We were up early again in hope of a trip to the Farnes, we had not booked but planned to phone at 08:30 to see what was on. I drove up the road at 08:20 till I got a phone signal and tried phoning. Permanently engaged on both numbers, so I resorted to booking online.
We arrived at Seahorses in good time there was a queue for Billy Shiel’s we queued up I noticed I had a confirmation booking, good news. Once paid up we had a wander and a few pee stops, as we were not sure of the arrangements later.
We headed to the end of the harbour wall to the boat Glad Tidings IV, and got on board, the tide was out so getting on board was a long walk down some steps, then a big step down, onto the vessel.
The boat left the harbour at 10:30 and we headed out to sea, the sun was shining and the sea was pretyy calm. We slowed when there were interesting things to see, both type seals basking on the rocks, guillimots, razorbills, shags, cormorant, and many other sea birds.
After taking a look at the furthest island Longstone, we headed back towards land to land on the Inner Farne. The friendly National Trust volunteers charged us non-members £6.20 landing fee, and told us to keep to the boards walks, and recommended we wear hats, or stand next to a taller person. It soon became clear why, the terns literally nest right next to the board walk, and then aggressively have a go at anyone close by, and had a knack of diving and pecking your head. I am tall and got pecked quite a lot later I noticed blood on my hat where they had draw blood right though the canvas.
We walked round to the light house and had our Heidi pies in the picnic area. After the lovely pies we continued our first circuit of the island. Just past the light house there is a cliff edge where you can get very close to the bird, many of them nesting, you are literally 1m away from Shag nests with young of various ages.
We ran the Arctic Tern gauntlet again as we got towards the National Trust centre, I was pecked a few more times. At the centre there is a church to have a look round, it is pretty basic, but did have a stained glass window. We had managed to while away about and hour and a half, we had 2 and a half hours left for more circuits of the island!
This time round I took the time to try to get some action shots of the Puffins flying in from their hunting forays, out at sea, for sand eels. The puffins were quite good at finding their burrows, and would drop in really close then dash quickly out of sight. If they missed the black headed gulls were hanging around to relieve them of there hard won sand eels.
At about 15:30 we went to join the queue for our 16:00 boat back, the queue was already long, the weather was turning I think everyone had seen enough and wanted to get back to a warm pub with a pint, we did for sure.
All in all we really enjoyed the trip, perhaps would have been better if it had been possible to land on two of the islands as advertised. We were definitely luck with the weather although it turned towards the end of the day, looking at the forecast for the next few days, today was the best.