Young and old come forth to play, on a sunshine holiday

I picked my first bramble of the year and the hedgerow goosegogs and wild rasps are well ripened. There is no doubt we are moving into the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”. Fortunately the “maturing sun” has also been in attendance so we took a day out to introduce the grandchildren to our own local version of the Galalpagos….the Farne Islands.



Castles had been the theme of the holiday with Alnwick Castle doubling as Hogwarts and Edinburgh with the one o'clock gun making everyone jump. The little castle on Holy Island was much more Enid Blyton ...A children's sized castle.

The morning was spent beach-combing and fossil hunting on Lindisfarne, then a boat out to the outer Farnes. The fossils looked like crinoids and belemnites and they were scattered all over the shingle and shoreline rocks





Fossils

The grandsons weren’t much interested in Saint Cuthbert or the ecclesiastical ruins except as a site for impromptu hide and seek. The trip on the boat was another matter, especially the fast outward journey with a massive bow wave and wash.
This late in the year, most of the puffins had left to resume their pelagic existence with only a few juveniles remaining and the terns had begun their marathon journey to winter, or summer, in the Antarctic. There were kittiwakes and shags aplenty and a large number of gannets displaying their diving skills.
For the boys the highlight had to be the grey seals, waiting for the breeding season to begin around about October and immensely curious regarding the boat, though they must be used to gawping tourists by now Seals

A flock of golden plover, more than a hundred strong flew in to land on one of the smaller islands, some were still wearing their striking summer plumage of black and white “waistcoat “ standing out from the gold back and wings but many had assumed their dowdier winter look.

The islands are the furthest fingers of the Great Whin Sill, the hard rock splits into columns like a miniature Giants Causeway, the cause of many a shipwreck, but we made it safely back to Seahouses. Ice-creams and doughnuts in the sun let us feel we could hang on to the summer holidays for just a little longer





Kittiwakes on columns

Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.!