Northern England: Day One

Or, Lisa tries to remember how to drive a stick shift, Lisa and Theresa nearly get stranded on Holy Island, and finally drag their sorry asses into Durham.

Tom and Tristan left early Saturday morning to catch their flight to the Orkneys, while we lounged about a bit in hopes of catching the farmer's market (which we totally missed--guess we'll have to go back) before heading to the airport to pick up our rental car. Though we requested an automatic, this is the UK we're talking about and we had no such luck. I grew up driving a standard, though, and it's a bit like riding a bike. In this one, however, not only was everything on the wrong side, but 1st and reverse were next to each other, and I kept putting it in 3rd for fear of hitting reverse by accident, and then stalling, and stalling, and stalling. Often in the middle of yet another roundabout.

Eventually we managed to get out of Edinburgh and on our way to England, chanting all the while, "Stay on the left, stay on the left . . . ." Our first stop was the Scottish Sea Bird Center in Berwick. I couldn't figure out why all the place names were sounding so familiar at first: Berwick Law, Isle of May, Culross. Ahh . . . the beautiful song about St. Thaney by Karine Polwart, that's it!

Historically Berwick made its living on fishing. Now it seems mostly to be a tourist town, but there are references to its fishing past all over the place


The Sea Bird Center had live cameras on the Isle of May and some other smaller rocks out in the ocean just offshore. There were huge screens and controls to manipulate the cameras, so we got to see some amazing views of gannets with their chicks. There were about 100,000 of them on the rock when we were there!

The tide pools outside the Center


After the Center, we picnicked in a very cute garden in the town of Berwick.


Setting up the shot




From Berwick we continued down the East coast of Southern Scotland and into England. Theresa had done some research and really wanted to visit Holy Island, where St. Cuthbert lived and died. To get there, one drives over a couple of miles of mud flats.




There are signs suggesting that tide charts should be consulted before crossing the mudflats to the island, but no tide charts in evidence. Seeing miles of relatively dry land between the causeway and the water, we figured we were safe. When we arrived on the island, we found a parking lot where you have to leave your car and be shuttled by bus the rest of the way to see the castle and village.

Theresa went to buy a parking sticker and I spied a sign entitled "tide chart," so I thought I'd take a look. Said the sign: "Safe times to cross over to Holy Island" followed by rows of dates and times. For our date, the safe times were from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and from 6:45 p.m. until midnight. It was 3:30 as I read the sign. Hollering, cursing and fast driving ensued.

When we arrived at the causeway, the water had reached the edges of the road. We hightailed it over the low point, parked the car a couple hundred feet away, and walked back to watch the ocean devour the road we had just crossed in under 10 minutes.