Scotland #4: Holy Island

After arriving in Newcastle we went grocery shopping and immediately drove north to Holy Island.

As you can see the causeway isn’t high enough to provide a safe access to the island at all times so we had to wait a bit until the tide was low enough to be able to cross safely.\ The island consists of a huge nature reserve, a small village and a castle. Of these three we first took a look at the village and it’s leftover mini-cathedral, a priory.

Next to the ruins there was also a small (still existent!) church that we visited.

Since the weather started to become very English again we decided to visit the castle the next day. We set up our tent for the night and had our first beer in the bar next to the campsite.

After being greeted by a beautiful sunrise the next morning we made our way to Lindisfarne Castle.

The castle itself was first built as a defense against the Scottish and in 1900 converted to a private hideaway for a guy from London.

We had a little snack at the very rocky beach, headed back to the car and made our way to Scotland.

Two more nice things:

The curious thing was that most of what exists on Holy Island was built before cars could reach the island. This is due to the fact that the causeway was built in 1950 - before you had to either use the footpath or take a boat.

On our last crossing of the causeway we saw this little fellow waving at us