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When we awoke it was a beautiful morning, we were sorry to leave Coldingham Bay. However we had to press on, our thoughts were now turning to the Big Night Out. We went to Berwick and found an excellent bike shop. They had a suitable tyre for Alan’s bike, a Continental Top Touring. It was the old style tyre, lighter and cheaper than the new one.
Carter had driven down from the Youth Hostel so we made the most of our time by finding yet another tearoom. Our plan was to go to Holy Island today but we could not cross the causeway until about 4 ‘o’clock. After buying pies for lunch at Greggs we set off for The Lamb, an old pub in Ancroft.
On arrival however we found it closed, in fact it closed in 1997 when the landlady retired. So we went back to the church to shelter from a shower of rain while we ate.
While we were there, and as it was raining we decided that now would be a good time to fit Alan’s new tyre and fit the inner tube which I had repaired at Byrness. After swapping the relevant parts Calum got his super duper pump out and we soon had the tyre up to 60psi, not for long though. As it slowly deflated Alan pulled our his spare tube. Great we thought, but as we slowly approached the 60psi mark again the valve burst off the new tube. An hour later with the original tube back in and having said our farewells to Carter we headed south in the gathering sunshine towards Holy Island.
We arrived a little early so we visited the ice cream van and watched as the works vans made their way through the 150mm deep salt water. I noticed that no one in a privately owned vehicle chose to do this and we thought it best to wait with most of our bicycles being made of aluminium alloy.

On the causeway to Holy Island waiting for the tide to go out.

We had a good look around Lindisfarne Priory and Museum and then set off back to Wooler at 17:00. With a brisk pace and few stops we arrive in Wooler at 18:40 and made straight for the Chinese takeaway. We were settled at our table in Wooler Youth Hostel before 19:00, not bad going I thought. That night we tried a different pub in Wooler but it wasn't much improvement on the S+N place.

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We had a bit further to go today than is usual for us so we set off in the overcast, damp morning at 9:15. We headed straight down the main road, the A697. At first this wasn't too bad but as the morning wore on the incompetent drivers dragged themselves out of bed and started to take risks with our lives. We turned off at Longhorsley and took minor roads to The Dyke Neuk for an excellent pint of Greene King IPA. We couldn't eat our sandwiches at the picnic tables outside the pub so we crossed over the road and ate them in a field entrance instead. But we couldn't take the beer with us so we had to pop back over to the picnic tables to drink our beer! Silly that isn't it!

We then had a very pleasant ride through the Northumberland countryside to Ponteland and from there we reached Dunston through post industrial Tyneside, now being regenerated with proper houses and green bits.
We arrived in Dunston at around 16:00 with enough time for a rest, a few cuppas and a nice hot shower. All we had to do now was to meet at the appointed time for the Big Night Out