me and three: Family Reunion

Saturday, 10 July 2021

Family Reunion

And so to the Borders we went.

There was a lot of mountainbiking...

BIG thumbs up to Glentress Forest!

(which second time round did also include
tea, cake and ice cream for us girls while
the boys carried on going for it)

A lot of swimming - and I mean a lot of swimming...

A lot of abbeys and monasteries and historic houses...

...and the only day we were truly unlucky with the weather,
though I'm not sure any of these photos truly show you how
wet it was. The whole. entire. day.

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne is a tidal island off the northeast coast of England, and about an hour directly east of where we were staying in Scotland. Holy Island has a recorded history from the 6th century AD - it was an important centre of Celtic Christianity under Saints Aidan of Lindisfarne, Cuthbert, and Eadfrith of Lindisfarne. After the Viking invasions (which is why all four of our kids learned about it and why they wanted to go), the priory was re-established and a small castle was built on the island in 1550.

Lindisfarne Castle - which is still closed to the public,
THANKFULLY! in the kids minds, because I'd have made them
trek out there regardless of the weather! I mean we had to find
something to do until the tide turned...

Lindisfarne Priory

The monastery of Lindisfarne was founded around 634 by Irish monk Saint Aidan, who had been sent from Iona off the west coast of Scotland to Northumbria at the request of King Oswald.

In 793 a Viking raid on Lindisfarne is now often taken as the beginning of the Viking age. Although there had been other raids, this one was significant because according to English Heritage "it attached the sacred heart of the Northumbrian kingdom, desecrating the very place where the Christian religion began in our nation".

Lindisfarne is also famous for its mead. In the medieval days when monks inhabited the island, it was thought that if the soul was in God's keeping, the body must be fortified with Lindisfarne mead. The monks have long since vanished, and the mead's recipe remains a secret of the family which still produces it, but a good few bottles now inhabit the Clan cupboards!

Melrose Abbey

The abbey of St Mary of Melrose is a partly ruined monastery of the Cistercian order. Founded in 1136 at the request of King David I of Scotland, it was the chief house of that order in the country until the Reformation.

The east of the abbey was completed in 1146 and other buildings in the complex were added over the next 50 years. The abbey was built in the Gothic manner and in the form of a St. John's Cross. Alexander II and other Scottish kings and nobles are buried at the abbey, and a container believed to hold the embalmed heart of Robert the Bruce was found in 1921 below the Chapter House site (the rest of his body was buried in Dunfermline Abbey), where it was found again in a 1998 excavation

Can you spot the bagpipe playing pig?!?

Abbotsford House, built as the residence of the novelist
and poet Sir Walter Scott between 1817 and 1825

Greenknowe Tower

The traditional home of the Scottish Laird was the tower-house. The Laird's Hall was on the first floor with the kitchen and cellars below and bedrooms above. Remains of the courtyard can be seen to the right of the tower.

A lot of hills and views...

The Eildons

Eildon Mid Hill (from the north hill top)

View down to Melrose Abbey

Those that made it up the second peak!

The north hilltop is actually surrounded by over 5km of ramparts, enclosing an area of about 16 hectares (40 acres) in which at least 300 level platforms have been cut into the rock to provide bases for turn or timber-walled houses, forming one of the largest hill forts known in Scotland.

The William Wallace Statue

The first statue erected in Scotland to William Wallace was commissioned by David Stewart Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan and is now protected as a category B listed building. The statue is made of red sandstone and was erected in 1814, standing 31 feet (9.4m) high and looking over the River Tweed