On the Edge: Around the coast in 80 days: Day 19: Bamburgh, Ford, Etal, Duddo and Flodden

Lindisfarne? Not today thank you.

Perhaps this blog would be better titled 'Travels with a Wayward Sat Nav'

I was up, out and on the road to Lindisfarne by 9.30am.

The wrong Lindisfarne.

Are there two then?

Apparently there is Lindisfarne in Morpeth!

I arrived at the correct place too late to cross as the tide was coming in and the causeway was flooding.

So I had to change my plans, and actually a great day full of little gems.

First stop Girl Power with that favourite of primary school assembly- Grace Darling. She was a 22 years old when she risked her life in an open boat to help the survivors of a wrecked ship on 7 September 1838. With her father, she rowed for over a mile through raging seas to reach them. The courage that Grace and her family showed on that day is now legendary. The RNLI has a great little museum at Bamburgh named after Grace.

Grace Darling was born here...

At only 26 she died and was buried in the church across the road...

This is Kirsty Watts, a volunteer who is both passionate and well informed.

5 Things I now know about lifeboat crew and lifeboats in general:

Eastbourne and Whitby have the most successful life boat museums in the country
You don't need to be able to swim to volunteer as a lifeboat crew member
Pub staff on the Thames are being trained to save drunks who fall in.
12% of lifeboat crew are women
By 2020 the RNLI hope to cut avoidable drownings by 50%

The museum is free, as is parking.

In Sussex, Ford is a small place near Arundel with a Prison. In Northumbria it is a small place with extraordinary watercolour murals in a school.

They are painted by the Victorian Marquise Louisa Waterford, over a period of 21 years, to get over the death of her husband when she was just 40.

She also built the school, restored the castle, and created the village of Ford for her tenants and employees to live in.

Currently the castle is a residential education centre.

The Gentry own most of this County. Ford and the nearby village of Etal are owned by Lord Joicey whose wealth originated in mining. Although just a minute or two down the road, looks very different. Thatched and whitewashed

Another member of the landed gentry close by, although literally in another county, is the Earl of Perth. The Douglas Home family have an enormous estate called The Hirsel, which is just over the border outside a town called Coldstream .

There is a monument to Sir Alec Douglas Home who served in the UK government.

There is a golf course (it is Scotland after all), a lake

beautiful grounds

Are pink or white bluebells still called ‘bluebells’?

Answers from Gardeners Question Time Panel on a postcard please.

Again, except for these…

And this…

I was the only tourist.

The place wasn't totally deserted, there are wonderful craft outlets on the estate. Abbey Ceramics is run by potter and water colourist Peter Lochhead

Julia Linstead makes wonderful glass in her studio.

And in White Fox Gallery there are beautiful photographs, paintings, and felted pieces. There is also a lovely tea shop.

Over the river Tweed and back in England five minutes later I found a Stone Circle at Duddo. It's on private land and you have to walk about a mile and a half through the fields to get there but it's worth it.

Back in Flodden I visited the Battlefield behind the house where I am staying with Sue and her family.

No-one outside the area seems to know about this dreadful battle. 10,000 Scottish lads and their dads were killed on 9th September 1513 by the British who lost around 3,000. James IV was also killed.

The villagers have a great sense of fun. Whereas I have seen visitors centres on this journey costing hundreds of thousands of pounds. This visitor centre is the smallest in the World.