England Coast Path — Day 2: Fenwick to Middleton via Holy Island
4th April 2026 — 30.50km (18.67 miles) — 210m (689ft) ascent
Previous day — Day 1: Marshall Meadows to Fenwick
I had an early start today to catch the 7:19am bus back to where I finished yesterday’s walk to Fenwick. I then retraced my steps back to the end of the causeway to Holy Island. I arrived at the causeway at 8:20am, perfectly timed to coincide with the start of the safe crossing time (which is three hours either side of high tide). The causeway is much longer than it looks, taking nearly an hour to walk across. Along the way the road runs next to The Snook, which has apparently been used for filming the ITV series Vera.
The weather was lovely in the morning, albeit very cold. I donned some sunscreen, which meant that it would cloud over and even start raining later! I looped around Holy Island, going clockwise. The path runs right under Lindisfarne Castle before arriving in the small village. As it was Easter this weekend, it was very busy everywhere in the village, but barely anyone had set foot outside on the coast path!
I did a small deviation to The Heugh, where remains of a building have been interpreted as one of the earliest Christian buildings on the island, possibly built by St Aidan in 635 CE. The path then runs alongside the ruins of the monastery — the slender complete arch is called Rainbow Arch, which nicely links to a photograph that I took on the previous day’s of a rainbow over Holy Island from Fenwick.
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I stopped briefly at Chare Ends, where the original crossing route is marked by a line of posts. This is called the Pilgrim’s Way and was busy today with people completing their pilgrimage to the island. I didn’t take this route back to the mainland and instead followed the road back.
When I was back on the mainland I re-retraced my steps to Fenham Hill, but instead of crossing the railway I followed the coast path further south past Fenham and Fenham-le-Moor. I then left the coast path and crossed fields, the railway and the A1 to pick up the bus back to Berwick-upon-Tweed at Middleton. This was quite a rush as I didn’t want to wait an hour until the next bus!
Travel options
From Berwick-upon-Tweed, both the X15 and X18 buses stop at Fenwick and Middleton. The X15 runs every couple of hours but does not run on Sundays, while the X18 only has three journeys a day and does run on Sundays. It takes about 20 minutes to Fenwick and 30 minutes to Middleton.
Travel to Holy Island itself is possible on the 477 bus from Berwick-upon-Tweed. This service is unusual in that the timetable varies depending on the tide times! It generally runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays through the year with additional services during Northumberland school holidays.
