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They have pretty good bus tours here. You can pay a fairly small fee to take a bus to various nearby attractions. This trip was a 2 hour drive north to the Holy Isle in the morning, with a choice of afternoon trips to either Seahouses or Bamburgh Castle. The Holy Isle is an island, of course, that has a very long Christian heritage. The first monastery was built there in 635AD. The island is connected to the mainland by a causeway that is underwater during high tide. There are 2 main attractions there, the Lindisfarne Priory and the castle. Since we were only given a couple of hours (had to leave before high tide), we chose the priory. This was a very cool ruined abbey, sitting right next to the current church. (You could tell that some of the stones from the ruin were used to build the current church). This was a very picturesque place, and there were tons of other tourists there. As you will see, I was having some fun with the telephoto lens. There were some very cool textures on all of the rocks and plants. |
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 That's the castle |
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 Lots of monuments here |
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 Here is the ruined abbey |
 Ruined by Henry VIII, |
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 just like all the others in England. |
 Nice Celtic crosses |
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 I forget, St Cuthbert? |
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 Awesome weathering |
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 Must have been soft stone. |
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 That's the current church in the background. |
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 Pigeonholed? |
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 Yes, there was more than one story. |
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 Have to go back to see this... |
 Why are boats so picturesque? |
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 Closeup! |
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 Modern version of the other statue |
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 Since it's me, |
 we have the obligatory |
 pictures of flowers. |
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 Great picture. Some guy sneaking some booze. |
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 Old headstones |
 are interesting. |
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 Small island off the island. |
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 Superzoom |
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 Anyone know the species? |
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 There are always leaning headstones |
 Hmm, artsy. |
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 Out-the-bus-window shots of the tidal flats |
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So, after the isle, we had a choice of Bamburgh Castle or Seahouses. Just for a change, we decided against the castle :) Seahouses is an oddly-stereotypical leisure seaside type town. There is a nice pier, boardwalk, lots of restaurants, and a bajillion tourists. We only had about 1.5 hours, so we signed up for a quick boat tour to see some wildlife. The tour was great, although I don't know how good it is for the animals to have boats getting so close to their rocks. (Not quite as close as these pictures would imply, since I was using max zoom). They didn't really seem to mind, though. Sorry, I don't remember the names of the different animals (besides bird, seal, etc. ;) ) Most of the little islands off of the coast seemed to have some kind of small structure on them. I don't think I'd like to live on such an isolated place, but whatever floats your boat (Ha, made a funny). |
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 This is Bamburgh, definitely have to come back. |
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 Yay, guano! |
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 Awfully relaxed for sitting on a rock! |
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 Do they eat jellyfish? |
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 jellyfish around. |
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 Yes, it did stink a bit |
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 Lighthouses are also picturesque. Maybe because they appeared in a lot of paintings? |
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 Bamburgh castle in the distance. |
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 Old tower keep, looks like it's now someone's house. |
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Don't forget to see page 2 (not too much there, but it may change your life!) |
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