We took a walk up to St. Cuthbert's Cave on what was the hottest day of the year thus far. It's a beautiful walk - as I well know, since I spent my childhood on the farm bordering the National Trust land. I'd often wander up to the cave by myself to be alone with my thoughts in my preteen years. It's a popular spot for hikers and pilgrims, since the cave is thought to be one of the (many!) resting places for St. Cuthbert's body as monks carried him from the priory on Lindisfarne Island to Durham Cathedral in order to escape the attacking Vikings. I grew up with this story and developed a particular interest in and connection to this small fragment of history, not least of all because my mother had traced our geneology back to this same area and given the likely Norwegian origins of our surname, had suspected that we were perhaps descended from the Vikings who landed and settled in this area.
We now only live a few miles away from the farm where I grew up, so I thought it would be great to show Theo a place I loved as a child. Of course, he's still too young to understand sentimental value and a forest is a forest to him - but he did have great fun searching out magical woodland creatures since we'd just finished reading a part of The Enchanted Wood (Enid Blyton).
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