditional manner, on the Saturday after the longest day.