Day 40 - In the footsteps of St Cuthbert's Way

Today we decided to walk part of the Cuthbert's Way, to visit one of the most significant sites along the route to what is known as St Cuthbert's Cave. The cave is reputed to be where the Lindisfarne monks brought St Cuthbert's body to rest in 875AD when they fled from the repeated Viking raids on Holy Island until it was taken to its final resting place at Durham Cathedral. 

Around the site, the Leather family of Middleton Hall used this area for burials and names have been carved into the giants rocks in front of the cave. Others have also scratched names and dates.

Above the cave we had a wonderful view of Holy island and the Northumberland coastline. We follow the route through Mill Race Plantation.

On route we met several other fellow pilgrims and locals but also as we passed a farm we met one of the retired farm labours who was washing his caravan.. a Bailey, these are built in Bristol, and our first caravan was also a Bailey, after sharing caravan stories, he told us that the 30,000 acre was sold to a Dutch company a few years ago, the Diary herd of 450 cows sold, with the sheep and the diary closed down making 18 redundant. Today the farm only employs 3 part time staff and grows mainly cereals, the field being sprayed  is 50 acres of poppies - a trial venture as the seed will be used to go into poppy seed bread! 
The farm expects to get £1000 per ton, 
that a huge amount of poppy seeds!

A second retired farmer was also watching the spraying commented that no one knows how they are going to harvest it as they don't have the specialist machinery, and the combine would struggle. The consensus was next year there would be poppies growing anywhere and everywhere around the farm and fields. - Whatever happens the poppies we have seen are very beautiful.

We continued on our way.....