Map 75: The Pilgrim’s Way across the Sand to Holy Island

24 August 2024

The tide predictions are widely available well in advance for this crossing. However, that’s really for the road crossing times. The advice for safe times for crossing the sand seems to vary between different websites but in essence it appeared that two hours each side of low tide is generally a reasonable estimate.

On the day we visited, the road was advertised as opening at 10.40am. However, we were there early and the first vehicles started to cross around 10.00am. I walked to the road bridge when my husband drove across soon after 10.00am. The pilgrim route on the sand was definitely still flooded. I visited the refuge by the bridge – there’s a phone, key box to unlock emergency supplies and a seat. A few walkers passed but continued on the road, which looked incredibly busy. Vehicles were going by in rapid succession, including delivery vans and work vans as well as hundreds of cars.

Eventually at around 11.00am, I decided that the water looked low enough for me to begin crossing. I could see a few pedestrians already on the sand – there was a big layby further along the road and they seemed to be heading out on the sand from there.

I lowered myself off the tarmac road on to the sand, which was surprisingly firm and headed for the first post. It all seemed quite straightforward so far.

There were a couple of refuges on the route. Unlike the one at the first bridge, these are not roofed.

I soon caught up with two walkers who had walked on the road and then deviated off at the layby. They were from Norway and were just completing the entire sixty-two mile St Cuthbert Way route from Melrose to Holy Island. Actually I walked the part of this between Kirk Yetholm and Melrose in 2013 as part of my Great Britain end-to-end walk. I managed to master taking photos on their phone so they had a picture of the two of them together.

After that, I left them behind me. There was just wet sand and shallow water to get through until I reached a short more difficult section over bog and grass.

I caught the only other group I had seen leaving from the layby ahead of me – a woman with a dog and two children. Her husband had driven over and was planning to meet them on the island.

I could hear a loud sound in the distance to my right and realised this was an enormous seal colony – in fact two separate groups of seals.

I met a man walking towards me who warned me that I would probably get wet feet soon. Indeed the water did get a little deeper. However after that I was almost across the causeway. The advertised three mile walk had taken me under an hour. I didn’t even need to sit on the thoughtfully sited bench on dry land to sort out my footwear as my feet felt almost perfectly dry under my walking boots and gaiters.

I met my husband briefly then set out on a circumnavigation of the island. The village, priory and castle areas were all teeming with tourists but the rest of the island was almost deserted.

When I arrived back at the end of the causeway just over an hour and a half after predicted low tide, the water level looked lower and the sand more dry than when I had completed my crossing. There were still people on the sand causeway so I hope they had time to cross as the tide comes in quickly and all the advice is to cross as the tide is going out.

I saw and heard the seal colonies, still on the exposed sandbanks before walking back to the village.

It’s definitely more fun and a much more exclusive experience trekking over on the pilgrim’s route rather than inside a car on the road. As I had started as soon as the sand was exposed, I would have had time to make the return crossing. However, I wouldn’t have been confident about having time to walk round the island in between as that would have meant making my return walk with a rising tide. The length of time the sand causeway is exposed is much less than the safe crossing times for the road route.