A Holy Island and Castle

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Geo: 53.6915, -1.63284

Falling behind on our entries so may make them shorter until we catch up. We left Scotland behind on Monday. We definitely want to go back and explore more of this wild and wonderful country. We came down the east coast of the Britain. Meant to stop at Rosslyn Chapel but totally forgot about it until too late.

Our first stop in England was at Holy Island (Lindisfarne). Holy Island is on the east coast - on the North Sea. A long causeway connects the island to the mainland - but only during low tide. If you stay too long, you're stuck until the tide goes back out. Holy Island is the site of an medieval monastery founded by Irish monks in 635. It was the center of Celtic Christianity in northern Britain. Today it is a pretty little town with the ruins of the monastery and castle, many cute little shops and places to eat. We didn't visit the castle, but went straight to the monastery ruins and were delighted to find a whole camp of Viking re-enactors making food and tools, clothes, weaving as well as fighting. Vikings had raided Holy Island (as well as many other parts of Scotland and England),

Not far away we visited Bamburgh Castle (interestingly pronounced Bomb-ruh).one of England's most dramatic castles. It sit hight on a bluff overlooking the North Sea and was mostly covered in clouds so no dramatic photos with the sea in the background.

We intended to visit several more places like York Minster and the North York Moors on the way to our next Airbnb stop south of Leeds, but were exhausted from our late night at the Tattoo.so headed straight to Dewsbury and Elaine and Jorge's place. We couldn't find a place to eat dinner before we got there and planned to drop our things and go find something. But Jorge insisted that he make dinner for us as he could see how tired we were, so we were treated to great chicken and some Cuban-style rice and beans.

Eiaine and Jorge are an interesting couple, and we spent a couple of hours chatting with them. Elaine is a high energy professional wedding photographer as well as an artist (the house is full of her paintings). Jorge is very generous and has a passionate love for his native Cuba. We enjoyed them both thoroughly.

Hope to catch up on the last couple of days so you may get three emails from us today!

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