Good Friday Thoughts

All of the photos in this blog are historic, taken between 1978 and 2019.

 

I’m leaving off the Facebook daily posts for today, but shall be going back.

For the past few years Good Friday has become special again.

There is somewhere I would really like to be today, 
something my son and I have shared for a couple of years and it won’t be happening.

Back in 1978 some university friends and I took part in Northern Cross, the pilgrimage where people walk over Holy Week reaching the Holy Island of Lindisfarne on Good Friday.  There are two or three different routes each year.  No doubt you will have seen photographs in the newspapers on Easter Saturday of Northen Cross walkers crossing the Pilgrims Way, some barefoot.

Over the years I have kept in touch with some of those friends, been put back in touch with others, and a handful of us meet up every six months or so (this April’s Coven has been postponed).

Each Northern Cross route requires at least one back-up driver to: ferry car driving pilgrims to and from the end and start point of each day; meet the walkers at designated points with food and hot drinks; carry anyone who can’t continue walking due to accident or blisters; and to buy anything that might be needed en-route including food or equipment. 

In 2017 my old university flatmate Dr E, one of the Northern Cross organisers, put out a plea for a driver for her route from Carlisle.  I volunteered myself and our car.  From the start on the day before Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, I had nine days of blissful solitude driving around the wilds of Cumbria and Northumberland interspersed with socialising and, sometimes, worshipping with friends and strangers who became people I liked. 

It was the longest length of time I’d been away from the boys since they were born.  They may have missed me but they survived.  They even managed to use the washing machine when they began to run out of socks.  It did me the world of good.

The next year I suggested to Thunderthighs that we go up to Holy Island and see the pilgrims crossing the causeway.  He liked the idea but, sadly, the weather was so bad they walked the road causeway instead.  But it was still quite atmospheric.

Last year we drove up again and the weather was wonderful.

We parked in Holy Island’s car park and walked back to where the Pilgrims' Way comes ashore.

Wearing wellies we walked out following the markers to the refuge point half way across.

We carried on further but turned around when the going got simply too muddy and slippery for us.

As we walked back to Lindisfarne the wind brought the strange, ethereal, haunting singing of the seals across the sands to us.

 




There were, of course, others waiting for the walkers.

Once we’d seen the Northern Cross pilgrims safely ashore, and shouted hello to people I know, mindful of the tide we got back in the car and came home.

I had intended doing the same this Good Friday.

But Northern Cross is cancelled this year, for obvious reasons. 

The only time it’s been cancelled before was during the Foot & Mouth epidemic.

I keep thinking about the sands between Holy Island and the mainland.

How desolate they must be.

How much more desolate they must seem on a day when they normally see all the pilgrims and followers.

How desolate Lindisfarne itself must be without its tidal flow of visitors.

And I wonder whether we’ll ever hear the seals singing again.