The humans rented a National Trust cottage for a week to explore Lindisfarne and surrounding area. We spent quite a while sitting in the cottage window watching all the people visiting the island as our cottage was on the route to The Abbey and next door to Naitonal Trust shop.

We went out very early to see the Island before all the tourists arrived. Access to the island is restricted by the tides. The causeway to the island is covered in water twice a day and is only safe to cross when the tide is out. Here we are looking at Lindisfarne castle from the harbour.

Upturned boats are used by fishermen as huts.

This one was our favourite hut.

We walked across the meadow to get a better look at the castle which is perched high up on rock.

All the spring flowers were in bloom. This photo was taken from the Gertrude Jekyll Garden which is across the meadow from the castle.

The weather changed quite a lot while we were on the island. On the 2nd day it was very windy but that didn’t stop us going out to explore.

We found lots and lots of cairns built on the beach.

It seemed like a good idea for us to build cairns too, but it did take a while. Big pebbles are very heavy for small bears to move around

Finally we finished them.

On another day we went going back to the Gertrude Jekyll garden to take some more photographs for the blog.

Gates are sometimes a tad challenging to small bears.

There is a little shed in the corner of the garden full of gardening tools.

We enjoyed identifying some of the plants. The purple plant is Nepeta, sometimes known as catmint, there is some in our garden at home.

The sweet peas had a lovely perfume

After having a rest on the bench in the garden we set off to explore the Lime Kilns

Limestone was burned in the kilns to reduce it to lime which was used as fertilizer and in mortar and limewash for buildings. It was very hard work for the men that worked there around 150 years ago.

There were numerous kilns which would have been heated up using coal.

This is the bottom of one of the kilns.

The carts carrying the limestone were dragged up to the top to be dropped in by men to spare the horses the heat coming up from the kilns. The tops of the kilns are now all fenced in to stop people and other creatures falling down the holes.

We spent so long looking at the lime kilns the castle was closed when we got there! The humans had seen it one day while we were busy sitting in the window of the cottage and said the inside was worth seeing, so do go in if you are ever on the island.

We climbed up to the door just to make sure it really was closed,

The door was indeed shut, however it was a good place to have a rest after the climb.

Here we are having another rest after walking back down from the castle.

We managed to visit Lindisfarne Priory while it was still open. Some monastic bears were waiting for humans to adopt them in the English Heritage gift shop.

There isn’t actually very much left of the Priory. A very very long time ago, about 1400 years ago, a monk called Cuthbert lived here. When Cuthbert died he later became a Saint.

We spend a little while exploring the remains of the various rooms.

Apparently when the Priory was no longer in use the stone was taken to build the castle and local houses.

We could see The Castle from the Priory.

Lindisfarne is a great place to visit, but if you stay on the island as we did, you have to be mindful of the tides and plan outings off the island accordingly!

On this occasion we certainly weren’t going anywhere as the causeway was submerged.

The Ship Inn is one of the pubs on the island, and we very much enjoyed the fish and seafood stew that we had there one evening.

The evening before it was time to leave we went down to the harbour one last time.

We watched the sunset and listened to the sound of the seals singing.

Horace the Alresford Bear 2/7/2022