SORRY about the cliché, but the scene was idyllic. Sun shining, sky blue, temperature 15°C and rising, sea like glass except for a gentle swell on which birds rode at ease.
Even the gulls, which have started nest-building in our roof earlier than usual, to my usual frustration and subsequent shocking deterioration in language, were less annoying in their natural habitat as they wheeled, squawked and squirted.
In the
distance was the castle we had just circled – although more an Edwardian house makeover than much of a castle – with a return via the Gertrude Jekyll garden and through several hundred pregnant matronly ewes grazing springy turf.
Behind our vantage point bench were 1,000-year-old priory ruins dappled in sunshine. To the left, a memorial to the small island's dead of two world wars, last year's poppy wreath still in place. To the right, a rocky beach turning to sand spreading into a golden distance. In front, two small fishing boats putt-putted round crab and lobster pots with a carrying voice remarking that "it's var near summer."
The voice was right. Hard to believe as we reluctantly set off towards the car park, past posters warning the potentially dozy or half-witted not to miss the tide deadline before the causeway disappeared, that this was Holy Island, off the British east coast, in early February.
The correct name is Lindisfarne, but to most it is Holy Island – apart from at least one generation of mainland children who called it Fraggle Rock and linked some of their schoolmates from the island to Jim Henson's imaginary creatures.
Not quite accurate, because Henson's vision for the Fraggle Rock television series was of a colourful and fun world. Holy Island is peaceful, almost idyllic in the right weather, a feeling of otherness, a hint of time forgot perhaps, but fun and colourful? Probably not.
However, Henson also tried to devise a Fraggle Rock world "with a complex system of symbiotic relationships between different races of creatures". Now you're talking. In summer Holy Island sags under a steady stream of tourists coming over the causeway, which is covered by sea for about six hours a day, while native islanders are now probably outnumbered by second and holiday home owners. Add competition for the tourist pound and Fraggle Rock storylines had nothing on the complex relationships of that mix.
Not forgetting the few who still farm and fish, I reflected, as a small boat moved away from one of the fishing boats, one man rowing, another standing in the stern, his right arm jerking backwards and forwards.
I've never done it on a boat, but I've been there often enough with lawnmowers to recognise the action. He was trying, without success, to start a small engine by yanking a cord and hoping.
As the engine coughed then died, coughed then died, as they do, I was willing it to start. It seemed a pity to spoil an almost perfect scene. But the boat coughed and spluttered out of view round a headland with the rower still bent over the oars. Selfish, I know, but I was so happy it wasn't me.
The full article contains 541 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
