The puppies had me flying out of the Airbnb the next morning accompanied by Stella, barking her head off. Andrew followed with his coffee.

“Did you hear the owl this morning?” John asked.

Andrew raised his eyebrows. The genuine-ness of the owls not to mention the crickets was still in question.

We learned a little more about our hosts while I cuddled the puppies one after the other.  According to John, Amy was “athletic,” but he was a Mountain Man. As a kid he trapped muskrats, skinned them and sold the pelts. I left the two men talking about manly stuff and went back inside to get ready for Day 2 in Walla Walla.

We started by driving up and down the roads around the Airbnb, trying to find Castoldi’s Candy Sweet Onions. Even though they are available in Seattle, I like to buy a huge bag of Walla Walla sweets right from the source when I can. I bought 25 pounds in a little shed next to what was presumably Farmer Castoldi’s house, stuffing $17 into a little Honesty Slot. For the rest of the trip, I relished learning that they were much more expensive everywhere else.

“You’re my Walla Walla sweet,” Andrew said. I glowed.

Next stop was Fort Walla Walla, which I remember as green but late in the fall it is brown and yellow. We found a walking path and Disc Golf course with those baskets that look like they belong at the bottom of a guillotine. Andrew had two discs in the car. He showed me how to throw one –it’s all in the wrist– and I immediately threw my neck out instead. We walked along the path with Stella, occasionally throwing a disc; it was hot and a little dis-spiriting. The magpies were fun though. On my 1075 trips to Walla Walla, I always noted the first magpie once I crossed the mountains.

We went back to Pioneer Park with a picnic lunch, it being so much greener there. Andrew is a first-class picnic lunch maker. He’s also an amazing cook though he modestly says that he just follows the recipe. If you are new, he’ll tell you about America’s Test Kitchen, Cook’s Illustrated, Cook’s Country and Milk Street. I’m not complaining, I like it that I rarely have to cook.

We drove to a pottery place called Clay in Motion. I discovered it once when I drove down to Milton-Freewater in Oregon to get some Scotch without having to pay all the Washington state taxes. I bought a soup plate to compliment the one I had bought on the earlier occasion.

It was what Andrew calls “surgical strike” shopping, the only kind he likes. Go in, buy, get out. The only exception is Christmas stocking shopping when you have to graze a bit. We had fun doing that last Christmas. Otherwise, I prefer not to shop with Andrew. He hangs around behind me and I think he’s bored but he says he enjoys the people watching and objected to my use, in this blog post, of the word “skulk” so I took it out.

Coming back into Walla Walla on 9^th Ave, we stopped at Melody Muffler Sculptures so Andrew could photograph some of Mike Hammond’s creatures and objects built from car parts.

Back at the Airbnb we had more discussions about where to go for dinner and whether or not the crickets and owls were real. Then a nap, ending with me leaping up: “Klickers!” I needed to show Klickers to Andrew. We drove up Issacs Ave, past the Community College with their renowned viticulture school, out toward the airport to family-owned Klickers where we used to get blueberries, watermelon, squash, honey and ice cream. We bought some Klicker’s  salad dressings, some carrots and apples and ice cream.

Like we needed more food. We always bring too much food on these excursions. Also too many clothes. We both wore the same thing for three days and packed about as much food home as we brought with us, not counting my 25-pound bag of Walla Walla sweets.

We resolved some of our excesses by deciding to have dinner at the Airbnb. Andrew grilled sausage, corn-on-the-cob and asparagus on the barbeque and toasted tater tots in the oven. I made a salad with everything that could possibly go into a salad. I put on a dress and lipstick and the sapphire earrings that my friend Kay gave me before she died. Andrew put on a tie. We had a lovely meal on the terrace next to the fountain with the lily pads.

Andrew said, “The food is always better at home.” When Andrew is the cook, I concur.

Another issue was resolved in the early evening when Stella who had been chasing something in the cabin for hours, finally bagged a cricket. I decided the owls were probably real as well.

The next morning as we packed the car, Stella insisted on sitting in my seat. She usually rides in complete comfort in the back but it took some coaxing to get her there. We visited the Walla Walla Saturday Market on our way out of town. A busker fulfilled all my requirements: good voice, accompanied by single guitar, well-played; old, well-loved songs and –crucially–not overly amplified. As we listened, a text came in from our Airbnb host: “You forgot Stella’s bed.”

Back we went for Stella’s bed. When she got settled, she looked as though to say, “See, I told you something wasn’t right.” Dogs know.

Andrew found the old highway out of Walla Walla. I don’t think I ever thought of it as Highway 12. It was the only way into town. We went by Waiilatpu (place of dry grass) where the Whitman massacre  took place. My freshman class at Whitman was the last one required to visit the site during orientation week.

Old Highway 12 goes through little old Lowden and Touchet, two communities where speeding is resented.  Lowden is the site of Woodward Canyon, the first winery in the valley and L’Ecole No 41, the winery with some of the best marketing merch. The two towns were always markers on the trip to Walla Walla.

We stayed on the old highway as much as we could, winding through the little farm towns.  In Zillah, we visited the oddity that is The Teapot Dome Gas Station and visited with the docent and his lovely dog, Ebony and puppy, Alfie. At Union Gap we finally found the Los Hernandez Andrew had seen on Evening Magazine –the best tamales in the valley, in Washington, maybe in the country, the world. We got four different kinds: pork, chicken, asparagus, and cactus, then wandered around looking for a place to eat them.

We ate them at a park on the edge of another gem: the Central Washington Agricultural Museum, which features a street to resemble an old western town, full of period pieces of carriages, mechanical potato planters, wringer washing machines and the like. The most interesting aspect was not on the curated street; it was behind it. There must have been acres of old equipment, cars, trucks, tractors, every piece of equipment you could imagine a farming couple wanting to get rid of when they down-sized their home so they could move to a condo in Yakima.

The tamales were ok.

Finally we made stops at the Selah and Thorp produce stands, which weren’t as wonderful as I remembered them to be, but then a lot of things are that way.

In any case, I could relax. Andrew pretty got much the full Walla Walla experience.

Melody Muffler musicians, Walla Walla
photo by AJB

Shakespeare fan, Walla Walla Shakespeare Co. Observe the beard.

Teapot Dome Photo by AJB

Trucks, Central Washington Agricultural Museum Photo by AJB

Sugar Beet Lifter Central Washington Agricultural museum photo by AJB

Some of the Back Forty lot Central Washington Agricultural museum photo by AJB

Andrew and I (and Stella, the dog) traveled to Walla Walla last week. You might be forgiven for thinking we were going for the wineries but we were not. Neither of us are drinkers. We were there for the Walla Walla sweets and Ancestor Worship, as Andrew says. My father was born and grew up in Walla Walla. My family visited when I was a child and I went to college there. (That would be Whitman College, not The One in Spokane, Whitworth.)

There was so much I wanted Andrew to see beginning with the pilgrimage there. He likes the dramatic terrain of I-90 which takes you across the Columbia River at Vantage but I argued for the highway through Yakima which is prettier and because I have avoided the Vantage route ever since I got a speeding ticket in the Hanford nuclear site.

The Yakima route was not prettier because the roads have changed. I used to wind through Selah, Zillah, Sunnyside, Grandview and Prosser. The new 82 speeds past sagebrush and gasoline exits, which gets old pretty fast. Past the Tri-cities, I couldn’t find the old road that used to be the only road to Walla Walla.  I felt a bit bereft and with pressure (all my own making) to see that Andrew had a good time. But how could he when we hadn’t gone past the Whitman mission at Waiilatpu and through little old Lowden and Touchet? Andrew couldn’t know what he was missing!

“I thought you said you had been to Walla Walla a thousand times.”

“I said about 75 times but I meant 1075 times.”

We had made a detour in Yakima to find a place Andrew had seen on Evening Magazine, Los Hernandez, best tamales in the valley, on the road to Naches. We ate tamales that didn’t seem all that special and Andrew said the storefront wasn’t the one from Evening Magazine. That mystery as well as The Mystery of the Missing Waiilatpu hung in the air until the drive home.

Our Airbnb, Silver Maples Estate was four miles outside of town on a highway looking suspiciously like the old one I thought I had lost. We had a charming little cabin next to the house where the hosts, Amy and John, lived with two dogs and three Havanese puppies. Stella could run around leash free on soft grass and poke around a pond with lily pads and a fountain built from the pink bricks of the old Walla Walla post office.

We got Stella moved in—she travels in style– and ate an early dinner. I took her outside after dark and stood listening to the crickets that chirped away in the grape vine festooned with colored lights that shielded our cabin from Amy and John’s house.

Andrew came out and smiled. “Those aren’t real crickets,” he said. Do you hear how rhythmic they are? Crickets aren’t in rhythm like that. The sound is probably connected to the lights.”

Back inside he showed me lights that chirped liked crickets on Amazon.

We created the tundra-like sleeping conditions that Andrew likes with help from a ceiling fan and two open windows. The sound of fake crickets poured in. The next morning, Stella let out a volley of barks and I heard little yippy noises from the yard next door.

“Oooh, puppies!” I threw on my robe and we were out the door.

Murphy, a Parti Yorkie and Maple, the Havanese mother of the three puppies and Stella barked fit to lose their heads until we got Murphy and Stella calmed down and Amy took Maple inside. I went for the puppies, three little brown balls of squirming fur—Marley, MacKenzie and Maverick, 12 weeks old. The youngest, MacKenzie weighed three pounds and was the color of milk chocolate. They call him Big Mac.

I wish to comment here that Andrew’s preferred method of introducing dogs is to pick Stella up and hold her anus to the nose of the new dog. He says it saves time.

As we stood out in the fresh morning air with the puppies and our hosts, we asked about the crickets. They both assured us the crickets were real.

John said, “I used to have a bunch of frogs in the pond. They ate all the crickets over there so now they hang out in the grapevine. But the frogs are gone now, too.”

“They sound too rhythmic for crickets,” Andrew said.

“No, they’re real,” they both assured us. “Did you hear the owls last night, too?”

Back inside, I said, “They both had pretty straight faces.”

“They sure did. Do you think they’re messing with us city people? I bet the owls are fake, too.”

We spent all of the first day visiting campus and my old haunts. We parked in front of Sherwood Center and made the first of many trips into the student union building, which we used to call the Sub but which is now called the Pete Reid center. It’s built on the site of the old White Temple Baptist church, which my great grandfather helped build and where I occasionally played the piano for services when I was at school.

The point of the many visits to the Sub was for one or the other of us to use the toilet, the other to stay outside with Stella. I am used to sitting with Stella while Andrew goes into a toilet or convenience store. She sits like a pointer trained at the door, whines a little and cannot be distracted by anything. Andrew sat with her while I went into the bookstore to see if there was any interesting new college merch and we discovered that she does the same thing when I am missing. Apparently, she wants us together as much as we want to be together.

Stella waiting for Elena outside SUB. Photo by AJB

While in the bookstore where there were no interesting tchotchkes, I asked the young man at the counter where I could find a drug store. Thrifty Drugs on the corner of Main and Palouse is long gone and the young man who was sweet and looked about 14 years old, wasn’t the least bit interested in hearing how much we had liked Thrifty Drugs in the 70s. He didn’t know of any drug stores except Tallman on Main Street.

“But it’s really old,” he seemed apologetic, embarrassed to be suggesting that a human being would go into such a place.

Tallman is one of few stores left from the 1970s and it was exactly where an old person could find knee supports; I had forgotten mine at home.

We toured the campus beginning with what used to be the Music Building but is now used for various humanities classrooms. I stood in the doorway with Stella and suggested Andrew peek into MacDowell Hall, where I had sung in recitals. It was locked. I wanted to belly up to someone and demand to see the hall on the grounds that I was an alumna but Andrew suggested I not make a scene. The building is charming inside even without the hall.

We walked along the wooded path that used to be Lakem Duckum until they stretched it out into a stream that meanders through the parts of the campus that flank Boyer Avenue.

(used to be) Lakem Duckum, Whitman campus

The path took us to the amphitheater where my graduation ceremonies took place, back to Ankeny Field, looking green and luscious and alongside Lyman House, which is no longer the funky old building that went co-ed the year I matriculated as did Jewett Hall where I spent my freshman year and was next on the tour. We carried on past Olin Hall, the Science building and Penrose library, always coming back to the old Memorial Building, the first building on campus in 1859.

Memorial Building, Whitman College

The day was pleasant and the campus was calm with very few students walking around. I said rush hour would start when classes changed. But when classes changed, there was an influx about half a dozen more students. Whitman is a small school. The population when I was there was 1000 students. I seem to remember walking to the Sub every day for my mail (how quaint) and practically running into everyone on the entire campus either coming or going.

Finally, we circled back around to a few of my family’s homes. My grandparents and their four children lived one house down from the corner of Park and Alder next to a house that was a fire station and then a Red Cross station. I can’t quite figure out what it is now but it’s still there and always seems to be closed. My dad tells the story –something that became family lore– of something catching fire in their house and he running next door to yell, “Our house is on fire, our house is on fire!”

“Where do you live?”

Wildy excited, eyes spinning around in his head, he repeated “Our house is on fire, our house is on fire!”

Old firehouse, Park and Alder (photo by AJB)

My father lost both his parents early. My grandmother Louise died in 1918 of the flu when my father was eight. My grandfather died during a gall bladder surgery seven years later. Louise’s sister Ann, took the four boys, ages 4,6,8 and 10 to live with her at 623 Alder in a house that is still there.  Much later Ann moved to a home on Marcus Street where my family came when I was a child.

When we tried to get to the Marcus Street home, it was gone and the whole block was a construction site. The street has slowly been encroached upon and taken over by the college. We approached from the other side because I wanted Andrew to see the tiny footbridge across the canal that contains Mill Creek and that used to take you right to my Aunt Ann’s property at 325 Marcus.  By this time of the year, Mill Creek is a gentle trickle down the middle of the canal; at flood stage it can be terrifying, especially to a child.

We had a picnic lunch in Pioneer Park up the road a bit from campus by the bandstand where my father attended Sunday afternoon band concerts.  We walked a few blocks to 728 Whitman St. where my great grandfather, James Knott, built the family home in the late 1800s. My grandmother grew up in the house and my father spent a lot of time there. It’s been re-modeled to within an inch of its life but it’s still there.

My dad at 623 Alder,
c. 1925

Elena on Marcus St footbridge over Mill Creek (photo by AJB)

(used to be) 325 Marcus St, Walla Walla

The gazebo and my favorite tree, Pioneer Park, Walla Walla (photo by AJB)

We had a nap, then made dinner at the Airbnb while talking about where we might go out for dinner the next night. I said that Foraging i.e. talking about what and where one is going to eat is, like Ancestor Worship, integral to the traveling experience.  We had a number of recommendations and spent an inordinate amount of time looking at menus online.

Back into town in the evening, we walked up and down Main St. to see what we were missing what with not being drinkers and with having a dog on a leash. Main St used to be small-town funky. The money brought in by the wineries has changed it completely. But for the angle parking, it could be Kirkland. The last straw for me was the Marcus Whitman hotel, a venerable old western style hotel with high ceiling fans, cantilever lamps and plush chairs in the comfortable lobby. I’ve stayed there a few times and for all it’s dignity, it was a fun place to stay.

Marcus Whitman at sunset from Alder St
(photo by AJB)

Once I had my bicycle with me and they let me keep it in a room off the office. When I came back after tooling around town, I could ride right into the lobby and up to the front desk to smiles and applause. The lobby has now been expanded and tables for drinking, eating and playing cards have replaced the plush chairs. When I pushed open the door, I didn’t recognize the space. I wanted to show Andrew the gorgeous old lobby and it wasn’t there.

We had a number of conversations about expectations on this trip. It’s only been eight years since I was last in Walla Walla and the changes left me alternately sad, annoyed and reflective. Andrew said that for him, my reminiscences were all part of the show.

The first day ended with the genuineness of the crickets and owls as well the next evening’s restaurant still undetermined.

My favorite thing to do in a city like London is to have a small mission that allows for adventures along the way.  Tuesday’s mission was to explore Ealing because Andrew’s (The Sweetheart) father was born in Ealing and Andrew knows shockingly little about his father’s origins. I began the day by walking to Paddington and taking the Elizabeth line to Ealing Broadway.

Ealing Broadway is one of the last train stations coming from my cousins in Somerset and I always envisioned it like a backstage in a Broadway theater in New York. I expected to get off the train and see people in leg warmers doing stretches and actors in Shakespearean dress fencing in the intersections. It’s not like that. Broadway is the “broad way.” It’s like Main Street and a busy one it is.

It is also the home of Ealing Studios, which I wish I had had time to visit. But I was on a mission.

St John’s Parish church, Ealing

I found my way to St John’s parish church a mile down the road that Andrew’s father attended as a boy. Some sort of community meeting was going on in the social hall and apparently that meant a visitor from Seattle, there for only one day, could not see the sanctuary or talk to the vicar, making this one of my more interesting stories.

But on the way I discovered Walpole Park, named after Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime minister, which opened in 1903. Andrew’s father was born in 1898 so it was easy to imagine that he would have played in the park. The 18^th century villa, Pitzhanger Manor, built by Sir John Soane displays itself amongst gardens and green spaces. Sir John Soane, the architect who designed the Bank of England, called Ealing home for a time, amongst the green that became Walpole Park.

Walpole Park, Ealing

I found some lunch at Marks and Spencer. I’ve learned from my cousins that this is a reliable place for an old lady lunch. Decent tea, homemade soup, always something gluten free. I had a bowl of tomato basil soup and a bun.

At the library I learned how to get to where historical records were kept, a tube stop away in Southall. A friendly librarian gave me directions and made a map for me. Southall, where “Bend it Like Beckham” was filmed is called “Little Punjabi” these days. Finding an English cup of tea actually proved impossible but I had the most gorgeous cup of masala chai in a hot, noisy café with pastries in neon colors and women is lovely saris.

Fortified, I found the Dominion Center library where I met Dr. Oakes who I had been corresponding with about Andrew’s family. He had a pile of books and papers and photos for me to peruse and was an enthusiastic help. His other researchers told me they were regulars and he was bored with them. I looked through old town directories and found listings for Andrew’s grandfather at the various addresses he occupied. It wasn’t much but as this was all about the hunt, I was thrilled.

On the way home, I bought a chicken salad and salty popcorn (hard to find; Brits prefer sweet) at Waitrose, the supposedly upscale grocery store. I took a hot bath, ate my salad and popcorn, Face-timed with Andrew when it was morning in America and fell asleep by 9:00. I had walked seven miles in better shoes than the day before.

The new Vagina Museum

In the morning, Andrew and I Face-timed again when it was evening in America. Then I set out for the Vagina Museum. I had discovered this museum on my previous visit to the U.K. and loved everything about it. In the interim between my two visits, it had closed and re-opened in a new location. Still in Bethnal Green, a long tube ride across town, I wanted to go back purely to buy 20 pens in the gift shop. I was irked when I found there were, due to supply issues, no pens and I had to be content with buying a dozen plectrums i.e. guitar picks.

I spent the rest of the day collecting items I like to bring home with me: paracetamol (British tylenol), Astral, a rich, old-fashioned hand cream and plasters (band-aids) from Boots. I took a final walk in Kensington Gardens and flew home the next day.

Andrew was waiting at International Arrivals when I got spit through customs and immigration. He went into a little dance step when he saw me and I nearly toppled my luggage in my hurry to get to him. A welcome like no other.

The other being who was happy to see me was more circumspect. She appeared disinterested when I walked in the house but for the next three days her favorite place was next to my face.

Artemis

When we were last together, I had said farewell to Lindisfarne after being in the unlikely position of reassuring native Britons at the bus stop that there was indeed a real bus that arrived on Holy Island regularly, if not often.

Once back in Berwick, I checked into the Castle Hotel, not the Castle Vale House, which I had enjoyed so thoroughly a week earlier. It should be said at once that there is no castle. There used to be a castle but apparently the train station was built on its former location and everything within spitting distance is now named Castle Something.

The Castle Hotel was serviceable and the staff was lovely. I was only there because I decided at my advanced age that I had had enough of hurling myself from one destination to another, at the mercy of late trains, flash floods, train strikes and being fatigued. So I gave myself an extra day in Berwick to walk in some of the glorious parks and to go to an evening concert I had seen advertised on a poster.

The concert was called “All in the April Evening,” a reference to a weird poem by Katharine Tynon set to music by Hugh Roberton and well known in the church choir set a generation ago. Marion Scammell directed a community choir and orchestra in Vivaldi’s Gloria, Schubert’s Mass in G and Elgar’s “Songs from the Bavarian Highlands” in the Berwick Parish Church, the Cromwellian building where I had, a week prior, asked to use the toilet and then felt obliged to attend mass because the vicar was so nice.

Berwick town walls

I arrived at the concert, having walked over on the old town walls, and found that I needed cash, which I did not have. There was a time when I bought pound sterling before I got on the plane in Seattle and then got more at an ATM in Heathrow. Now everything is contactless. Except amateur musical societies.

British to the core, Reception was apologetic for asking a fee at all and outraged at their own thoughtlessness in not being able to accommodate credit cards.

“We really need to pull ourselves into the 21^st century. But do come in. We are not going to turn you away!”

(I sent a donation when I got home and Andrew doubled it. I love having a boyfriend.)

I sat in the balcony until the intermission –when we all repaired across the way to a social hall for wine– and then moved down to the front, near enough to see the drama behind the performance. I thoroughly enjoyed the concert. I like a well-rehearsed professional choir as much as anyone but there is nothing quite so magical and refreshing than listening to regular people making music for the pure joy of it.  I enjoyed not being responsible for any of it.

Concert, Berwick Parish Church

And then it was the next day and I was on the train to London where it was warm and summery. I got in a taxi queue and then sank back for the ride to Queensway where I had booked a room at Hyde Park International Hotel, two blocks from the park. Not an expensive hotel, there still was a smiling doorman and wonderful staff and lovely rooms with a view of a quintessential London street with two story white rowhouses, quaint iron gates and big leafy trees. I went for a long walk in Kensington Gardens and then to bed early.

Monday the rain and cold was back. I went to Kensal Green Cemetery, my mission the grave of one Krystyna Skarbeck aka Christine Granville, Polish-British spy.  A rain squall drove me into a Costas where I dried out with a cappuccino and wrote four postcards I had been carrying around from Holy Island.

entrance to Kensal Green cemetery

When the rain let up, I started walking, looking at my map and asking questions until I got on the correct bus. The driver put me down at a wall on the Harrow Road and told me the cemetery was on the other side.

Kensal Green is an enormous cemetery crammed with monuments and headstones bending every which way, long grass dressing everything up. It would be a nightmare to trim, which is probably why they don’t. I walked along one of the main roads for what felt like miles, following signs to the chapel and crematorium, figuring that would be the most likely place to get some directions to the St Mary’s section of the cemetery I was looking for. I finally found a foreman who told me I was in the wrong cemetery!  St Mary’s used to be part of Kensal Green but now has a separate entrance. So I went out and the far end and around a corner to get into St Mary’s.

There wasn’t a soul (least not a live one) in sight but fortunately I had done enough homework that I knew the quadrant and number of the grave. But the quadrant was enormous and it’s not like the grave numbers are prominently displayed like house numbers. I wandered around and backtracked, musing that I had worn the wrong shoes and how on earth did I expect to find this grave and what was wrong with me that I even wanted to. Couldn’t I just go to the Tower of London or Madame Tussauds like everyone else?

Picking my way through grass and graves, I suddenly just saw it. It was like when Sue and Wendy and I were wandering the harbour of Tobermory, hoping to see the cat, Ledaig and Sue suddenly crying “There it is!”

Clearly, I was not the only pilgrim to this grave. Krystyna has not been forgotten. There was a sash –maybe a French resistance thing—flowers, rocks, a photo, a candle. I stood for a long time, got tears in eyes and finally turned to backtrack all the way to the bus.

Krystyna Skarbeck

On my way, I saw a man about my age at a small grave.

“I never bring the right tools,” he commented when he saw me.

“You’re tending a grave. Is it a parent?”

“No, it’s my son.”

Simon, aged 8, had died in 1981 of leukemia on that day, April 15.

“I’m so sorry,” I said

“You never get over the guilt of being left alive.”

I started to choke up.

“Never mind,” he said. “That’s life. Who are you visiting?”

“A spy.”

We had a nice chat about spies, World War II, American sports (briefly as I know nothing about them. He liked the Dallas cowboys, yawn) and our political scene.

“Bless your little boy,” I said– I don’t know why; I wanted to say something—and continued on.

By the time I was getting some fish and chips in Notting Hill, I couldn’t feel my feet. I had walked six miles in the wrong shoes. It had been a strange but lovely day.

Lindisfarne, more often referred to as Holy Island, is a half hour’s drive from Berwick, just down the main coast road. You might think it’s easy to get to. It’s not. Without a car, the choice is an $80 taxi or the bus, which leaves Berwick on Wednesday mornings. The only bus off the island is on Saturday mornings. I decided that if I wanted to have an experience worth all the trouble of getting to Holy Island, I would have to spend a few days there so I got an Airbnb from Wednesday to Saturday.

The island is cut off from the mainland twice a day by the tide as every fan of Vera knows. She is shown zooming over the connecting causeway, rooster tails on both sides, as she crosses just before the water covers the road. The bus schedule doesn’t allow for anything that dramatic. It crosses well before water covers the road. Being at the mercy of the tides, the schedule changes every day of the year.  The best way to make sure you get to Holy Island is to figure out the bus schedule at home before you even leave the U.S., have it confirmed by the owner of the Airbnb on Holy Island as well as the host of the Airbnb where you are staying in Berwick, check with the station in Berwick, ask Graham, the bus driver you met your first day in Berwick and get it confirmed by the driver before you ever set foot on the bus itself. Then you can be reasonably certain you will at least get there. Must do everything in reverse to get yourself off the island. But I’ll get to that.

The other quirky thing I encountered in my plans to go to Holy Island involved paying for the Airbnb. My hostess said that she often had trouble processing American credit cards so she waived the deposit when I booked the room and told me to just bring cash when I came. When I got to the island, I was to give the cash to Debbie who worked in the village post office and who serviced the Airbnb rooms (which was unimaginatively called “holyislandaccommodations.com.”) Should I repeat all that? It seemed unreal; on the other hand, British money is so pretty, it hardly seems real.

I arrived on Holy Island at 9:45 Wednesday morning with 400 GBP in cash hidden obsessively in my travel vest. Debbie, at the post office, told me to just leave the money in the room when I left on Saturday and she would get it when she cleaned.

I still felt unwell, it was cold and raining and my room wouldn’t be ready until 1:30. I left my luggage in the village shop, wandered the streets and had a cup of tea in each of the three cafes and one of the pubs until I was finally able to collapse on the bed in a room that was sweltering from the heat coming off the towel rail in the bathroom. In the evening, I did a bunch of hand laundry, which dried before I fell asleep.

My first full day on Holy Island began with my porridge overflowing in the microwave. The mess it made looked a bit like I felt but eventually I got myself out into a day that was warm. When my hands and feet were freezing on Mull, Wendy and I had had this conversation:

“Do you think it will be cold on Holy– ?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think it will be colder than her–?”

“Yes.”

The warmth on Holy Island was both welcome and unexpected.

Lindisfarne Castle was on Thursday’s itinerary. It’s an imposing, moody looking structure that sits out in the North Sea and can be seem from Berwick on a clear day. And incidentally, opening and closing times of all the shops, cafes and attractions vary, like the bus, with the tides and are usually pushed up about half an hour every morning. On the half mile walk to the castle, I joined the day tourists who had arrived when the causeway opened, some dressed like pilgrims and druids.

The inside of the castle was a bit disappointing. The structure itself is 16^th century but it had been bought and remodeled in the Arts and Craft style in the early 1900s by a Sir Edward Lutyens. When it was taken over by the National Trust in 1944, they buffed up the remodel rather than restore it to its 16^th century look.

Lindisfarne

Mozart in Sir Edward Lutyens’ kitchen

However, the actual setting cannot be equaled and that was never so apparent until the afternoon when tourists left, everything closed and the 150 residents all went to their own homes on the island. In the evening when I walked back to the castle, everything was moody and ethereal and it was pretty much just me, the sheep and the nun Kyra with her little dog Tessa.

Lindisfarne in early evening

The next morning, Friday, when I got out of bed, I could barely walk. I was dizzy and felt nauseous. I sat back down and thought, “This feels weird. These are not “normal” symptoms. I feel drugged.”

The only drug I had been taking aside from a few prescriptions, which shall go nameless–I know I disclose a lot about myself but even I have limits– was the Night Nurse medication that Wendy and Sue had gotten for me while we were on Mull. I had finished the five doses in that box and had bought another at the Boots in Durham. Now, sitting on the bed in my airbnb on Lindisfarne, I read the label. “Do not exceed four doses.” I had taken seven. “Oh my god,” I thought. “I’ve poisoned myself.”

Andrew asked, “What’s in it?”
“I don’t know. Probably paracetamol and there’s Dex-something.”
“Dextromethorphan Hydrobromide?”
“How do you know something like that?”
“Because I look at what I put in me.”

Sue said, “Probably a good idea to read the directions.”

I thought, “I shouldn’t have been let out of my house.”

I had a slow morning. I drank a lot of water and didn’t take any pills of any kind all day. Late in the morning I ventured out to walk carefully around the Lindisfarne Priory. The medieval priory was built on the site of an even earlier Anglo-Saxon monastery. The Lindisfarne gospels were created there. St Cuthbert whom we met in Durham holding the head of St Oswald, lived and worked there until he’d had enough and retired down the beach to live as a hermit. He was originally buried on Lindisfarne but his body, which in eleven years had not decayed a bit thus insuring his sainthood, was moved to Durham when the Vikings raided the island in the 800s.

Lindisfarne Priory ruins

Lindisfarne Priory

Lindisfarne castle from the Priory

After a lovely lunch at the Crown and Anchor, I discovered St Aidan’s winery, which produces Lindisfarne Mead  and poked around the few shops and galleries, mostly waiting for them to close and for all the day tourists to go home so I could walk back out to the castle and luxuriate in its ghostly presence and in the quiet.

I set Tuesday as the day to go to Durham because rain was predicted and I thought a cathedral would be a better place to spend a rainy morning than tromping around Berwick on the city walls.  My interest in Durham cathedral began with Bill Bryson and was encouraged by Sue. I had read and heard that it was magnificent. But then I find that all the cathedrals are.

When I got off the train in Durham, it was indeed raining and I wasn’t feeling well. I didn’t fancy the walk from the station to the cathedral and evidently, I wasn’t the only one because there was a shuttle available. The bus driver—Geoffrey—proved to be a helpful acquaintance. He took me to the cathedral and showed me how to walk back into town and where to catch the bus back to the train.

My first impression was that Durham was heavy and dark. It’s Romanesque and has the earliest surviving rib vault ceilings, which always fascinate me.  They are Bach in architecture. Barchitecture.

Barchitexture

The Venerable Bede is (finally) resting there. The Venerable Bede was a monk and scholar who influenced both Chaucer and Shakespeare. English majors can’t get through their degree without reading his name in footnotes and wondering who the heck he was.

To St Cuthbert the “finally resting” is perhaps most apt. He did some traveling after his death. A monk and scholar, Cuthbert was buried at Lindisfarne (Holy Island) where he had been Prior. The head of St Oswald, king of Northumbria, was tucked into the coffin for safekeeping. Seven years later when St Cuthbert’s body was exhumed for travel to Durham, he was found to not have decayed at all and was still clutching the head of St Oswald. I have no reliable intel as to the condition of St Oswald’s head, leading me to assume it looked like Norman Bates’ mother. Both were moved to Durham cathedral.

St Cuthbert with St. Oswald’s head (presumably) It’s not clear to me what happened to St Cuthbert’s head

I don’t know what he thinks he is doing amongst the saints and kings in Durham Cathedral but the enormous reclining figure of a 19^th century headmaster of Durham School sprawls in the nave. I wondered if his ego was as big as the statue but perhaps he had nothing to do with its creation and placement.

Robert Britton

Robert Britton’s little friend

When I emerged from the cathedral, it was bucketing down. I hurried to the bus waiting on the other side of the square. Who should be in the driver’s seat but my man, Geoffrey? He left me in town with instructions of where to get the bus for the train station. He pointed out the Sainsbury local and advised me where I could get the best fish and chips—Bells —and set me down in the rain.

I didn’t want fish and chips, I wanted hot soup. I found it at Vennels, a crowded café hidden down a narrow alley. I was advised to bag a table before I ordered at the counter. A woman who was leaving a small table in the corner, waved me over to her.

“Would a jacket over a chair be enough to save this table?” I asked her.

“Oh, you go order,” she said. “I’ll wait until you come back.”

I ordered a vegetable-barley soup and sat down at the table. “Thank you so much,” I said. “This was so kind of you.”

“Women traveling alone,” she said. “We look out for each other.”

Elizabeth sat with me and we chatted while I ate the very tasty soup. This was the second time in two days I had experienced the kindness of strangers; in both cases, women looking after women. It gave me a warm feeling for Northumberland.

I never made it to the Sainsbury local because I found a farmer’s stand in the Market Square. I bought carrots, peas, apples and bananas to take with me to Holy Island the next day. I’d been advised there was no place to buy fresh produce on the island and I need my fresh produce.

Finally, I was on the train on my way back to Berwick, feeling worse by the minute.  A half hour past Newcastle, the train stopped. We waited. And waited. A voice came on the address system to say there was water on the line and we were awaiting the technicians to see what could be done, if anything. If anything. What did that mean? The staff came down the aisle passing out forms for us to fill out regarding our destinations and situations. I asked what was going on.

“They’re trying to decide if they can clear the water or if we have to go back to Newcastle and put you on buses. If we have to go back, they will refund your train ticket.”

I leaned my head against the window and closed my eyes. The tea cart came along and I had a cup of restorative tea. I got out the stash of postcards I’d been carrying around and set out to feverishly write six of them. Postage on international postcards had gone up twice since I had last been in the U.K. a year and half ago. The few stamps I had from then needed so many additional stamps, there would have been no room for a post card message. Then again, that would have been an improvement on the whines that went out that day from my first-class seat on the train.

Finally, the train began to move and was only two hours late getting into Berwick. I had that peculiarly English experience of gathering up my things, dis-embarking the train and walking home, which, in my case, was down some stairs and around the corner.

More images from Durham Cathedral

Royal Border Railway viaduct, Berwick-Upon-Tweed AND the view from my bedroom window

It must be said at once that the Tweed is a tidal river, not a fabric or some reason to make a joke about rightly silly British place names of which there are hundreds; this just isn’t one of them. Berwick-Upon-Tweed is in Northumberland, in northeast England and two miles from the Scottish border. The general area is referred to as The Borders because through the ages the border has moved between the Scots and the English too many times to get into here and because I don’t actually know how many times. Berwick itself changed hands 13 times from the 13^th to the 15^th centuries– reading from my Berwick Chamber of Trade Town Map and Mini-Guide.

The original medieval walls were fortified by the Tudors and they remain today, making it possible to walk all the way around the old town on its walls. That’s always fun. One other unforgettable feature is the wind. The wind blew so fiercely one of the days I was there, I staggered down off the walls because I was afraid that I was going to lose my balance.

My first morning in Berwick, I went to the train station, which was just up a flight of stairs and around the corner from Castle Vale House, to inquire about trains to Durham and to ask about the Holy Island bus schedule, the next two places on my itinerary. Here I made friends with the railway staff and met Graham who drives a bus on Sunday. Graham walked me to a spot where I could get onto the old town walls to begin my walkaround.

Mozart on the ramparts, Berwick-Upon-Tweed

It was gorgeous: grass, garden, trees, trails and parks everywhere. I stayed on the walls until I got to the ramparts.

Holy Trinity Churchyard from the Ramparts, Berwick

Distracted by a churchyard, I found the next egress from the wall and walked back. When I got inside the Holy Trinity Parish churchyard, bells began tolling. Not the usual resonance, these were electric bells. I was to learn later that the church was Cromwellian, which means there is no steeple, tower or church bells; i.e. the bells you pull with ropes. Inside there is no huge cross. Cromwell was such a killjoy.

The tolling of the bells came simultaneously with my needing a toilet so I went into the church where I ran into the vicar. He directed me to the “Ladies.”

“What are the bells for?” I asked

“There’s a service at ten.”

Inside the toilet there was no toilet paper. (I’m always so glad when I remember to check.) I went back to the vicar.

“There’s no toilet roll,” I said.

“Oh, that won’t do.” He took me to another building.

As I was washing my hands, I thought, “Oh, crap, I expect I should go to his stupid service.”

Gentle readers, I went to Morning mass—it’s an Anglican church but I guess they still say “mass,” not “eucharist” or “communion”. There were five of us: three elderly men, me and the vicar. To say that I started out with an irreverent attitude is putting it mildly. (What on earth is he kissing when he kneels down there behind his thing? What the hell, we have to stand up? Oh yes, when the gospel is read; that’s so silly etc.) But as the short service went on, I became mildly ashamed of my attitude. Here was a vicar doing what vicars do (my hostess at the Castle Vale House told me he would be reading the mass to an empty church if no one had been there) and here were some elderly men to whom morning mass had purpose and meaning. I can’t imagine what they thought I was doing there; I knew some of the responses and ritual but I was clearly not well-oiled. We were all just people. We passed the peace and then it was over. The vicar came and sat with us and began talking about football (soccer).

It’s a funny old world.

I walked into the old town to the high street, called Marygate (scene of a recent Vera episode for you Vera fans) and hit the jackpot: Sugar Mountain, a confectionery. Was this a reward for my going to church?

In a café I had some rather tasteless lentil soup and horrid watery greyish tea served to me by an adolescent boy with no people skills who I nevertheless felt sure would develop into a fine man, I don’t know why. Maybe my recent conversion at Trinity Parish church made me less critical of the human race.

Also, I had had a conversation in Sugar Mountain with the teenager behind the counter who looked at me wide-eyed and admiringly.

“You’re from America? Oh, I want to go there!”

“Well,” I said. “I wouldn’t mind living the rest of my life in Berwick.”

“Oh god, ick. Why?”

“Did you grow up here?”

“Yeah, I’ve been here my whole life. I can’t wait to get out. I want to go to America!

“I’m sure you will get there,” I said.

I have grand hopes for both of the young people I met in Berwick.

If you re-call, I had gotten sick while on Mull and by the time I had finished my tour of Berwick, I felt awful so I went back to Castle Vale House and slept for three hours.

In the evening, I decided I would walk to the closest place I could find that looked like they had decent meals. I found “Coulls,” advertising the finest fish and chips in town. I had Minestrone and chips. (Chips are fried potatoes.) When I went to the till to pay, the girls there said, “Your bill has been taken care of.”

“What do you mean?”

“That woman who was sitting over by the window—she paid for it.”

“Why?”

They shrugged. “Kindness?”

I remembered the woman who had been sitting over by the window with a wheely suitcase so I recognized her at the bus stop near the steps to Castle Vale House.

“Excuse me, you’re the woman who just paid for my meal! Thank you! But why did you do that?”

“You were a woman alone like me,” she said. “We are fellow travelers.”

“Thank you,” I said again.

“My pleasure.”

It isn’t just a funny old world. It’s also full of lovely surprises.

Here is Duart Castle. Sue had to get a private escort (practically) to get a view of the castle that wasn’t propped up with scaffolding. The castle is situated on a little promontory of land south of Craignure and overlooking the Firth of Lorne.

Duart Castle, Mull. Photograph: Sue Cooke

I was excited about this castle because it figures in a 1938 Powell-Pressburger movie I have seen half a dozen times called “I Know Where I’m Going.” It stars a young Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesay and was filmed on Mull and Colonsay, another Hebrides island. In the film, the main character takes the train from Glasgow to Oban only she has her own compartment on the train and isn’t squished into a short train full of Easter holiday-makers.

Inside it was cold. All castles are cold and damp but I was especially cold because unbeknownst to me, I was getting sick. But I’ll get to that.

The first stop with Wendy and Sue is always the café, either for lunch or for tea and cake. We pushed our trays along, cafeteria style.

“Do you have anything gluten free?”

“No-I’m-terribly-sorry-we-don’t.” He looked straight ahead of himself.

“Do you have soup?” Every Scottish café has soup. It was definitely a hot soup day.

“No-I’m-terribly-sorry-we-don’t.”

He didn’t look terribly sorry to me. He looked bored.

We got sandwiches and I just ate the middle part with some weak tea. Egg mayonnaise. Yum. Doesn’t that sound good? Egg mayonnaise, tuna mayonnaise, shrimp mayonnaise, chicken mayonnaise. The reason they call them that is because there is more mayonnaise than egg, tuna, shrimp or chicken. And then there is butter on the bread as if you need any more fat.

I’m a little whiny just thinking about there not being any hot soup because it was so cold.

But with the exception of the bored café server, everyone was good to us. The ticket taker offered to let warm our hands from his heater before we entered the castle. More surprising than that, the chief of clan Maclean who was wandering around his ancestral home in his pajamas, offered the same thing.

Laclan Maclean was not really wandering around in his pajamas. But he was dressed in baggy pants, a couple of sweatshirts and slippers, loitering in an upstairs gallery, talking to tourists. In a society where everything is “lovely,” he really was lovely. We chatted with him and he asked about us. He apologized for the temperature of the castle and offered to let me warm up by his electric heater.

Laclan Maclean, chief of Clan Maclean

The young man in the gift shop was a student, home for the Easter hols and the complete opposite from the bored young man in the cafe. He lived just down the road and had grown up on Mull.

“You don’t sound Scottish,” I said.

“I guess not,” he said. “I hear that a lot. My mother is English and my  father is Portuguese and I went back and forth between both countries when I was growing up.”

I fingered the men’s ties. The young man explained to me the difference between ancient and modern ties and the two slightly different designs for whether you were hunting or having dinner. The “ancient ties” were thus called because the traditional dyes produced less vibrant colors than the modern ones.  I wanted to get one for Andrew.

“I don’t know how to buy a tie,” I said to Wendy.

“I think you just take it up to the till and pay for it,” Wendy said.

You may have to know Wendy to appreciate how very funny that remark sounded.

When we left Duart Castle, I was feeling what Wendy and Sue would call “poorly.” I was grumpy when Sue insisted on going to Moy castle, which on the map, looked like it was just down the road. It was hardly a road. More like 20 miles of bike trail. It was raining and have I mentioned it was cold? When we finally got as close as we could in the car, I stayed put while Wendy and Sue tromped the half mile through god-knows-what to see Moy castle. It’s my big regret of the trip that I did not drag my phlegmy nose, sore throat and shuddering lungs and achy body down that soggy path and see Moy castle if only because it figures more prominently in “I Know Where I’m Going” than even Duart.

Moy Castle

I spent the next two days in bed, feeling sorry for myself and Face-timing with Andrew. Sue and Wendy had wild adventures without me but they brought me lemons and a remedy called Night Nurse from the chemist. In the evening, we played Happy Families and Snakes and Ladders, often mentioned in books and shows, and I wanted the experience. The closest thing we in America have to Happy Families is probably the card game, Authors. Snakes and Ladders is what we call Chutes and Ladders, only in England, you slide down a snake instead of a slide. The snake has something to do with the Victorians wanting to teach morality in their peculiarly surreptitious way.

Saturday morning was our departure day. On the kitchen table lay an envelope addressed to Craignure Police, evidence that Sue had not let go of our early introduction to Mull and was following through on Tick Billy.  We packed up, cleaned up and left for Craignure where we were to leave the car with a full tank of gas. The gas pump had a bag over it. We had ¾ of a tank of gas and the memory of Tick Billy’s threatening behavior.

Wendy pulled into the police station and Sue got out. She was inside for a long time.

“What do you think she’s doing? Telling him the whole story?” I asked.

“I think she probably is,” said Wendy.

When Sue got back in the car, she said there was nothing official the police could do but they were going to make a report.

We left the car and started pulling our cases toward the ferry where we learned that all ferries were cancelled due to a storm. Once again we were with our cases beside the road in Craignure in the cold and damp. We went in the tourist office to see about accommodations for the night. We told the story of Tick Billy to a new set of staff and were gratified by their outrage that such a thing should happen on Mull.

Back outside, a police car pulled up to the ferry dock and Sue went out to speak to her new best friend, a young policeman named Kevin.

“I think Sue has made a friend,” I observed to Wendy.

“Can be a useful thing to have,” Wendy said.

It was. We got a ride in the police car to the posh Isle of Mull Inn and Spa a mile down the road. Once there, Kevin had to open the doors for us to get out because of course, once you’re inside a police car, you have no control over your life.

As we were waving goodbye, Sue said that Kevin was going to “have a word” with Tick Billy to make sure there was no difficulty with the ¾ full tank of gas; also to let him know that a complaint had been had been made about his unprofessional, not to say unkind behavior. Kevin told Sue he’d have been livid if anyone had left his grandmother standing by the side of the road with her case like we had been. We grinned at each other. None of us were grandmothers but age does have its uses.

At the Isle of Mull Inn and Spa, we got a sympathetic and outraged reception, not because the ferry was cancelled—they were used to that—but because Sue blurted out the Tick Billy story again. The hostess sat us down in the lounge overlooking the Sound of Mull and brought us complimentary tea and biscuits while our posh rooms were being prepared.

As we sat fussing over our bookings for that night in Glasgow, Wendy announced that Auntie Christine was paying for all this, the posh rooms, the meals, the works. Auntie Christine who died recently, had left Wendy a nice little pile of money. Wendy generously decided ours was a worthy reason to share the wealth.

My room was lovely and comfortable. I talked to Andrew and told him I had been listening over and over to Willie Nelson sing a song called “You Were Always on My Mind,” a song that in no way fit our relationship except for the recurring phrase that you were always on my mind.

“You’re listening to Willie Nelson?” Andrew asked incredulously. “You? Miss Opera? Miss Classical Vocal?”

“He was the most expressive,” I said defensively. “He makes me cry and right now I want to cry.”

I can’t hear that song now without thinking of the Isle of Mull Inn and Spa and three grandmothers drooped over their cases by the side of the road. And Andrew, of course.

We got the first and only ferry off the island the next morning. The storm made the crossing, well, perilous is too strong a word but it was a wee bit scary. It wasn’t too bad sitting in the middle and not looking to the side. When I looked out a side window, first the sky disappeared, and then the sea as the boat rocked up and down.

last ferry to Oban

All at once the boat lurched and white water fully eclipsed the view ahead, splashing all over the deck. I took a deep breath, grinned at Wendy and said, “It seems to be calming down.”

Sue, not amused, was white from motion sickness when we finally dragged our cases ashore at Oban. We found some tea (always, always) and while I’m on The Always, when you order tea, it comes in a crockery pot with cups and saucers and a wee pitcher of milk. Always. None of this paper-cups-to-go, although I guess if you’re a Philistine, you can have a paper cup to go. That’s not how Wendy and Sue roll.

We pulled into Glasgow after four hours on the uncomfortable train, enlivened by one delightful, enduring image: a lamb running down the edge of a field, his tiny legs pumping away like he had only just discovered them, running for the pure joy of movement. One little being with its own little mind and its own little experience of the world. So small and so precious.

At Queen Street station, the cousins saw me off on the train to Berwick-Upon-Tweed while they went on to their hotel. I decided that since I would have to lose one booking due to the ferries being cancelled, I’d lose the Glasgow hotel rather than the Airbnb in Berwick. It’s always hard to say goodbye to Sue and Wendy partly because I don’t see them very often and partly because when they aren’t around, I have to start thinking for myself.

I changed trains at Waverly and settled into a window seat. The drinks cart arrived immediately.

“A Scotch, please.”

“Scotch? What is this Scotch? I don’t know this Scotch.” It sounded like a Ghanian accent.

“Oh, a whisky,” I said. “If someone says Scotch, they mean whisky.” I made a note to not say Scotch while in Scotland. It seems to go without saying that you want Scotch, not Kentucky Bourbon.

Choosing the Berwick Airbnb over the Glasgow hotel was serendipitous. The Castle Vale Hotel is in a lovely old house, full of Catholic art and statuary, stuffed with DVDs and books—wonderful books, old, new, literary, Penguins, history, fiction, classics. My hosts, Margaret and Justin were the parents of ten children and thirty-nine grandchildren. My room was spacious and comfortable. Breakfast (all on bone china) included homemade bread and three kinds of homemade preserves: raspberry jam, marmalade and winter apple butter.

But the first order of business was to make a hot toddy with the last of my lemons and the High Commissioner whisky from the train and to crawl into bed at 8:00 and talk to Andrew and his daughter Lorna with whom he was having lunch, it being noon in Seattle.

Between the hot toddy and the Night Nurse, which I was still taking, I slept like someone with too many chemicals inside her.

in dungeon of Duart Castle

Duart Castle from the Isle of Mull Inn and Spa

Oban

shop window in Oban

Iona. Wendy figured we needed to leave by 9:00; it might take as much as an hour and half to get to Fionnphort for the 11:00 boat. We missed the 11:00 boat, we missed the 12:00 boat.  There’s only one decent road on the island and it’s not always even that. It runs along the Sound of Mull from Tobermory to Craignuir, then cuts across the inland hills and what they call mountains to follow Loch Scridain to Fionnphort. The well maintained back-road that the tourist office had told me about allowed us to skirt Tobermory and lulled us into thinking we had more time than we had.

At Fionnphort we were greeted by sheep in the car park.

A short walk got us to the ferry dock. The handsome ferries made me a wee bit homesick for Puget Sound. The gray, windy and cold day contributed to the visit to a moody, mystical place. Founded by St Columba who came over from Ireland in 563 C.E., the nunnery is in ruins and the Abbey is supported by scaffolding. Sue complained that every time she visits a place like Iona, she can’t get a decent picture without scaffolding.

Sound of Iona

A Christian ecumenical community, founded in 1838 by George MacLeod, is thriving today and, of course, a tourist business but neither blocks out the bleakness. If I thought Mull was remote, this little island is other-worldly in its loneliness. Or so it seemed to me. The short boat ride over on a ferry is quite a contrast to a small medieval boat in the wind and rain and cold, the nuns holding onto their wimples, their habits billowing about them.

George MacLeod said Iona was “a thin place where only tissue paper separates the material from the spiritual.”

Felix Mendelssohn, a visitor in 1829, said, “When in some future time I shall sit in a madly crowded assembly with music and dancing round me, and the wish arises to retire into the loneliest loneliness, I shall think of Iona.”

Those two quotations –displayed in the entrance to the abbey, gave me a frisson. I have read that many people get a sense of something otherworldly on Iona. That was my moment.

My other frisson was Shakespearean. Apparently, Macbeth and Duncan are buried in the abbey churchyard. As are about 60 other kings of Scotland. I go back to that small medieval boat with nuns’ habits billowing and add a royal corpse. And a cold, gray sky.

burial place of Macbeth

Iona Abbey minus scaffolding

Iona

Getting myself to a nunnery

My one-armed Mozart in the abbey, asking one of the disciples to cut his meat for him.

Easter morning on Calgary Bay. In my jet-lagged stupefaction, I kept trying to say something clever about this and had to patiently remind myself over and over that it was Calvary that had Easter associations, not Calgary.

Our holiday cottage was on Calgary Bay on the isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides. Ours was one of handful of houses that appeared mostly empty. A few people camped on the beach in tents or camper vans and we watched them huddle around their fires while we enjoyed an enormous house with three bedrooms, three bathrooms and two living areas, all splendidly appointed and scrupulously labelled, right down to rubber bands and Covid tests. After the adventure of getting here, it was a relief to find it so welcoming.

Calgary Bay

The British Daylight Saving is called “Summertime” and we entered it on Easter morning. I had brought chocolate from America –Sue likes the Russell Stover strawberry creme eggs. Wendy had brought garlands and more chocolate and both of them gave me cards. I rummaged around in the well-appointed house and found among the children’s craft supplies some green paper out of which I cut Easter grass, something they don’t have in England.

We lounged around, talking, drinking tea, making plans and discussing Tick Billy up one side the house and down the other. Sue had been awake a good part of the night feeling anxious about our experience with him. He wove in and out of my sleep, such as it was, what with being wide awake at 3:00. We agreed that we had all felt threatened, then tried to analyze whether what had happened had been menacing in the legal sense. Sue declared that she was going to report the incident.

Sue and I perused the extensive collection of books and DVDs available but Sue said they were mostly “bloke books.” I left copies of my two books, 99 Girdles on the Wall and Advancing the Retreat next to the bloke books, happy to get them out of my suitcase as well as all the Easter chocolate and the ice-wine maple sugar candy and salt water taffy the cousins had asked for.

Kilmore Church of Scotland (The Rocket Church)

Wendy had declared Sunday to be a no-car day but by the evening she decided we’d drive as far as Dervaig, which was about halfway to Tobermory, to see the Rocket Church or as it’s officially known, the Kilmore Church of Scotland. Sue, a brilliant photographer, wanted some photographs.

Now here I must digress a bit and tell you about paraplegic Mozart. Andrew and I had been playing a back-and-forth game where we planted a little plastic figure in 18^th century clothes in each other’s house. (Wendy suggested it might be Lord Nelson but I told her I didn’t think many Americans knew who Lord Nelson was.) I decided it was Mozart and he ended up in my luggage. I had him in my pocket or my purse during my trip and he somehow lost a leg and an arm but still managed to enjoy his trip to the U. K. Here he is in the Rocket Church.

Mozart in the Rocket Church

That night I slept a full 8 hours without waking. Up early, I went for the walk Sue and Wendy had taken without me on Easter because I had fallen asleep for the second time that day at only 12:30 in the afternoon. The walk goes either straight across the beach or across an enclosed field above the beach, whichever one prefers. The tide was out so I walked along the beach and annoyed the geese. On the other side, I found a walking path to take me to an old granite pier that was chained off and inaccessible. But there was a stile involved — I always love those– and a stinking sheep’s carcass on the beach so it was worth it.

We went into Tobermory and did the Monday farmer’s market and all the wee shops, got more groceries and had fish ‘n’ chips for lunch. All along the harbor front, in every shop, I asked “is the cat about?”  An enormous orange male cat makes a life for himself in Tobermory. He sleeps in the hardware store, dines at the chippy and entertains the tourists by wandering amongst them and sleeping in rope coils on the wharf. He had apparently already done his morning rounds so no one had any recent intelligence on him.

It was Sue who spotted him lounging outside a private home, the door of which was cracked open so he could come and go as he pleased. As we approached slowly, taking baby talk, cameras ready, he deigned to look at us at first. But we coaxed a little action out of him. He came over to me when I rattled my paper sack but lost interest when nothing to eat came out of it. The woman who lived in the house came out. She told us his name was Ledaig, pronounced “letch-ick.” It means “safe harbor.” “He’s the Tobermory cat, you know,” she said brightly.  Ledaig has certainly found a safe harbor for himself in Tobermory.

I popped into the tourist office. I knew we were going to Fionnphort the next day to board a boat for Iona. (Fionnphort. Iona. Remember those words.) I wished I could have been some help to Wendy, maneuvering the large Vauxhall on narrow, winding roads. The map gave no indication as to which roads were paved and which were no more than rocky paths. I thought I would do my part to help

“What’s the best way to get to Fiona?” I asked.

The fellow at the counter looked at me with amusement and asked kindly, “Did ye mean Fionnphort?”

“To go to Fiona, yes.”

“Iona.”

“Oh yes, Fionnphort. Iona,”

a Mull road Wendy said she would never drive again

The Aloof One

Kilmore Church of Scotland

Rushes at Dervaig

I was glad I asked because he showed me the road that the locals take because it’s paved. So the next day, Tuesday, we were off to Fiona. Iona.