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On holiday in the North East of England, I was not exactly at the seaside as in the bucket and spade variety. Sea and sand flow magnificently around Lindisfarne and Bamburgh Castle, for instance, but without any chance ‘to stroll upon the Prom, Prom, Prom! where the brass bands play: Tiddly-om-pom-pom!’
By coincidence, The Last Night of the Proms fell shortly after I returned.
Twice this year we had been to concerts in the Royal Albert Hall.
From the comfort of a seat, we saw how the unseated Promenaders enjoy the music with remarkable stillness and attention.
I thought the whole idea of taking a promenade was to move?
The word (rhymed with ‘lemonade’) crops up in Barn Dances, doesn’t it, where you dance off with a partner?
Pilgrimage, if not promenading, featured in our Northumbrian trip.
It is and always was pilgrims who came to visit the saints in life and their resting places for centuries after their deaths.
We were making the same journey in the footsteps, this year especially of Cuthbert and of Bede.
Both men now lie impressively within Durham Cathedral where Cuthbert’s bones were moved into the present building when it was eleven years started on 29 August 1104.
They had been enshrined in the previous ‘White Church’ on the cathedral site in 999.
St Cuthbert’s Church, Beltingham, which we also visited, is in a quiet fold of hill overlooking the South Tyne.
It is believed to have been one of the places where St Cuthbert preached in his missions to the remoter parts of Northumberland in the 680s.
As Bishop of Lindisfarne, he was buried on the island.
When it was attacked by Vikings in 875, the monks fled and took with them the abbey’s treasure and the body of St Cuthbert, resting it at many places like Beltingham on its way to secret burial near Chester-le-Street.
Its final move came a century later.
‘Open our eyes, Lord, to see your glory; open our ears, Lord, to hear your call; open our lips, Lord, to sing your praises. Then guide us on our pilgrimage of faith.’