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Edinburgh was my destination. Friends there had invited me to stay with them any time after 18 August, so I telephoned my cousin in Tynemouth and asked if I could stop there en route. No, she said, she had just booked to go on a tour of places of religious interest in Northumbria, starting 17 August. She read me the itinerary. I decided to defer my visit to Edinburgh and go with her,
The tour was led by the Reverend John McManners, priest-in-charge of the church of St Gabriel in Sunderland, and his wife Gina. John is full of knowledge and enthusiasm; Gina looks after everyone. The centre for the tour was Shepherds Dene, the Arts and Crafts country Retreat House of the Anglican Dioceses of Durham and Newcastle, at Riding Mill, a village near Corbridge and Hexham.
The high spot of the tour for me was Ruthwell Cross, a stone cross of the eighth century, near Dumfries. Fragments of the Anglo-Saxon poem 'The Dream of the Rood' are carved in runes on its surface, Fifty-something years ago I studied Anglo-Saxon; I found my Anglo-Saxon Reader and took it with me. The night before we went to Ruthwell I read some of the poem to John, and he asked me if I would talk about it when we were there. Old English religious poetry is often criticised for its set lifeless phrases, but 'The Dream of the Rood' has been praised for the radiance of its vision and the pathos of its narrative. It tells the story of the crucifixion from the point of view of the cross. There is no excessive emotion; the cross does not demand sympathy or claim glory, but it recounts how it was pierced with nails and mocked by men. While we looked at the cross, I read a synopsis of a short passage and then a few lines of the poem. There is a pattern of alliteration in every line, but it sounds like a foreign language. However, I offered to read more to anyone who would like to join me in the bar later that evening, and I was surprised by the response.
We visited sites linked to other early texts. One day we drove to the north east coast and across The Causeway to Lindisfarne or Holy Island. It was a wet day, but two or three of us stepped carefully over the slippery stones and seaweed to St Cuthbert's Island, the very small island where he tested his vocation before going out to the Farne Islands to live as a hermit. Cuthbert lived in the seventh century, and stories of his life are full of miraculous events. He decided at the age of seventeen to become a monk, inspired by a night vision of a great light in the sky, interpreted as a Christian soul escorted to heaven by angels; he learned the next morning that St Aidan, who founded the monastery on Lindisfarne, had just died. Later Cuthbert became Prior then Bishop of Lindisfarne and was renowned for his healing powers, but finally he lived as a hermit on the Inner Farne. He died there, but his coffin was moved to Durham, and in it was found a copy of St John's Gospel, the Ceolfrith Bible.
The parish church of St Mary on Lindisfarne has copies of The Book of Kells and of The Lindisfarne Gospels, written on the island about 700AD, in honour of St Cuthbert, and, according to legends, miraculously preserved. For example, in 878, when the monks decided to abandon Lindisfarne and cross to Ireland, the book fell overboard and sank, but later, guided by a vision of St Cuthbert, they found it at an exceptionally low tide, undamaged by the sea water.
In the church the embroidered kneelers are based on the decoration of The Lindisfarne Gospels, and there is a carpet, handmade on the Island and unique, which is a reproduction of a carpet-page, a page wholly covered with decoration, without any writing.
You can see The Lindisfarne Gospels and the Ceolfrith Bible without travelling three hundred miles. Just go to St Pancras to the British Library. Apart from accessibility, there is the bonus of being able to look at The Lindisfarne Gospels on the Turning the Pages computer.
Writers of guide books to Lindisfarne seem unaware that there is also a United Reformed Church there. I remembered this from a previous visit as a traditional building. Now it has been transformed into a cultural centre, light and open and full of people, with an exhibition of paintings by a local artist. I talked to a retired vicar who told me that he was there on a short retreat, living in a one-room flat in the church, converted from the old vestry. He told me that there is a short service every day, attended by local residents who go indiscriminately to both churches. There seems to be a future for adapting old church buildings to modern art centres.
Our tour included other churches, other crosses: in the east the church at Bamburgh, dedicated to St Aidan; in the west the church at Whithorn, founded by St Ninian; carved stone crosses in Bewcastle and Rothbury. On one wet day we trudged through mud to explore parts of Hadrian's Wall and to see the influence of the Romans on Christianity.
The tour was repeated a few weeks later - unfortunately coinciding with the Morpeth floods. On the television news I saw the car park in Rothbury, where we had left our coach, now completely under water.
Shepherds Dene is a delightful house, elegant, warm and comfortable, with excellent food. It will be closed during the winter for refurbishment, so by next summer it will be even better. I may be tempted to go again.
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