Our Fabulous Farne Islands

Ella and Thomas settled down well last night and slept till 6.30, giving me plenty time to make a picnic, pack everything up and for us to get out of the house by 8.30.

We got our tickets for the boat to the islands, and sailed out of the harbour at 10am. Because a heavy swell was running, we headed straight to Inner Farne and disembarked for our hour with the birds. I took 80 photos and have a few good ones, but in the end I couldn't decide on whether to show close-ups of the birds, or the view of some puffins, and across the sea, Bamburgh Castle - so you get a collage. Ella asked if a queen lived in the castle. Possibly the only royalty ever there was Peter O'Toole playing Henry II in the film "Becket".

I had planned the trip for now as I knew the puffins had arrived, but the Arctic terns hadn't. The children would have been scared of them and their dive-bombing antics. We saw lots of seabirds - puffins, shags already with eggs, the cute kittiwakes, guillemots, a few cormorants and razorbills, and some ducks.

After our hour on the island we sailed to the Outer Farnes to see the lighthouse where Grace Darling lived, and make the trip out to where she and her father had rowed to save the sailors from the shipwrecked Forfarshire, in Victorian times. We then headed for Staple Island, which is difficult to land on, and nobody would get ashore today as it was too rough, but we saw the birds on the cliffs. Our last island was Brownsea, to see the seal colony basking on the rocks, and swimming around us.

After we got back to shore, despite having a sandwich earlier, we were all hungry so after we'd bought some postcards of the puffins for the little brothers at home, we had some very indifferent, in fact pretty horrible, fish and chips. We then headed back down the A1 to deliver them home. The children had been very good and thanked us, saying it had been a great adventure.

I'm so glad we took them, that the weather was fine, and that they enjoyed it.