Lindisfarne castle – something from seaview

Seaside gardening

I guess I should be honest … I’m really writing a gardening blog because – on a cold winter’s day – I badly need to remind myself how lovely summer can be in the Northern Hemisphere … Not that our garden has always been as it appears above … We moved to an unkempt wilderness, and, since we neither of us had any previous experience of coastal gardening, we turned to the authorities …

I treated myself to a copy of Mrs. Bardswell’s book on Sea-coast Gardens and Gardening …Her references made me laugh! Lady Battersea’s Overstrand garden is really rather grander than is relevant to our little Northumbrian coastal cottage garden.

… Salt airs stir leaves in broad plantations, red and white Roses stud smooth lawns, Lilies flower happily in the half-shade of trees, and pond-flowers are blooming in sylvan lake and pool. …

I think not for us!

But she did make valuable points, among them the importance of plant protection from the prevailing winds.

Success in sea-coast gardening is really a question of shelter. That must never be forgotten. If natural shelter be lacking, however, it is not difficult to build it up.

My elderly copy of Scotts Nurseries catalogue (veritably a gardening bible!) says much the same …

Once a hedge is established to keep out, or even filter, the drying salt-laden sea-winds many tender plants will flourish in our equable coastal climate …

Perhaps the most touching (and expert) advice came from my Aunty Jilly, here enjoying her lovely Edinburgh garden …These are her recommendations for planting for shelter … (somewhat disconcertingly she refers to First and Second Line of Defence as though preparing for a military siege) …So we did indeed plant for shelter – but from the prevailing and often boisterous westerly winds … hollies (variegated for effect), sea-buckthorn, rosa rugosa, ribes …Making a solid protective border of shrubs which the birds and smaller plants love … On the coastal side – looking south-east to the sea – we actually removed the existing defences … taking down the five foot fence so that we could see the sea …Sometimes we pay the price for this folly – as when vicious easterlies sweep in and burn … Just look at the bottom of those raspberry plants … But we can see the sea!We also got advice and inspiration from another source. A local garden, designed by the wonderful Gertrude Jekyll …Lindisfarne Castle is just over the sea from us – it’s that bump on the horizon, glimpsed here in the soft glow of the evening light …In 1906 Gertrude Jekyll stayed at Lindisfarne Castle a couple of times while the architect, Edwin Lutyens, was also there. Lutyens had been commissioned to renovate the Castle by its owner, Edward Hudson. It was Hudson’s idea to turn the old walled vegetable garden into a tennis and croquet lawn and develop the valley between it and the Castle into a pretty water garden. In the event the pretty water garden never materialised – and the old vegetable garden became the Castle Garden where gardening wizard Jekyll worked her magic … We first visited the garden in the winter, so what struck us were the bones of the structure …Even in the winter it was clear that stachys lanata (aka lamb’s-ear) was the plant to grow in this locality … It does indeed flourish very happily in our garden. I think I’d go as far to say that it is one of the most contented of our plants … self-seeding happily … And that splash of silver sets off the other plants so well …Last summer we visited the garden for the first time in the summer months – July. Normally we avoid the Castle and Garden at that time of the year as it is so busy.

It was indeed busy when we visited. But it was worth it. And somehow the Garden felt very comfortable with all this busyness – perhaps because it is so fabulously beautiful and everybody was enjoying it so gently.

This is the view looking from the Garden back to the Castle – presumably the area where Hudson wanted his water garden …And if you angle your head a little bit more to the right you can see the mainland over the sea …Great swathes of colour everywhere …But the structure still strong and clear …Masses of sweetpeas …A bench from which to admire the view …Is it folly to take you now from this wonderful wonderful garden to our little patch of Northumbrian heaven to show you what we learned from Gertrude Jekyll … ?! Probably, but I’m going to risk it.

We don’t actually grow that many of the same plants as Jekyll and following gardeners have planted in the Lindisfarne garden. Sweet peas, yes, we do grow them, and they flourish very happily …

Sunflowers can be found both in Jekyll’s garden and ours … Undoubtedly the strength of our garden lies in the poppies which flourish all summer thanks to repeat sowings. They do grow poppies in the Lindisfarne Castle Garden (look behind that bench above) but not in the numbers that we do … Ours are not exclusively red … The other striking feature in Jekyll’s garden is that she’s not afraid of colour – great splashes of it! Nor are there coy toning colours. Just glorious perhaps vulgar-in-some-eyes colour …We aren’t afraid of colour either. Look at the strident yellow here: the broom echoing the local farmer’s rape field behind the fence …I think Jekyll would approve of the riot of spring colour provided by the wallflowers … And a little later in the year … lilies, alchemilla mollis, pinks, calendula … (and the ubiquitous poppies) … in vibrant clashing glory … Later in the year too when the crocosmia and loosestrife clash comfortably before the harvested field … In my opinion the most important thing for a seaside seaview garden is a good bench …And I’d like to think that Gertrude Jekyll would agree …

Misty Moisty* on Holy Island

There has been dense fog over much of Britain for the last week or so – not cold, just moist and very misty. You can sense the sun is trying to break through.And there have been days when the sun has actually broken through … even if it is only for a little time. So when the weather forecasters said the sun might break through on the Northumberland coast, and we saw that the tides were convenient (so to speak), we decided yesterday was the day for a walk round Holy Island.

Crossing the causeway was forbidding: the fog was deepening.The car park – not surprisingly for a grey foggy day at the beginning of November was almost empty. (Contrast this with our summer visit several months ago.)It wasn’t cold – just very damp, very grey, and not a little bit disappointing. But we’d set the day aside for this walk, so better make the most of it. And how very rewarding it turned out to be.With so much mist – such limited vision – you see things differently. Dark, decaying plants stood out strongly. Colours – even the smallest patch of gold lichen on the wall – leapt out at us.Plants that had been silver earlier in the year were now turning gold.There were clearly cattle around – much evidence of them: the ground churned up, cow pats. But we never saw them. I was imagining how they would look looming through the mist.Would the mist lift when we got to the beach. No, far from it – the fog was denser there than ever!What I can’t convey with these pictures is how haunting the sounds were as we walked round the island. And nowhere more so than on the beach. We found – and heard – a couple of curlews amid a plenty of gulls – and our favourite little sanderlings (for whom we have set out searching before).

This was the view – or lack of it – from the hide. It’s usually busy here with people settled in to watch the water birds. But yesterday? Nobody else – just the water birds busy and noisy. What colours and splendour of bullrushes! We met nobody else on the walk – until we had passed this hide. The sense of walking in the pervasive grey and damp with just bird calls floating out and about was extraordinary.

As we drew near to the castle, we passed the cairns shrouded in mist. Visitors construct these out of local stones – in memory of loved ones or perhaps for fun? I don’t know. Today they were beautiful and mysterious.Somebody had left a message …And then we approached the castle … or did we …where was it? Never before have I seen (or not seen) Lindisfarne Castle like this!Curiously, it is even more magnificent glimpsed in fog.

We couldn’t leave – on a day like this – without paying our respects at the Priory. Most disappointingly, it was shut, so we couldn’t get inside. Still plenty to see outside.Walking round the graves in the churchyard, you can’t help feel how appropriate the old festivals of All Saints and All Souls are for this time of year. Remembrance Day also falls in November, for the very good reason that Armistice Day, when the guns of the First World War fell silent, is on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Here amid the grey mists and grey graves, it comes naturally to remember. These lost souls almost stood around us.Such an enjoyable walk – how very surprising! When we got to the pub for lunch, the few other tourists there were complaining about the weather: Such a horrible day! We knew better.* Misty moisty are technical weather terms of Stephen’s.

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne

I will let you into a secret. It was for this view that we moved the 400 miles from Devon to live in Northumberland.You are looking out of the window, over the fields, over the Eastcoast railway line, over the sea, towards Holy Island. That bump that you see towards the right of the picture is the Elizabethan castle standing proud on Beblowe crag. In differing lights the island looms grey or shimmers as a mirage. Sometimes it is wrapped in mist. It is always fascinating.

It is as though one is glimpsing Avalon, the Isles of the Blest, a place associated with deep yearning and longing – and peace.

Although I have always felt drawn to this distant vision, I haven’t always enjoyed going to Holy Island.

Our first visit was in August 2004. Like the rest of the day-trippers, we’d checked the tide tables and driven over the causeway in a busy queue of holiday makers. We were directed into a huge busy carpark, and followed the stream of people walking into the village where it’s all busy and bustling, and you can join the rest of the crowds in the tiny Lutyens castle, the mediaeval priory or the usual mish-mash of touristy shops.

Nothing special there. Just busy, bustling and bustling. How to reconcile this with the spiritual intensity of St Aidan and St Cuthbert, to draw near to the harshness of life that those amazing monks experienced who produced the Lindisfarne Gospels, to understand the holiness of the place?

Well – we have learned the way. Now I can feel the island calling to me when we have not visited for a while. It has worked its magic on me, and I am a disciple.

So – let me tell you about our visit earlier this week.

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne is not really an island. It would be much more accurate to call it a peninsula. Peninsula – from paene meaning nearly in Latin and insula meaning island. It is just that: nearly an island.

You have to cross a causeway to get to Holy Island, and the causeway is flooded by the tide twice a day. So for approximately eleven hours of each day it’s inaccessible by road.Before the causeway was built in the sixties, you had to approach by boat, or else walk with your donkeys over the sands as these two good ladies did.Were you to cross when the tide was high, you would be unable to drive right over the causeway. You would have to take refuge in this rickety little wooden hut and wait for the tide to go down.You are still directed into the huge busy carpark. Even though it’s a long way off the school summer holidays, the carpark is crowded and busy. Holy Island is an immensely popular visitor attraction. But it is from here that we diverge from the masses. While most people walk into the village (or catch the local hopper bus), we back-tracked and walked along the road to a footpath that takes you over to the dunes. The expedition has begun!! You can immediately see how different this area is. The wild flowers are fantastic. There are poppies and daisies….and cowslips and orchids and buttercups and vetch…..There is also piri-piri. At this time of year it is young and green and harmless. There are warnings about piri-piri, and rightly so as it is most tiresome and we definitely do not want it to spread.One year, later in the summer, I unwisely trampled in the piri-piri and this was the result. This plant has the best survival tactics of any I have ever known – it attaches itself with little wiry hooks which are the very devil to remove. and then it travels with you until it finds a nice new uncolonised spot to invade. After you leave the meadows, you climb up into the dunes, and there is the sea! The vegetation is different here – more sparse and lower growing. Everywhere the birds are calling. I cannot capture the many larks we see as they fly up and up and up with their glorious singing. But believe me, they are there, and their song is beautiful.We sat on the edge of the dunes and looked down on this wonderful white empty beach. Not a lot of birdlife here today, and no people at all. Strange – there are usually oyster catchers, curlews and redshanks, and at least the odd beach-comber competing for finds.There are, however, quite a few kittiwakes chicks in nests on the cliffs. We can see one nest quite clearly. There is a very demanding chick there! You can see its open greedy beak, and boy, could we hear it! When parents arrive with food, the chicks go wild and make an unholy din.After watching the birds, we turn inland again and head for the castle. It is fascinating how many different sorts of terrain there are on one small island. We call this part the Moon Landscape. It is actually what was once Nessend Quarry. This is where, in the 1860s, they quarried for limestone. The extracted limestone was fed into the limekilns (at the foot of Lindisfarne Castle) where it was roasted into quicklime (commonly used as an agricultural spread for neutralising acid soils). You clamber out through sandy dunes and are back in meadowland again. We are once more in the land of verdant greenness.There are traces of old dykes and ditches. The monks farmed here so these may be very old indeed.We turn onto the old tramway that once carried the limestone to the Castle lime kilns. This is very comfortable walking after the rough terrain of the quarries and dunes. They’ve clearly been shearing the sheep – bits of their fleece are scattered all over like snow. But it’s a coarse fleece – I shan’t be taking any home to spin. Now we’re beginning to draw closer to the castle, and we can see the sheep whose fleece I’ve been inspecting.I love Lindisfarne castle. The washed colours remind me of an Uccello painting.It is not an old castle as British castles go – nor did it see important action. A castle was first built on the protruding rock of Beblowe Crag in the 1570s as part of the English defences on its unruly Scottish borders. But in 1603 the crowns of England and Scotland were united under James (1st of England, 6th of Scotland), so after that the castle was rather unnecessary (although a small military garrison was maintained there for another three centuries).

It was reborn into modern life in the early 20th century when Edward Hudson (the owner and founder of Country Life magazine) acquired the building. He appointed the distinguished architect, Edwin Lutyens, to convert the castle into a home. Lutyens made a magnificent job of it. It is enchanting inside – simple magnificence combined with a strong eye for detail.

On the shoreline below the castle people make cairns with the local stones. We may not all visit Holy Island as Christians, but without doubt many people find in the place a deep spirituality. I think this couple were building a cairn to commemorate the scattering of cremated ashes. I can well understand why you would wish to leave the ashes of those precious to you in the care of these little islands on the Northumbrian coast.

You are here to kneel Where prayer has been valid (T S Eliot: Little Gidding)

On the distant horizon is the Inner Farne Island, whither Cuthbert retreated when he could no longer cope with the busyness of Lindisfarne. Now we are rounding the shoreline and the old tram road path leads up to the Castle (those arches on the left are the Lime Kilns). The castle sits like a galleon sailing in these magnificent Northumbrian skies.We are nearing civilisation …But first, glance up at the golden lichen on the castle approaches. Lichen thrives where the atmosphere is pure. And look down, at the banks of valerian on the lower castle reaches.We are back now with our fellow tourists. The ruins of the Priory are in our sights.A sunny lunch in the local pub. It’s quite an ordinary little pub, but how many other pubs sit so casually next to such magnificent ruins? It was St Aidan who brought Christianity to these islands at the request of King Oswald of neighbouring Bamburgh Castle. The sainted Aidan was much loved and is still revered as a great saint, as is his successor, Cuthbert. But in many ways it has to be said that Cuthbert has overtaken Aidan in the popularity stakes. This is Cuthbert’s country. He was – and still is – hugely special to Northumbrians. They remember him locally as Cuddy. If you look carefully you’ll see the Cuddy duck (actually an Eider) nestling at the foot of this rather curious statue of Cuthbert. Crinoid fossils found on the beaches are Cuddy beads, and were once used to make rosaries. Today there’s a ginger cat asleep nearby, oblivious to everything but the sunny warmth. Aidan and Cuthbert never knew this stone built Priory. Aidan came here in 635, and Cuthbert is thought to have arrived here some 30 years later. They lived and worshipped in wooden buildings which have completely disappeared, but are thought to have been on the same site. Given the simplicity of the monks’ lives here on Lindisfarne it is truly extraordinary that one of the finest books extant, the Lindisfarne gospels, was copied and illustrated here. The Lindisfarne Gospels are thought to be the work of Bishop Eadfrith, Cuthbert’s successor on the island. They are now one of the greatest treasures of the British Library. First page of St Matthew’s gospel. Image made available to the public domain by Wikipedia.The monks left Lindisfarne in disarray when Viking raiders began a series of attacks on the monastery at the end of the 8th century. But they took the body of their beloved St Cuthbert with them, and a fine wooden carving in the church commemorates their devotion.

In the 12th century monks returned to build the Priory that we see today. It is a beautiful building, and despite the exposure to the elements still looks amazing. You can still make out the details of the chevrons on the columns. Even in the Priory, it is the Castle perched on Beblowe Crag that dominates. It intrigues me that when I speak of gazing longingly at Holy Island, it is a conflation of the image of the Castle and the ethos that the monks created that sits in my mind. The Castle is the stronger visual symbol of the place, but without the history of Aidan, Cuthbert, Eadfrith, and all their fellow unknown monks, it could just be another castle. Of course, Mother Nature has a strong part to play in making this place remarkable too!Time to face the world again. There’s the whole Lindisfarne/Holy Island retail experience. And then we join the pedestrians walking back to the car park. I hope they will return to the mainland as refreshed by their visit to Holy Island as I have been.

Busy old fool, unruly Sun

It’s now 18 days since the winter solstice, and although each day that passes lifts my spirits as the minutes of daylight increase, there’s an accompanying sadness.

We are losing our sunrise.

Our house looks south, out over the North Sea coast, so on a good day we clearly see the castles of Lindisfarne and Bamburgh.No view of sunrise, you would think. But that’s where you’re wrong. Until I came to live here some 4 years ago, I hadn’t realised that because of the tilt of the earth, during the winter months sunrise moves over across the eastern horizon towards the south.

Imagine our excitement the first winter we were here in 2010 to see this magnificent sunrise exploding over the snowy fields. At this point sunrise has moved to half way between the two castles.A more furious sunrise here; now the sunrise has moved right up to Bamburgh Castle and you can just make out the silhouette of the castle with the sun rising behind.Christmas Eve last year, just a few days after the solstice, and the sunrise is far past Bamburgh Castle. But it’s started out on its journey back.Oh, busy old fool – teasing us with all that promise ….to when you make your cosy little egg yolk first appearance ……to playing mean and moody………to coquettish, mysterious ………to simply gorgeous ……I don’t want you to go – I shall miss you!