A (nother) Northern Adventure

A short story of 4 photographers on a day trip to Northumberland

Date ; Friday 1^st November

Time ; 17:00 hrs

Location ; Bingham and Carlton, Nottinghamshire

Intended destination ; Lindisfarne, The Holy Island, Northumberland (Mecca)

We had planned a ‘quickie’ day trip in advance of our annual pilgrimage to the North West of Scotland, Ian wanted to go to Norfolk but was overruled by Chris and Scott (not really a major fight ensued)

On this occasion Derek Doar joined Ian Pinn, Scott Wilson and Chris Newham, a non-NOPS member I am aware but we allowed it all the same! We left home at 17:00 hours in 2 cars, seeing the amount of photo kit we pack you can understand why, its not the overnight bag that took up the room (a pair of underpants, a pair of socks and a toothbrush are not space hungry after all),

The journey North up the A1 was problematic, lots of Friday afternoon traffic making its way home made the roads very busy and we got caught up in a few jams, still not too bad as it took up about 4 ½ hours to get to the Pub on Lindisfarne, Chris and Derek detoured into Seahouses for some Fish & Chips, but they were all shut so settled on good old fashioned Pizza instead.

Our Pub (The Ship Inn) was also closing when we got there (no Beer L) we grabbed our key and headed for the other Pub, after a couple of Beers we decided on some star photography and headed out into the harbour area on Lindisfarne where the famous upturned boats are located. Had a couple of hours and hopefully got some good images in the bag it was time for bed, after all it was now 2am!

Retired to the Ship and our room and got our heads down, no sooner had we settled than the alarm was going off, 4am, we must be mad. Kitted up and headed out to do some pre-dawn work and catch the ‘Blue Hour’, very nice it was too.

Chris and Derek joined us just after 5am having had to wait on the other side of the causeway for the tide to recede, they also did some star work the night before.

Come 6am it was very promising for a spectacular dawn, the colours in the sky were building and a few wispy clouds were also very obliging, this was going to be special, I know people say we are lucky but you have to make your own luck and keep getting on locations at these ungodly hours to start to make the luck turn in your favour. I can assure you for every one good dawn there have been 10 rubbish ones!

We wandered out into the muddy/sandy harbour looking for different compositions as the light strengthened, a good 45 minutes of shooting ensued, then the Sun appeared and it was game over, too bright for landscape work we started doing some general images and detail work.

Come 8am Scott and myself decided to grab our breakfast, very nice it was too. Chris and Derek had to wait for theirs as they were in a hotel off the island.

After breakfast we headed home, got home about 2pm absolutely shattered.

Many thanks to Scott for the driving and also to Chris and Derek for the company.

Bring on Harris and Lewis, not long now!