With our Edinburgh tour complete, we started our way south and stopped at the ruins of Melrose Abbey. In the 600s AD, St. Aiden of Lindisfarne established a monastery at 'Mailros' a mile east of the current monastery ruins. In 1136 David I encouraged monks from Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire to found Scotland's first Cistercian monastery here at Melrose. This invitation was strategic. Melrose lies on the English border and the monastery showed the English the immense wealth and power of the Scottish King, which is why in the 1300s, the English attacked and destroyed the church. You can still see the wall remains. The current ruined church that now stands was built in the 1400s and dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Interestingly, the English King Richard II actually provided funds for the rebuilding of Melrose after his armies destroyed it. Perhaps it was because he no longer saw the Scottish border lands as a threat or maybe he was trying to ease his conscience. It was a grand monastery and the church is remarkably well preserved, or at least preserved enough to get a sense of style and scale. Fun fact, when the church was damaged in 1322 from heavy fighting during the wars of Scottish independence, Robert the Bruce helped pay for it to be rebuilt and later had his heart (and just his heart) buried here. The rest of his body lies in Dunfermiline Abbey. I think my favorite part of the Abbey is a little sculpture high on the outside of the nave. It is of a pig playing the bagpipes! Can you doubt the Scottish essence of this place?
From Melrose we wound our way down and stopped in Jedburgh for the night. Jedburgh also has beautiful abbey ruins. Although we didn't tour them, we did drive by them as the sun was setting and they made for a stunning view. We stayed in a 300 year old B&B. Or rather the house was 300 years old, I don't think there was a B&B there in the 1700s! The owners have a farm and on this farm is a peacock. I don't know if you have ever heard a peacock call but it can be rather unsettling if you don't know what it is. This peacock was also rather cocky, but then, what peacock isn't?
They also had a very friendly dog who had absolutely no sense of boundaries. I was sitting in the car with the door open trying to let my phone charge and all of a sudden this wee dog came out of nowhere and practically jumped up on my lap. There was also a lot of licking. Yesterday morning it was waiting outside of our door when we opened it to go down to breakfast. It was a cute little thing! Anyway, since yesterday morning was our last morning in Scotland, I chose to have haggis for breakfast. It was offered so of course I had to have it along with scrambled eggs, bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms, toast with whiskey raspberry jam, and tea.
After breakfast we decided we had a few hours to kill before heading to Newcastle to catch our ferry to Amsterdam so we headed out to Lindisfarne Abbey, which of course, meant crossing back into England! St. George's Day was Wednesday so many houses had the flag of St. George flying outside. For those who don't know, St. George is the patron saint of England. The patron saint of Scotland is St. Andrew which is why on the Scottish flag you will see a white X cross. As we drove towards Lindisfarne, we went past Flodden Battlefield. Flodden was the site of a brutal battle in 1513 in which a whole generation of Scottish men was wiped out. The Scots had managed to push their way into Northumbria and when they confronted the English at Flodden, they did not realize it was a bog. They surged forward, got stuck and became sitting ducks. Thousands were killed including King James IV. It was also the largest battle fought between two kingdoms. Years later, the losses at Flodden still struck a chord with many Scots and there was even a song written to commemorate it, The Flowers of the Forest. It is an incredibly moving song and quite haunting. The tune dates to the 1600s and the words added in the 1700s. The tune is still used by the Canadian, British and Australian Forces for their fallen soldiers. I encourage you to take a listen: http://youtu.be/hqY79y-SCbA
The interesting thing about Libdisfarne is that it is on an island called Holy Island which is connected to the mainland by a causeway. This causeway is impassable twice a day at high tide. Guess what time we got there? That's right, high tide! Nevertheless, we (and the other tourists) walked out to the edge of the flooded road and took a look out to Holy Island. One truck driver decided he had enough waiting and drove across the flooded causeway. We all waited with bated breath to see if he would make it or not. He did but he was lucky. It was quite difficult to make out where the road was, one slip and you'd be toast. Since the causeway wouldn't be clear again for another two hours, we decided to leave. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to wait and make our ferry. But we did drive around and found a nice view of the island with the castle and abbey.
We took the coast route down to Newcastle and enjoyed the seaside views and occasional castle ruins, some less "ruined" than others.
It took awhile to board the ferry. The crew had some difficulty figuring out how to load all the cars but we eventually boarded and found our cabin. We had bunk beds and a bathroom. The toilet was in the shower so you needed to choose one or the other although I suppose you could multitask. The ship operated on Central European time so even though we were still in the UK, we had to push our time up an hour. We ate dinner at one of the restaurants on board and guys, I was in heaven! There were vegetables! So many vegetables! Baked cheesy vegetables, steamed vegetables, vegetables in stir fry, vegetables in salad, vegetables, vegetables, vegetables! I ate more vegetables that night than I did the entire trip. Most of the vegetable choice on this trip has been the potato. Don't get me wrong, potatoes are grand but it's nice to occasionally see some leafy greens on your plate. Since we were leaving from Newcastle, I had to take advantage of the irony and order a Newcastle Ale. When I did, our waiter laughed and said partially to himself, "Germans really love Newcastle!" He thought we were German. It's okay, we have been mistaken for Scandinavian, Australian and English (yes, that actually happened in Scotland) on the trip as well. And frankly, apart from the Australian, we are Scandinavian, English and German! After dinner we headed back to our cabin for bed. As I had claimed the top bunk, I prepared to climb up. I admit, I had some difficulty which resulted in hysterical laughter from my father. In my defense, it is difficult to climb up a ladder when a boat is moving from side to side. It is also difficult to take a shower, but I digress. But the good news is that nobody got seasick! Those Viking and shipmaster genes kicked in and all was well.
We docked yesterday morning in Amsterdam, or rather, west of it. I got a little nervous when we went through immigration. When we gave our passports to immigration the Dutch officer looked at them and said, "please wait a moment." Then he walked away and motioned for another officer to go with him into a hut. They had not done that to anyone else. Eventually they came back and we realized it was because we don't belong to the EU so they had to do an extra check and give us a stamp. So we navigated our way through the Netherlands, saw some windmills, canals, lots of people on bikes and incredibly colorful tulip fields. There are so many colors of tulips! Various shades of purples and blues, yellow, orange, white, red, and pink! Fun fact, the Netherlands is the biggest exporter for flowers.
Our trip is just about finished. We are now working our way back to Norway. Tomorrow we will take a ferry from Denmark to Oslo, then we will have one day in Oslo and fly home!
Cheers!
Elizabeth
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