Previously I enquired about driving from Edinburgh to York via Hadrian’s Wall and the Border towns but was advised against it due to the length of the drive and the sights warranting more time.

We’ve instead turned our minds to visiting Lindisfarne and possibly Alnwick Castle if time permits.

Originally I was considering a guided day trip from Edinburgh (and on a separate day, taking the train to York), I’m now wondering the feasibility of doing this en route to York with a part train part driven journey as follows:

• Take train from Edinburgh to Berwick (approx. 40 minutes)
• Hire car from Berwick, store luggage in car
• Drive to Lindisfarne, spend a few hours on the island subject to suitable crossing times with the tide
• Drive to Alnwick to see the Castle (not a must, more so if we have time after Lindisfarne)
• Return car and take train to York (preferably returning car in Newcastle to avoid backtracking to Berwick – if this option is feasible)

Is this a more feasible idea and would this be manageable (sometime in the first week of July)? I’m hoping this is as logical as I think it is given we’d avoid the chaos of driving out of Edinburgh.

If so, how chaotic is Newcastle to drive into? It would save us time to drop the car in Newcastle as the train ride to York is shorter but if Newcastle is a bit bonkers, with the added surcharge of dropping the car at an alternate location, would probably then prefer to return it in Berwick.

I can't seem to edit the original post but thought I'd add, I've just discovered that there are no longer any rental businesses in Berwick so may very well be that we have to drive from Edinburgh or find another stop on the train route that has a rental facility in town.

Glad you discovered that on your own. You really need to pick up and drop cars in major places . . . Edinburgh/EDI/Newcastle/York. Little towns/villages don't have Avis/EuropCar/Hertz/etc.

One important detail is omitted . . . how many days do you plan for this journey from Edinburgh to York with visits to Lindesfarne, and Alnwick and/or Hadrian's Wall. I suspect you are trying this in one day?? If so -- that's just about impossible. And if you are trying it as a combo of trains and rental care -- even more impossible.

From some further browsing online, I expect our only option will be to collect the car from Edinburgh and drop it off in York. I’d prefer to drop it in Newcastle and take the train to York as it’ll be faster but not sure if the time savings would be cancelled out by the time needed to deliver the car and get to the station.

We’ve dropped Hadrian’s Wall entirely so on this car trip we’d just be focusing on Lindisfarne with the option of stopping at Alnwick Castle afterwards but only if we happened to be doing well for time and felt we were up for it.

High tide in Lindisfarne that day is 9:40am – 1:20pm so I expect we’d either have to get on the road early to be in Lindisfarne before it comes in or have a later start to get to Lindisfarne in the afternoon, though the preference would be the former as I expect all the tour buses will schedule their Lindisfarne stops for the afternoon for that very reason.

It still isn't clear to me . . . are you trying to do this in ONE day? If so, that's simply not realistic. You are squishing a 3 day trip into one day. Lindesfarne is a 3 to 4 hours visit (the parking area is not in the middle of the village so it takes a fair amount of time/walking). And a visit to Alnwick if it is JUST the castle and Garden takes another 4-ish hours. More if you eat on site.

"I’d prefer to drop it in Newcastle and take the train to York as it’ll be faster". That would not be faster. Newcastle > York takes 1.5 to 2 hrs by train (depending on the train you catch) and about the same driving (and that's without the hassles of driving into central Newcastle and dropping the car)

Just take the train from central Edinburgh to central York and forget about sightseeing en route. To take any sense you'd want 2 nights/the best part of 3 days to visit Lindesfarne and Alnwick, etc. It could be done with just one overnight but as long as you were driving it would be a shame to miss Bamburgh, and Hadrian's Wall so 2 nights would be better.

Yes, one day. We can live with skipping Alnwick so that our one confirmed stop is in Lindisfarne.

I can appreciate that Lindisfarne and Alnwick in one day is unrealistic but surely driving to Lindisfarne, spending a good chunk of time there and then continuing onto York is manageable? Possibly even with a short stop at Bamburgh (I've been told that if we go a short visit is manageable as though the exterior is a sight to behold, the interiors aren't the most impressive)?

There is a lot we'd love to see in the region that we are mindful we'll miss out on but I don't see why we can't at least make do with the time we have to see something.

Yes -- you can do the drive including visiting Lindesfarne in one day by car . . . I was working with you wanting to combine trains and a car, and visiting Alnwick. Turning in a car and switching to a train doesn't make sense and you would not have time for Alnwick.

EDI (the easiest place to collect a car) to Lindisfarne takes close to 2 hours so you'll have to get on the road early to make the tidal opening to give you enough time on-island. Then Lindesfarne > Bamburgh > York is about 3.5-4 hours depending on traffic (that's without entering Bamburgh Castle)

Thanks Janis – sorry if my post has been confusing, I’ve been skirting around different options to try and get to what is the most feasible plan. I do appreciate your help 😊 Couldn’t figure out how it was such a bad idea but obviously with what I’d originally written you must have been sitting there thinking ‘no blooming way!’.

I think what I’ve come to is that with the driving times and tide, the only way we can make this work (other than by doing the return guided tour from Edinburgh) is by picking up a car from EDI first thing in the morning (or even the night before) to get to Lindisfarne before the tide comes in (I looked at the wrong date for the tides and high tide is 10:45am - 2:20pm so we'd aim to get there by 10:15am), spend a good chunk of time there at leisure and make our way to York slowly and steadily, possibly with a short stop at Bamburgh Castle.

Just realised that we did something similar to what you want to do
Have included that day from our tripbook.
Main problem is getting started.
Can you get the car the night before to spend the night in Berwick on Tweed?
We also bypassed Newcastle and it wasn't as chaotic as we expected and the highway just went through.



<Day 46 - Holy island - Alnwick Castle - Warkworth Castle - O/cast 16C - Drove 182 miles.

Today we had to leave reasonably early to go to Lindisfarne Holy Island.
The Island is only accessible when the tide is out and when the tide comes in cars can get caught in the water.
It was only safe to go until 11.55am today.

We left Berwick Upon Tweed at 9.15am and reached Lindisfarne in 30 minutes.
There is a 2 mile causeway which was dry and then 3 mile drive across the island to the Lindisfarne Priory.
Parts of the Priory dates from the 6th Century however it is now a ruin,

We then drove to Alnwick Garden (and the Castle next door) and reached there at 12.00.
The Garden was very nice with a huge water feature coming down a hill with ponds and fountains.
Also formal garden, flower garden, vegie garden, roses etc.

We walked over to the Alnwick Castle and looked it over.
It is still lived in by the Duke and is in excellent condition.
We had a tour of their State Rooms but couldn't take photos.
We walked through about 14 rooms which are just as the Duke lives in them.
Some of Downton Abbey was filmed here and there was a display of dresses from the TV series.

The Castle which surrounds the State rooms has huge walls and in working order. Some of Harry Potter was filmed here.
We had parked in the town car park where a parking disk was required, and just as we got back to the car the Parking Inspector started checking our row.
So we ran and jumped in the car and he didn't check us!

So we left at 2.30pm and went to one more Castle nearby, Warkworth Castle which is a ruin.
It was the usual ruined castle with walls fallen down and half buildings standing.

We then had to drive the 100 miles to the hotel, on the A19, through the Tyne Tunnel and then the A1.
After that on small roads until we got to Bradford and found the Premier Inn at Bingley at 6.30pm.>

I'll need to check how much more it would cost us to hire a car the night before but I expect we'll likely go ahead with picking up the car on the day off (we can pick it up as early as 7am) as we'd likely be tired the night before from a full day of sightseeing.

What did you see in Lindisfarne while there? Based on the plan I'm currently looking at, we'd be there for at least 4 hours.

How did you find the drive from Alnwick to Bingley? It seems like our drive from Lindisfarne to York is only 11 miles and 17 minutes longer. Coming from Australia, I’m used to doing decent drives (heck we spent 3 hours in the car yesterday just to get back from a wedding!) but conscious that driving in the UK is generally on smaller roadways and requires more concentration.

Just quick - I'm in the middle of working on my taxes grrrrr You have the advantage of being used to right hand drive. For the route between Edinburgh and York you will be on major roads, a lot of dual carriageway and a little bit of motorway.

You really don't need to get to Lindesfarne early - I'd plan on being there get there maybe 10 or 15 minutes after the causeway is scheduled to open. That way those arriving early and having to queue will have cleared and you can drive right across.

In Lindisfarne we just wandered around the little village and the ruins
There was more to see further away but we didn't have the time.
We're also Aussies so really have no problems driving in the UK.
After we left we jumped on the motorway.
They get you places quicker than Aussie roads. It's the big cities that are the problem
although with google maps etc it's a lot easier than it used to be.
The day before we'd also visited the Falkirk Wheel. An amazing experience.

Newcastle is not at all chaotic. Why should it be? Do you still fear the Vikings? ;-)

hahaha I can’t speak from experience at all but have read online that it can be a bit daunting to drive around in

You won't be driving around 'in' Newcastle. You will be driving around the center on the A1. The hassle would be if you are driving into the city to drop the car and then geting to the train station.

I don't see a big problem with your original plan of visiting Hadrian's Wall en route, depending on what all you want to see on the way. It's about 2 1/2 hours from Edinburgh to Vindoland, and another 2 1/2 hours from there to York. You wouldn't have time to see many other places on the Wall, but Vindoland was the most interesting site we saw. We were travelling by train and bus from Newcastle, so we were limited by bus schedules.

We visited Housesteads and Vindoland. The main thing I remember about Housesteads was a hokie film about life as a soldier in ancient Rome. I had wanted to see something else in the vicinity, but we couldn't find it, and had to give up so as not to miss our bus. I was thinking of waiting for the next bus and skipping Vindoland, but I was really glad I hadn't. Vindoland had a very interesting guided tour on a much larger site, with buildings from a range of times. In their museum you could see replicas of the ancient Roman wooden "notecards", with such things as a birthday party invitation, a mother in Italy sending her son warm woolen underwear, and a commander from another fort asking advice on where to get a good meal en route to Vindoland. Vindoland was one of the more interesting ancient Roman sites I've visited, and I live in Italy.

Lindesfarne seems to be their #1 priority. If so, there wouldn't be time for Holy Island and Hadrian's Wall.

Personally, with their interests, I'd take a night or better yet 2 nights, and do all three Lindesfarne + Alnwick + Hadrian's Wall.

I agree. Add a short stop at St. Abbs on the way, or cross the Lammermuir Hills via Gifford - a lovely drive through the heather-covered landscape.

Honestly, I am kicking myself that we didn't discover just how much there was in the area until after making our plans. If we can move our flights back we definitely will and will add a few nights.

Off the back of my post yesterday, I’m trying to wrap my head around all our possible options to try fit in our visit to Lindisfarne to see if there is a more efficient option available to us that gives us plenty of time to visit.

There are 2 other options that I’m thinking which I thought I’d run past you all.

1) Continue as planned but stay in Durham overnight

This would see us take the same journey as planned (early departure from Edinburgh, half day on Lindisfarne, then brief stop at Bamburgh on the journey southbound) but would take some pressure off by cutting out 90 minutes of drive time. If we did this, we’d stay in Durham for the night and return our hire car in the morning (I believe there are at least 2 hire facilities in Durham) before taking the train to York.

2) Take this trip from York

With this option, we’d take the train from Edinburgh to York and sandwich a visit to Lindisfarne with our time in York, in that, on what would be day 2 of our 3 full days in York, in which case we’d either take a guided tour to Lindisfarne and nearby sites (I expect we’d have to take the train to Newcastle for such tour) or do it ourselves but again, to minimise driving time, take the train to Durham and collecting/returning the car there.

Given these options would involve some more faffing about to make them happen, do you think the sensibility makes them more worthwhile to consider?

If we go with option 2, is anyone aware of any other places closer to Lindisfarne / Bamburgh than Durham that offers car hire facilities but is directly connected to York via train?