Monks, Sun and Sand

       This morning I woke up to sun streaming in my window! It was a lovely surprise after yesterday's downpour. I excitedly put on clothes and joined everyone in the dining hall for a good breakfast (no complaints on food so far!) We walked over to the "primrose yellow house" for our briefing on Cuthbert, Northumbria and Holy Island. I can tell Professor Lomas really likes this topic because he sort of chatted about it in so much detail that we only had two minutes at the end of the hour to mention Cuthbert (who was pretty much the main topic of the day).
       We had a fairly long time on the bus today with two long breaks at Holy Island and then Bamburgh. The beautiful weather really made the day! There are no surviving ruins at either location so we were looking at more modern buildings (or sometimes, nothing) trying to visualize what the monastery at Lindisfarne and castle at Bamburgh might have been like in the 7th and 8th centuries.
       Lindisfarne is only connected to the mainland twice a day, so we have a tight schedule where we had to be off the island by 1:30. We walked up onto the Heugh (YUFF), which was a hill on the farside of the island that overlooked the monastery on one side and the sea on the other, including Cuthbert's tiny island where he had his first hermit's hut. In an unfortunate turn of events, while we were on the Heugh we were swarmed by millions of tiny black beetles that got onto everyone's clothes and hair. General panic ensued as we all flailed away down the hill while Professor Lomas looked bewildered and gave up on giving us his Cuthert spiel temporarily. The "flea plague" as it was known the rest of the day was soon resolved but i'm sure will never be forgotten. Poor monks who had to live that way on the island all the time!

        On the opposite side was a beautiful castle that looked as if it have been carved on the top of a large rock jutting out of the ocean. Professor Lomas told us this was Lindisfarne castle, which we would not be going to because it was out of our time period (built in the 16th century). That was a little disappointing because it was really amazing and I would have liked to see the inside--but no matter, we had more important things to investigate!

        We walked through the ruins of the 11th century monastery that had replaced the even older Lindisfarne monastery (the 8th century one where the manuscript was made). There was also a little museum with a nice gift shop where I couldn't control myself and bought a super soft stuffed sheep who I have named, most appropriately, Cuthbert.

        After eating another lovingly packed lunch, we drove the short distance to Bamburgh, which acted at the capital of Northumbria for several centuries after its conquest by Ida, the first Bernician king (Northumbria is comprised to the two smaller kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira). Here was another awesome and enormous castle which we again, did not get a closer look at because it was from later than the period we were studying.

       Instead, we walked out to look at the sea, where we could see, in the distance, both Lindisfarne and Inner Farne, a smaller island and home of St Cuthbert with is now a bird sanctuary for puffins!

        I have some videos of all this but unfortunately I think I left my video camera on the bus so I'll have to hopefully upload them when I am reunited with it tomorrow! At any rate, tomorrow we are studying Bede and going to his monastery at Jarrow as well as to several churches! Hurray! I am looking forward to seeing things that are not ruined, though the last two days has certainly been an exercise for the imagination!