Today we took our bus tour over to Lindisfarne and to Alnwick. First up was a drive along the coast. At North Berwick in 1590, woo witches were accused of trying to sink James VI and his bride's ship. They were tortured and tried in Edinburgh and executed on Castle Hill. Further south on a sign, we saw the town name of Conundrum then went on to Seahouses (a very pretty more modern town) and down to Berwick-upon-Tweed (pronounced Berrick on Tweed). This town changed hands between the English and the Scottish 13 times between the 11th-15th century. It is now in English hands, but there are rumblings even now about the citizens wanting to rejoin Scotland.
Funny story about Berwick that our tour guide and driver, Peter, told us: In the Crimean War in 1853, the declaration of war was signed by England, Wales, Ireland, AND Berwick-upon-Tweed. When peace was declared, however, the treaty did not mention Berwick-upon-Tweed, so until recently the funny story is that Berwick is still at war with Russia. However, recently in a bit of tongue in cheek humor and for publicity, the Russian Ambassador came to Berwick to sign a peace treaty with Berwick!
Then we went on to Lindsifarne. This is the tidal island also known as Holy Island. The monastery of Lindisfarne was founded by Irish born Saint Aidan, who had been sent from Iona at the request of King Oswald in 635 AD. Monks from Iona and Saint Cuthbert settled here and Saint Cuthbert was later Abbot then Bishop of the monastery. He was buried here, but later his remains were transferred to Durha Cathedral.
In the early 700s, the famous illuminated manuscript known as the Lindisfarne Gospels, an illustrated Latin copy of the Bible’s Gospels, was made at Lindisfarne. The artist was probably Eadfrith who later became Bishop of Lindisfarne. In the 10th century, a monk named Aldred added an Old English gloss to the Latin text. They now reside in the British Library in London.
In 793, a Viking raid on Lindisfarne is now often taken as the beginning of the Viking Age. A written record of the time mentions excessive whirlwinds, lightning storms, and fiery dragons ween flying in the sky. This was followed by great famine and the ravagiong of heathen men who destroyed God’s church at Lindsifarne. They poured out the blood of saints around the altar and trampled on the bodies of saints.
A causeway connects the island to the mainland and is flooded twice a day by tides. Warning signs urge visitors walking to the island to keep to the marked path and check tide times and weather carefully. Drivers who cross to the island at the wrong times have been caught off guard and stranded as the North Sea comes rushing in. Some have even had to be rescued by helicpoters. Recently Lindisfarne has become the center for the revival of Celtic Christianity.
Holy Island is well known for mead. In the medieval days when monks inhabitied the island, it was thought that if the soul was in God’s keeping, the body must be fortified with Lindisfarne Mead. The monks have long vanished, and the mead’s recipe reamins a secret of the family which still produces it. It is produced at St. Aidan’s Winery and sold throughout the UK.
The mead we tasted was very sweet and not really to my taste. What I liked was St. Aidan’s Cream Liqueur. It was like Bailey’s Irish Cream only 1000 times better. No bitterness, VERY smooth. Almost like thin chocolate milk and you don’t taste the alcohol in it at all.
Driving along, our driver put on a CD with Scottish songs and one was “Loch Lomond” which he reminded us of the story of it being written by a Jacobite rebel in Carlisle Prison. He realized he was going to die so he wrote this song equating “taking the low road” to going back to Scotland as a ghost and never more to see his true love on the shores of Loch Lomond. We stopped for pictures of Bamburgh Castle, owned by the Armstrong family.
Then we went to Alnwick (pronounced Ann-ick) which is home to Alnwick Castle. Funny how the British love to just throw out letters from their words. Alnwick? Let’s just take out the L and the W and see if we can confuse those pesky American tourists.
We drove down Bondgate Inwith Street then continued on Bondgate Outwith—the designations for whether you were inside or outside the old town gate. Alnwick is a very pretty city with its light-colored sandstone buildings.
Alnwick Castle is used as a stand in for the exterior and interior of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films. Scenes filmed at Alnwick include the flying lesson on broomsticks and the crash landing of the flying car. It is in better condition than most castles. It has also been used in other films such as Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Alnwick Castle is the second largest inhabited castle in England and has been the home of the Percy family, earls and Dukes of Northumberland since 1309.
We didn’t have time to visit the interior of the castle so we had lunch at the café across from the Treehouse Restaurant (which was fully booked) then walked up to the largest second-hand bookstore in the UK! My kind of heaven!!! I found 4 tiny books of which I am so proud. Two Freemason handbooks of rules, one on illuminated books, and one which is basically a fold-out panorama of Edinburgh from the early 1800s. So happy I found them, but I didn’t find any of the books I was really looking for. Oh well.
On the way back to Edinburgh we made two stops—one at Flodden Field where the Battle of Flodden Field was fought on September 9, 1513, between an invading Scots army under King James IV and an English army commanded by the Earl of Surrey. It ended in victory for the English army, and was the largest battle fought between the two nations. This conflict began when James IV, King of Scots declared war on England to honour the Ald Alliance with France by diverting Henry VIII’s English troops from their campaign against the French king Louis XII. Henry VIII had also opened old wounds by claiming to be the overlord of Scotland which angered the Scots and the King.
Using the pretext of revenge for the murder of Robert Kerr, a warden of the Scottish East March who had been killed by John "The Bastard" Heron in 1508, James invaded England with an army of about 30,000 men in 1513. In keeping with his understanding of the medieval code of chivalry, King James sent notice to the English, one month in advance, of his intent to invade. (Bad move!) This gave the English time to gather an army and, as importantly, to retrieve the banner of Saint Cuthbert from the Cathedral of Durham, a banner which had been carried by the English in victories against the Scots in 1138 and 1346. After a muster on the Burgh Muir of Edinburgh, the Scottish host moved to Ellemford and camped to wait for Angus and Home, and then crossed the River Tweed near Coldstream.
In this battle, King James was killed within a spear length from Surrey and his body taken to Berwick. The “rent surcoat of the King of Scots stained with blood” was sent to Henry VIII. The biggest error the Scots made was placing their officers in the front line, medieval style. A Scottish letter of January 1514 contrasts this loss of the nobility with the English great men who took their stand with the reserves and at the rear. The English generals stayed behind the lines in the Renaissance style. The loss of so many Scottish officers meant there was no one to coordinate a retreat.
Every noble family in Scotland was supposed to have lost a member at Flodden. Surrey's army lost 1,500 men killed. There were various conflicting accounts of the Scottish loss. One source said that about 10,000 Scots were killed. Another reported the loss at 18 to 20 thousand.
We drove back through the Borders with its rich agricultural land full of barley. Peter also told us that the area was known for its cloth, specifically hard-wearing and rain resistant tweed, and that it wasn’t named after the river but was a mistake. The original name of the cloth was tweel, Scots for twill, it being woven in a twilled rather than a plain pattern. A traditional story has the name coming about by chance. About 1830, a London merchant received a letter from a Hawick firm about some tweels. The London merchant misinterpreted the handwriting, understanding it to be a trade-name taken from the river Tweed that flows through the Borders. After that, the goods were advertised as Tweed and the name has remained ever since. We stopped at Coldstream to get a snack then returned to Edinburgh.
Pictures from top: bridge in Berwick-upon-Tweed; tree trunk sculpture of monks in St. Mary’s Church on Lindisfarne; gate at St. Mary’s; stone wall at St. Mary’s; house that I loved at Lindisfarne.
