Pilgrimage to Lindisfarne

The Pilgrims’ Path to Lindisfarne

A Bar-Crawl back to the beginning…

By James Cochran (Physics PhD, JCR Vice-President) and Euan Martin (Physics MPhys, JCR Student Trustee)

A mile of wooden posts, bare tree trunks entrenched in sand, stretch out ahead of us as we unlace our boots and step into the North Sea. The last mile of a journey that began, as many great journeys do, in a pub several months earlier… “We should go on a pub crawl” James said to our group as we enjoyed the finest offerings of Cuth’s Bar, “Let’s set off from Durham and go to Lindisfarne and stop at every pub on the way”. After much amused discussion, a group of 6 or so of us concluded that such a plan was a fantastic way of spending some of our summer holiday and agreed to plan the route. As expected, more people joined our plans, but as we approached the date of departure excuses and apologies started rolling in, until only we two remained committed to the project. At this point most people would cancel such a project and write it off as simply a grand idea to mention occasionally as a talking point. But as we are both the kind of person to encourage each other on, we found ourselves on 21st August standing outside the front door of 12 South Bailey with packs laden and boots fastened, having our first pint outside the (sadly shut) front door. Armed with 3 1:50,000 OS maps, James’ bush craft knowledge and Euan’s experience as a hillwalker, we set off up the Bailey, calling in to visit the Shrine of St Cuthbert in the Cathedral en route.

The first day’s walking was around 20 miles, with our aim to reach a friend’s house in Jesmond to spend the night. Unfortunately, due to our mid-morning departure time, the pubs we planned to call at in Durham were closed; however after a speedy walk to Chester-le-Street we called into 2 pubs to rehydrate ourselves and visited the Church of St Mary and St Cuthbert, which was founded after the monks at Lindisfarne fled in 875 with the coffin and relics of St Cuthbert. After several more pubs, and visiting the Angel of the North, we arrived in Newcastle in the early evening, just in time to reimburse ourselves with calories. We then made our way into Jesmond and settled down for the night, our last

Setting off from 12 South Bailey

night indoors for several days.

After a good night’s rest, a session tending to our blisters and a hearty Weatherspoon’s breakfast, we set off on what was to be our last morning of metropolitan walking, with the aim of having reached Cramlington by lunchtime. After walking along the side of dual carriageways for seemingly forever (and then finding out that there was a bridleway following it beyond some trees), we finally reached the far side of the Newcastle metropolitan area and began our travelling through the fields, farms and villages of Northumberland. The basic plan from this point was to reach a large town by early evening and get something to eat, then head out to find somewhere to set up our tarp and sleep underneath. Our second night was spent in some woodlands just outside

The Pilgrims’ Path to Lindisfarne

Hebron, due north of Morpeth, near to the appropriately named St Cuthbert’s Church. On the Friday the weather, which up to this point had been warm but overcast, kicked up a notch, making our journey somewhat more challenging. Knocking on doors for water occurred at an increasing rate, but this actually gave us both an insight into our journey. People would often ask us what we, two slightly dishevelled young men, were doing, which had a straight forward answer of “We’re walking to Lindisfarne”. The follow up question of “Why?” was always harder to answer. We’d tell them something about college or the bar crawl, but really we did it because we wanted to and because we could - something which is becoming more and more uncommon as technology and commitments take over our lives. We ran into other people doing long distance walks (the St Oswald’s and St Cuthbert’s Way both run in the same area), but our route was just for us, made up and adjusted as we saw fit. Wild camping helped to make the whole thing more adventurous, and we also spent our last night in St Cuthbert’s Cave, where the body of St Cuthbert was hidden from the Norse invasion. Despite the midges, this truly was an experience we’ll look back on fondly, as we built yet another connection to the group of monks who travelled over these lands to eventually found Durham. drawing strong comparisons to Euan’s homebrewed meads) and visiting St Cuthbert’s Island, we all crowded into Elena’s car to return to Durham, taking us back to the place we’d started 5 days and 95 miles beforehand.

Journey’s End

The last day began as we set off to follow St Cuthbert’s Way for the final 10 miles, with a plan to meet Elena (JCR President) and Rishi (JCR FCO) before our crossing to the island. After Euan narrowly avoided falling into a rather deep pond, we located the car and shed our boots, let our weary feet enjoy the cool water and set off across the Pilgrims’ Path to the island. The tide was still decreasing during our crossing, so we were slightly wetter than expected; however ending our journey this way truly did make us feel like Pilgrims. After visiting our last pub, trying out the mead from the Meadery (and