Lindisfarne (February 2014)

On the final day of my trip to the Northumberland Coast (2014) I crossed the causeway to the island of Lindisfarne (Holy Island) aiming to capture Lindisfarne Castle at dawn.

Looking back I was fortunate to have the tide and timing in my favour as Lindisfarne can only be accessed at low tide by car. It is always worth studying the timetable carefully keeping very much to the safe crossing times. 

My vigilance goes back to the school history trip in mentioned in the first of the Northumberland Coast series of posts. I wrote in the ‘mandatory’ school diary: ‘when we got back to the coach we [found] that the tide had covered the causeway, so we had to stay on the island until 2:00 pm’. What sticks in the memory was the sheepish coach driver having to turn around at the causeway and the exasperated teachers! As kids, it wasn’t a problem, we could play football anywhere!

Many years later, I walked from the car park / temporary football pitch to a point below the Lindisfarne Castle where there is a classic landscape view.

Set into the rock is an old mooring ring which makes ideal foreground interest with a lead in to the castle that stands off-centre to the left. This scene works so well it has been taken by many landscape photographers over the years and some might even class it as a ‘cliche shot’. However, I would not let that put any landscaper off having a go. Everyday is different and the conditions will dictate, as it did for me on this occasion. 

Rising above the castle were diagonal streaks of pink cloud, some of it reflected in the pools of water in the foreground - it had to be taken! 

One hour later, the conditions demanded another go at the scene. This time the sun had broken through the cloud lighting up the castle in golden hour warmth:

Whilst waiting for the sun to rise, I captured the dawn light reflected in the castle’s bay with the first image being a recent find in the reprocessing exercise for these posts:

After sunrise I stayed on the island photographing the boat sheds (results in the next post) before returning to the mainland. For good measure I stopped to photograph the Pilgrims Pathway, a footpath across the sands marked by a series of posts, and the emergency refuge huts on the roadway for anyone unlucky enough to misjudge the tide: