Day 10 - Lindisfarne (Holy Island)

What a Plonker!

Monday August 2nd 2010

After a few days in Scotland, we headed back across the border to England. We still couldn't understand what anyone was saying but the guidebooks stopped saying how the English were evil, which was a bonus. So we went to Holy Island off the course of Northumberland. It is an unusual island in the fact that when the tide is high you can't get across it. There are in fact 2 caches on there. To save disappointment now we only managed to find one of them, after all we don't to rush ourselves do we. For more information on this glorious part of the British Isles please click here.

Even Josh is impressed

When we got out the car in the main car park...the 2 caches appeared 1 mile away, and it was clear as we walked to the village centre that we were not heading in that direction. We first went to look at the priory....there was a charge to enter, but naughty naughty Mr Shiltonpig found a back way in and took a peep. If there are any children reading this...Mrs Shiltonpig would like to say that she does not condone this type of behaviour. To be fair the entry price does not warrant what you are going to see. Back to the village, where we stopped Josh from eating poisonous berries, we gathered he was hungry and so took him to a cafe for something to eat.

It may not look much but is Joshs 1st crab

Next up was the castle, which was very impressive. Mr Shiltonpig took like a million photos around here, very peaceful. By the time we went to the castle we realised there were rock pools and lots of them. Mr Shiltonpig suddenly reduced in age to about the age of 10 and started trying to find crabs and other such sea life creatures for Josh to see. We found a tiny crab as featured in the photo, and our first hermit crab as well we have found in this country. Josh loved it on this beach (well rocky pool beach) and was busy throwing in stones...in fact if throwing stones was an olympic sport Josh would win hands down!!

Not quite the tower of Babel 

Somehow managed to avoid the ice cream van from Josh on the way back to the car. But then we still had the issue of finding the 2 caches. We parked further down the coast near some sand dunes and started walking...within minutes this started to attack us. You don't need to talk about the Triffids, these plants would have assimilated my jeans given them chance. It is no surprise that they provided the inspiration for velcro. The dunes however were beautiful and the cache itself was on a part of the island that pretty much gets no visitors and even better a short walk takes you to one fantastic empty beach. Nobody for miles...peace at last and yet again Josh loved it. The name of the cache is "Greenshiel stamps" and easily a contender for one of the top 10 caches of the year. Sadly for us the other cache was still a fair walk away and with the risk of the high tide coming and sweeping away our car in water we had to scoot for the day. But it gives us reason to come back another day.

He is so cute..

St Cuthbert meets Team Shiltonpig