Still here

We’re still hanging out in Lindisfarne. It’s such a lovely peaceful place it’s been hard to drag ourselves away, that and the fact that my OH is watching a couple of specific birds in the sand dunes. One’s a Meadow Pippit with eggs and the other is a Stonechat with chicks.


Meadow Pippit, needless to say, my OH's pic


Stonechat

I spent a glorious afternoon at the Lindisfarne Centre on Tuesday, studying a facsimile of the Lindisfarne Gospels, which are the gospels of Mark, Mathew, Luke and John that were originally written and illustrated between 698and 721. The following explanation explains it better than I can, and I was rather awed by the second piece I found at the exhibition, which I thought was a wonderful sentiment.





The illustrated plates are wonderful, with such vibrant colours and attention to design, which of course features the beautiful Celtic patterns.






Here’s just one example of St John ‘……holding a scroll symbolising the Book of Life in which the names of the blessed are inscribed’.

The exhibition also had two large Celtic quilt on display, which are beautifully made.









As the weather was lovely on Wednesday morning we took our walk on the beach before breakfast again and this time I remembered my camera, and just as Diedre had once commented you always find one shoe, how is possible not to notice you’re one shoe short?




And then of course there was this lovely bit of driftwood with this fantastically weathered bark.




On Thursday we woke up to awful weather and it was no good at all for photography so as soon as it was low tide we set off for Chillingham Castle, which is supposed to be the most haunted castle in Britain. Sadly though, the ghosts must have all been on holiday the day we went.




The castle was built as a 12th century stronghold, and remained occupied continuously until the 1930’s. when it went into decline until it was bought in the mid 80’s and has been undergoing restoration ever since. It’s definitely a WIP, but that gives it its charm plus the present owner uses it as a family home. He also has a very large collection of what I can only describe as miscellaneous ‘stuff’.



One of the things I found amongst the collections was this American late 19th century quilt which was apparently made by a cowboy’s wife from bits of left over cloth and is an unusually large piece for it’s type.




This is one of the bedrooms.

And I found this spinning wheel complete with wools and a bit of rather grotty knitting, loitering on one of the landings.




It was a very good second visit for me as there’s very little restriction in the way of photography and most of the collections are easy to view, I would recommend it as a great place to go as an alternative country house.

The way they make sure that no-one steals any of the artefacts is to put several letters and articles on show explaining what bad things have happened to anyone who takes things and this is only put right by their return! Quite a novel deterrent.

I think this will be my last post now till I get home as I don't know when I might be able to connect to the internet again, so many thanks to all who've commented on the trip so far and I will definitely catch up with you all when I get back.