Holy Island and Bamburg Castle

Our adventures started today at the beautiful Holy Island of Lindisfarne. This unique place is a tidal island which means you can access the island twice during a 24 hour period of time as the tides will come in an cover the paved road linking the island to the mainland. A monestry was built there in the late 600's AD and was attacked several times by the Vikings. It survived until our friend Henry VIII dissolved all the monestries and in the 1550's a castle was built on top of this volcanic mound from the stones of the destroyed priory. In 1901, a gentleman by the name of Edward Hudson who was the founder of Country Life magazine bought it from the royals and turned it into a country home. Later he gave it to the National Trust hence how we found it in our membership booklet.

The tides had just gone down around 9:15AM and we arrived at 9:30AM so it was pretty cool to still see water up very, very close to and on the road yet. I do wish we could have seen it over the road but with two little ones it's hard to get going that early in the morning. We parked in a car park just outside the village and then we walked on through the village towards the castle but I loved all the signs posted to warn people to check the tides schedule or you could get stuck!!! There was a little bus you could take but we quite enjoyed the mile walk through the little village (population 160) to the castle by the sea.

We had a little bit of time before the castle opened up so we walked around the pennisula a bit and climbed up on the rock mounds.

Our family picture up on the balcony of the castle looking back at the tiny little fishing village that probably makes most of it's money from tourism as I think over 650,000 visitors a year come here.

Just outside the castle and along the shore of the village are all of these little sheds. They are actually the hulls of old boats that have been cut in half, turned over and closed up on the open end. This is apparently a tradition carried out for many, many years with old boats that have been retired. Talk about "being green"...this is recycling to the max! The National Trust has little lockers in them so people can store back packs and oversized bags along with pushchairs as they aren't allowed in the castle.

Inside the castle was AMAZING. I so could have moved right in and lived there. It so reminded me of the little cottages we got to look at when we were on our househunting here. When you first walk in you are taken back by this large fireplace with a very decorative painting with what looks like a compass on it, but the arrow is actually attached to a wind vane on top of the castle and it indicates the direction the wind is blowing inside.

This was the dining room and eventhough you are surrounded by cold stone the decor was warm and rustic. All the bedrooms were filled with original furniture and just beautifully decorated for the early 1900's.

A fun thing that Addie got to do was a little kid's hunt. The former owner loved the cello so all around the house there were little toy cello's hidden and if you found one you were to write down which room you found it in. Kevin helped her out a bit, but it was a great way to keep her interested and moving about in all the rooms. It is so fun to be able to do that sort of thing with her now.

After an amazing tour through the castle we made our way along the coast a bit and checked out all the boats. There were piles of lobster and crab cages all over and we even found a few dried up star fish as we snuck around them.

Next we made our way along a foot path back up towards the village to check out the old monastery. Funny enough Lindisfarne Priory was an English Heritage site so we were able to walk right in with our membership with them....bonus!

Again Kevin and I don't know why but we really, really like the old ruins of castles and priories and such almost more than that fully functional stately homes and castles. Guess it's just a lot less hectic with the kids as they can just run all over the place and get a real feel for the history (well they have no idea about the history other than stone can hurt when you fall on it).

We found all sorts of fun little places throughout the priory. I still think it's funny that monks essentially invented beer and that they made it all the time and even got a ration of like one beer a day. I had found the "Brew House" while wondering around and Harrison found his way into the pit that probably held a cauldron to brew the stuff in. Other funny things to find are the toilets which were often a hole in a slab that had a small stream running under it. Kevin and I agreed that the coolest part of this place was the arch that remained over the main sanctuary. What a strong will it had to survive as the rest of the church was in ruins.

We spent only 3 hours on the island as that's all we paid for parking and we had another castle to get to for our afternoon. By the time we left, the water had receded even more but the signs were so funny to see eventhough they were dead serious. I could see how people could be tempted to cross the 100 yards with a bit of water on it but I'm not going to try it today.

We actually headed back south 1/2 hour to Bamburgh Castle. This mighty looking fortress was quite impressive on the outside and we could actually see it from Lindisfarne castle in the far distance.

We actually found a place to park up in the town centre and walked to the castle not knowing what the parking situation would be like close by. Along the way we saw what looked like croquet fields, but the sticks and loops were set up all different. Guys wearing what looked like cricket uniforms were out playing...the Brits sure do take leisure like sports to the extreme...hee hee.

Some of that state rooms inside the castle were pretty amazing. The King's Hall was huge and had this amazing wood slatted ceiling and decorated beautifully.

We have been at many, many castles and most of them seem to be very similar, but again I like to find what's unique about each. One cool thing I found here was a few early appliances/tools that we use and take for granted like a deep freeze freezer made of wood and lead lining. Also a really early washing machine and this wooden vacuum cleaner.

In the grounds of the castle a group who does re-enactments of were showing off some of the ways people practiced different trades in the early centuries. This woman showed us how to "drop spin" wool. Instead of a spinning wheel they would actually create thick tread by using this tool to pull and spin the wool. She said it created a finer wool than even a spinning wheel there for making finer garments.

This woman was actually talking about early mid-wifery and early practices of how women gave birth. After some of the stories she told I really appreciated the modern day doctors we had and that wether it be an epidural or gas and air, we had some other type of pain relief than some old man bishop praying over you that the pain would subside and having to smell some awful smelling concoction to scare the baby out.

They also had some games and toys that children would have played with back in those days so Kevin jumped in with the kids to play them out. This game looked kind of like lawn darts with large paddles.

There was also an aviation type museum there which Kevin and the kids found quite interesting. I admired a few bits here and there like this plane cockpit that they found parts scattered all over and tried piecing them all together. The silhouette behind it actually gives a good idea of what it should look like. Kevin found an engine of all things "Mr. Engineer" that apparently had completely melted the cams (whatever that means) and had me take a picture of it.

Addison liked sitting at the big modern day "shoot" and pretend to shoot down the enemy....which was probably me as she wasn't too happy when I told her it was time to move on out.

Back outside we checked out the loads of canons set up on the castle walls and have probably been instrumental in the castles defenses for many, many years.

As we made our way north toward Scotland now we pass by the famous bridge spanning the River Tweed at Berwick-upon-Tweed. I saw it out of the corner of my eye and just bearly was able to get the camera out to take a picture of it, but I wanted to remember that I at least saw it since it was on the tea towel I just bought as a souvenir from Northumberland.

Yeah!!!! We finally made it to Scotland!!!!

Loved it that we saw this sign just after getting into the border!!! Is driving worse here than in England????

We made our way into the heart of Edinburgh (prounced Edin-bra for all you Yankees). I had found this absolutely amazing place call the Holyrood ApartHotel which we got a two bedroom apartment with a full kitchen and two bathrooms to stay for the next two nights. It was so nice and even a bit bigger than the place we first stayed in when we moved to Peteroborough. Other nice bonuses were that we were located only 100 yards from the Royal Mile where all the action is at and then we were literally only about 100 ft from a brand new Pizza Express!!!! Our first night's stay included a breakfast hamper which gave us about 2 days worth of breakfast with a whole loaf of bread, assorted jams, cereals, and then the fridges was stocked with juice, milk, butter and more! The kids were hungry so they made themselves at home and had a big bowl of cornflakes while they watched Peppa Pig!!! It really is nice to be able to go on a holiday in a different country that is so much like the country you already live in for once and have English-speaking cartoons for the kids!!!