When the tide goes out at Lindisfarne I become a pilgrim and
a time traveller. When you feel the liquid sand and mud between bare toes where
St Cuthbert once walked you too will become a pilgrim.
Since Cuthbert’s time (AD 670) this tiny island - occupying
just 1,000 acres off the coast of Northumberland - has inspired soldiers,
priests, fishermen, writers, artists, architects, gardeners, filmmakers and
plain trampers like me.
Have you ever wondered why so many of us tramp (v. walk firmly; walk, go on foot. v.t.
perform journey, traverse country, on foot)? I do often. I did when I stood
at the top of Uluru (Ayers’ Rock) in the Northern Territories of Australia,
especially after being admonished by a wife sensitive to the wishes of the
indigenous people who prefer visitors do not climb. I did when half way across
northern England on The Coast to Coast, caught in a rainstorm at Keld. I did on
the summit of Ben Nevis in a near whiteout on 4th June for heaven’s
sake. So why do it? The answer is landscape, culture and people.
With wife Liza, sister-in-law Mary and her husband T.K. I
walked in Cuthbert’s footsteps in 2003. The 60-mile Way crosses the Eildon and
Cheviot Hills, winds with the River Tweed and concludes with crossing the sands
to Lindisfarne by a line of posts marking the Pilgrims Route. The modern statue
of St Aidan within the ruins of Lindisfarne Abbey is the symbolic end of St
Cuthbert’s Way.
 |
| An intrepid tramper |
Lindisfarne, I looked over the sands on the last morning of our expedition. I smelled pine trees, heard the plaintive call of the seagulls and imagined how Cuthbert must have felt thirteen hundred years ago. Cuthbert and I will have found pretty much the same view, excepting I have the castle. Peace and serenity abounded then as it still does today. The early scholars thought the peace was good but the serenity was fragile. So they moved their base to Durham, to put Northumberland between themselves and the unpredictable noisy, northern neighbours. The island thus escaped ‘development’. Apart from the active years of the castle (1570 to 1603) Lindisfarne has remained in the hands of fishermen and travellers.
I’ll not bore readers with a lengthy history of Lindisfarne,
(or Holy Island), save only to say that St Aidan founded a monastery here in
635. St Cuthbert, in my book a great man, became prior around 675. The
troublesome Vikings sacked it the 875. The Benedictines of Durham started the
current abbey in the 11th century. A castle was built in 1549 – to
keep at bay more pesky invaders, the Scots. And in 1902 another great man
arrived to turn the castle ruins into a house; that man was Edwin Lutyens.
Lindisfarne fills me with wonder. I am compelled to revisit
every few years. The landscape here plays with all my senses. I care about
places like this and their preservation for the next generation of fishermen
and future travellers. One such past traveller was Edward Hudson, the founder
of Country Life magazine. In 1901,
whilst holidaying in the area, he discovered the neglected castle remains. He
hired his favourite architect, Edwin
Lutyens, to convert it to a private home.
Lutyens is my quintessential English architect and a man of
vision whose buildings express cool English emotion yet also a pronounced durability.
Lutyen’s Thiepval memorial to the missing on the Somme (see August 2016 blog), Castle Drogo in Devon
and Lindisfarne Castle each serve a purpose that resounds as strongly today as
when he designed them. The landscapes with the buildings he created in them
became fused focal points that lay down a lineage that has attracted succeeding
generations of visitors.
This constant and febrile joining of land and history on
Lindisfarne influenced others that followed Cuthbert and Hudson. It was
instinctive for Lutyens and Hudson to ask Gertrude Jekyll in 1906 to redesign
the planting of the atmospheric Walled Garden north of the castle. In 1966 the
brilliant filmmaker Roman Polanski shot Cul-de-Sac
totally on location on the island and used the castle for many of the scenes. The
mercurial lead actor Donald Pleasance, known to many as Blofeld in an early
James Bond film, spends much of the duration in this bizarre film dressed in
only a pink nightie. (Movie fans not familiar with early Polanski work will be captivated).
Poets Sir Walter Scott and Tony Harrison and novelists including Melvyn Bragg,
George R.R. Martin and Bernard Cornwell have all felt the drama and mysticism
of the island.
 |
| Gertrude Jekyll's garden |
There is another long distance walking trail that starts on
Lindisfarne. This is St Oswald’s Way. I therefore felt an innate impulse that
we should return to the island and once more be pilgrims. We wanted to feel the
slimy sand between our toes as we crossed the Way and get lost once again in
the inescapable Northumberland littoral.
If you would like to share your experiences of the places
discussed in this blog please record them in the Comments section.
Books by all the authors referenced above can be bought at: https://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk
