Having a bit of Farne...

Some travel from near, Durham, some travel from far, (Spain) but somehow we are all in the same boat, travelling to Inner Farne, an island famous for its puffins.  Only now it is just out of the Puffin Season, but still we are happy to be swooshed wet with the waves over the bow, peer at the black shags against the black rocks festooned at their tips with bright white poo, sniff the pongy brine and scan the dark sea just in case tiny flapping wings signify one of the most characterful birds in Britain.    I feel very silly, when I realise that the Spanish woman - a vet in trainee at Cordoba Uni - has managed to travel here from Newcastle and will return in one day whereas I have had to get my act together, check out the route when staying in Berwick last year and until my bus arrived this morning, was still uncertain I would get here from Alnwick.   Yet in reality it is all fairly easy, once at Seahouses a boat is imminent.

I guess in season our small boat will be packed, but there are only about 20 of us today.  Our first sightings are of seal sleeping in the sea, noses up, bobbing.  While others flip their flipper in greeting from the seal coloured rocks. I could happily have spent the day watching them, but there are other islands to skirt, stories to hear of about brave Grace Darling, heroic rescuer at 22, but dead herself only 4 years later, and then our final destination the National Trust site, once home to St Cuthbert but now  home to thousands of birds.   NT staff spend a large chunk of time here, joined by keen volunteers.  We have an hour here, time to wonder the marked path, and watch the clumsy footed shags, wonder at the world they inhabit.  They are charming.  In season the noise and smell must be intense, today we can just relax and enjoy the sights, before a last potter on the beach and the boat thrashes back to the coastal town busy with tourists.  How Cuthbert survived all alone there is a mystery, how puffins spend their days at sea, astonishing,  and for all the intripid tourists another small adventure has just ended.