The Holy Island That Appears When the Sea Disappears

Kings and saints, bloody battles, and muddy toes.

History casts long shadows in Northumberland. This wild, desolate, achingly beautiful stretch of northeast England sits hard against the Scottish border and the North Sea.

Roman emperors, Viking raiders, saints, and kings–all have left their stamp here. As a wellspring of England’s Christianity, Northumberland draws pilgrims by the thousands to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, known simply as Holy Island.

Twice a day, during low tides, the island rejoins the mainland. Cars by the hundreds stream across a causeway built in the 1950s. The rest of us follow the ancient Pilgrim’s Way, just as the monks did, walking three miles (customarily barefoot) across silt and mud to reach Holy Island.

So it was that my wife, Mica, and I peeled off socks and shoes for the final stretch of a weeklong exploration of England’s least-populated region, via train and bus and often two legs. Northumberland is home to an untamed section of the newly renamed King Charles III England Coast Path, which promises to circle England for 2,700 miles when completed.

Holy Island has only 160 residents but attracts more than 650,000 visitors annually. It is perceived as a “thin place”–one where Heaven and Earth cling more closely. The Rev. Canon Dr. Sarah Hills, vicar of Holy Island’s St. Mary’s Church, says visitors’ motivations vary.

“Some are looking for God,” she said. “Others want peace or stillness or beauty–which I would also say is God. Mostly they are looking for something they haven’t got in their lives.”

Fair enough. I suppose we are all searchers, scurrying apace, too busy to ask ourselves exactly what we seek. Or what to do when we find it. When you walk unfamiliar ground, allowing beauty and quiet to seep in, the experience can leave lasting impressions.

As our footprints marked the final steps toward Holy Island, our guide struggled to wedge 14 centuries of English history into a two-hour walk. His words sent me back four days and almost 100 miles, to where our own pilgrimage began.

To a place called Heavenfield. Where a king named Oswald, following his faith, planted a cross on the eve of battle.

A King’s Victory and an Emperor’s Wall

Six miles from Hexham, a charming market town on the River Tyne, a humble sign and weathered replica wooden cross welcome visitors to St. Oswald’s Church. It was named for a king whose real-life exploits helped inspire the character of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional wandering king, Aragorn.

Though scholars disagree about the battle’s actual location and date, prevailing history holds that in 634 C.E. the king and his troops raised a cross here, overlooking Heavenfield’s wind-swept grasses.

The day before, St. Columba, an Irish missionary, had visited Oswald in a dream. So recounts Bede the Venerable, a monk and influential historian who also described Columba’s visionary promises that the king would vanquish his enemies and “reign happily” thereafter.

Oswald’s outnumbered forces indeed prevailed, routing a Welsh army. Oswald united the northern kingdoms during his reign and sought to spread Christianity.

Doing so required a spiritual leader, in the form of an Irish monk named Aidan, who in 635 became Lindisfarne’s first bishop. Walking from Holy Island to mainland villages, Aidan offered a powerful message of compassion and charity.

Despite Columba’s assurances of a happy reign, Oswald died a bloody death just eight years after his Heavenfield victory. Pagans displayed his dismembered body parts on poles. Yet Oswald’s life still reverberates–in a web of Christian faith extending southwest from Holy Island throughout Northumberland.

Earlier rulers have left their mark as well. Today, many of the region’s low farm fences, houses, and churches–even sections of the majestic Hexham Abbey–share the same dull gray/brown appearance. That’s because locals lifted stones one by one, century after century, from a massive Roman wall.

Hadrian’s Wall, a UNESCO World Heritage Site named for the Roman emperor who ordered it built, is the region’s defining manmade feature. It stretched across England’s 73-mile width when built in the second century and remains best preserved in little-populated Northumberland.

Was it designed to repel barbarian invaders? Or perhaps regulate trade?

“I think it was more a statement of power,” Duncan Wise, a tourism officer at Northumberland National Park, told us. “The Romans wanted to instill that sense of, ‘We’re here, and we’re not going anywhere.’”

The rooftop vantage of The Sill, a regional visitor center just a few miles from Heavenfield, shows how the wall ambles across the horizon. From there, we walked along the wall, past the colorfully named Sycamore Gap and Whin Sill, watching lambs scurry behind their mothers.

Other vestiges of Roman occupation can still be found nearby, including Roman Vindolanda Fort & Museum. There, priceless wooden tablets describing the daily lives of soldiers and their wives can be viewed inside, while kneeling volunteers excavate building sites outside.

“You are walking in the footsteps of many a Roman soldier,” said Penny Trichler, an archeologist who serves as Vindolanda’s visitor experience coordinator. “This is the story of the Roman Empire’s frontier, and it’s told better along this stretch of England than anywhere else in the country.”

Leaving Hexham, trains carried us northeast to the coastal village of Alnmouth. From there, our feet would provide most of the propulsion northward, along the coast path, where people grew scarcer, but the wind remained a constant companion.

Castles, Crashing Waves, and the Walk to Holy Island

Our planned pace called for daily walks of 10 to 12 miles, stopping in the occasional village for lunch, with overnight stays at inns or bed-and-breakfasts. The steady sound of sandy gravel crunching beneath our feet and waves walloping the rocks accompanied us.

We walked past gorse interspersed by wildflowers, measuring our progress by castle sightings. Passing the village of Craster, the ruined battlements of Dunstanburgh Castle, a 14th-century stronghold, pointed skyward like crooked fingers.

North of the market town of Seahouses, the imposing outline of Bamburgh Castle announced its presence from miles away. Beautifully restored in the 19th century, the castle’s rooms and ornate halls housed kings for ages. From here, we had our first sighting of Holy Island.

Steps away, in the village of Bamburgh, stands pretty St. Aidan’s Church. The stone building dates to the 12th century, on the same site where Aidan had a wooden church built in 635.

At last, the morning arrived for us to walk the Pilgrim’s Way to the island. Guide Dave Harris-Jones met us in sandals and a tunic. He and his wife, Harvest, offered us alder walking sticks, and he read a short prayer to assure our passage.

Locals monitor tides closely for safe road crossing times by car. Though poles mark the walking route, we were glad for both the company and Harris-Jones’ perspective on history and myth.

When St. Aidan died, he recounted, a young shepherd beheld a vision of angels in the sky. Was it simply the Northern Lights putting on a show? The shepherd, Cuthbert, interpreted it as Aidan’s soul ascending to heaven, and it inspired Cuthbert (later a renowned saint) to become a monk himself.

As we walked, silt squishing between our toes, Harris-Jones cautioned that in a few hours the tide would rise again, isolating Holy Island from the mainland. But his warning also held a promise.

“When everyone’s home tonight,” he said, “that’s when the island will be the most magical.”

By mid-afternoon, the cars had streamed back across the causeway and the village streets were emptied. In the shadowed ruins of the Lindisfarne Priory, pigeons cooed. Afternoon light shone through the stained-glass windows of St. Mary’s Church, so quiet that we could hear our own footsteps.

We walked outside and around a bend to the water’s edge, watching the rising tide. We saw no angels that night but felt a palpable sense of calm. Every day, this holy place embodies the words of English poet John Donne, who held that none of us is an island–all are connected, “a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

A recurring theme here is one of peace, reflection, and even atonement. Hills, the vicar of St. Mary’s, recalls how a few years ago a group from Norway–some dressed as Vikings–visited to apologize for raids dating to the Middle Ages.

They laid their ceremonial axes at her feet. She blessed them. And they left.

“This island lets people enter another place out of their daily routine, and extraordinary things can happen,” Hills says. “Christianity is strong here. It feels like holy ground.”

Tides rise and fall. Pilgrims leave fleeting footprints in the silt and mud, retracing ground walked by saints before us. Hills noted as much in a St. Aidan Day sermon.

And so as we journey on our pilgrimage, we pray–for ourselves, for the other pilgrims along the way… for what has happened in our lives and our hopes for the future. As the hymn goes, there is indeed a ‘wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness in the sea.’

So let us indeed walk in Aidan’s footsteps – steps of peace, of love, of mercy, wide enough, big enough for us all to share the gospel of good news.

Amen.

A Mini Guide to Northumberland

Places to Stay

Twice Brewed Inn is a cozy and modern inn/pub next to the Sill. The Old Rectory B&B in Howick embodies charm, just a few hundred yards from the coast path. The Beach House Hotel in Seahouses looks out on the Farne Islands, a seabird spectacle worth visiting on a day outing. The Lindisfarne Inn is strategically located on the mainland for pilgrims wanting to overnight before walking to Holy Island.  Manor House Hotel on Holy Island has spectacular views of the neighboring Lindisfarne Priory and Lindisfarne Castle.

Places to Eat

The Garden in Hexham offers freshly made sandwiches, soups, coffee, and more. The Joiners Arms in Newton-by-the-Sea offers elevated pub fare. Bamburgh Walled Garden in Bamburgh is remarkable for its salads, sandwiches, and pastries in a lovely setting. Both Northern Edge Coffee and the Corner House café are worth a visit in the walkable walled town of Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Making Connections

Train service is frequent and dependable, and the Hadrian’s Wall Country Bus runs daily to and from Hexham. Baggage transfers are available on routes such as St. Oswald’s Way and the coast path.