August 30, 2026: Holy Island/Lindisfarne with Cheese Scones and Crab -

Going places as a tourist, and then complaining about how there are too many tourists, is valid and useless and a cliché, and as such, I believe it is a Human Right. Going to a place of pilgrimage and complaining that pilgrims can be weird/raucous/not pious is just one time-honored variation.

Case in point: when I was a teen, my family went to Paris, very briefly. We decided to make a quick run to the Louvre, to catch the Mona Lisa. Haha. We vilified whoever had posted the little

                                   To the Mona Lisa →

signs in every room, which were CLEARLY taking us the long way. And when we finally got to THE room, we couldn’t see the painting for the many-deep crowd around it.

But we could hear an American accent coming from the front of the clot, a woman whining, “It’s just a little PICK-CHA! It’s LITTLE! I thought it would be BIG!”

At that moment, I invented the idea of saying I was Canadian, if anyone asked. Turns out this was not an original idea, but I didn’t know that at the time. (Hey, my husband invented the omelet. Not his fault it already existed.)

Other cases:  Assissi! People got off the tour buses and filled the streets. Some of them seemed to have crossed the fine line between Devotion and Uh-oh, especially the ones clothed in sheets, wearing a crown of thorns, carrying a cross, or crawling on their bellies up the main drag. Eeek.

Or Iona! I know, it’s supposed to be a thin place, full of mystical, magical vibes, but the stormy day when we went, it was full of wet, seasick, and hungry people who were furious that the little coffee shop was closed. I was one of them! And I wanted the others to be swallowed whole by the earth, forever. If I was going to be miserable on Iona, I wanted to do it ALONE, free from the annoyance of other people.

So when it turned out that Lindisfarne/Holy Island (apparently the locals prefer the latter name, these days) was popular, I couldn’t reasonably be surprised. I got there on a tour bus, after all, along with dozens of people from my choir tour. The parking lot was full of tour buses. The causeway was packed with people and their dogs. There were lots of places to get the famous crab sandwiches, and the famous warm cheese scones, and Lindisfarne Mead, and keyrings, and fridge magnets and tea towels.

I'm not usually a collage type, but this cried out for collage. It's called Holy Island with Cheese Scones and Crab.

But I still wanted it to myself*, that majestic view out to the castle, that shimmering coastline. I wanted it to be windswept and glorious and silent and nearly empty. I wanted a Spiritual Experience, which was just plain greedy, since I was already getting one a day, singing Evensong in Durham Cathedral.

*(Well, the dogs could stay. The dogs were beyond adorable. I discovered later that Holy Island appears in a lot of “Ten Best Places in the UK to Take Your Dog on Holiday” lists, which explained a lot. And okay, in an ideal world, I would allow maybe ONE cheese-scone-and-crab-sandwich place, just for my own needs, but with no line out the door – how ever did they stay in business?)

In lieu of owning the entire, glorious location, I found a bench down by the boatyard, and sketched for a while. A favorite choir friend happened by, the perfect amount of human contact. I stopped at a crab sandwich shack on my way back to the bus, but the line was long, and the shop was making sandwiches at the rate of one about every twelve minutes. I thought about how long the line to the bathroom had been when we got off the bus, and I told myself the crab could never equal our Dungeness. I grabbed a cold cheese scone and skedaddled. I wasn’t the last back. It was a good day.