The Farne Islands

Once holy, and the home of Grace Darling, now a famous nature sanctuary

AFTER Alnwick, I headed north along the A1 and turned off to Bamburgh, to catch a boat to the offshore Farne Islands and finally see some puffins!

‘Puffin (Fratercula arctica) on the cliff above The Wick (Y Wig) on Skomer Island, Pembrokeshire, Wales. Approaching its burrow with a mouth full of lesser sand eels (Ammodytes tobianus)’. Photo by Charles J. Sharp of Sharp Photography, 20 June 2021, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The Farne Islands are a notable bird sanctuary these days, operated by England’s National Trust. In earlier times, they were also a refuge of…