Myself, the GLW, our two boys have been to St Mary’s Island today, along with Grandma Jenny and Granda Bryan (who came in their own car). This is a little island just off the North East coast of England (apparently it’s sometimes called “Bait Island”, but I’ve never heard it called that) which is basically just a rocky outcrop that is connected to the mainland via a little causeway which is uncovered at low tide and covered at high tide.

Incidentally, I think all photo credits are “Granda Bryan” although it’s possible there’s a “Grandma Jenny” or two in there.

Many thanks therefore to North Tyneside Council for their information on St Mary’s Lighthouse and also for their invaluable Tide Tables 2006-07 PDF Document, showing when the causeway will be covered by water. This proved to be incredibly helpful yesterday, when for no apparent reason my three-year old declared that he wanted to go to the seaside this weekend, and go to the place where “Daddy saved him from the water”.

Daddy saving him from the water wasn’t some great heroic event — last time we’d been, the tide was in so we couldn’t get across to the island in the first place, and so we just pottered about at the mainland end of the causeway, clambering about the rocks. At one point, a large wave, some ooh, six or seven millimetres in height came over the top of the rock we were on and he screamed because he didn’t want the water to get him. So I picked him up and held him above the towering wave, which really impressed him (for some reason) and I got a lovely cuddle all the way back to the car.

Anyway, on to today. After completely failing to remember that one of the key roads into Newcastle was closed to traffic today, we got stuck in traffic and our original plan to get to St Mary’s Island for about mid-day (giving us two and a bit hours until the causeway would be covered) was, to use a technical term, buggered.

In the end after driving back half the way we’d came and looping round to the north of Newcastle, we finally managed to make our way to St Mary’s Island and the car park on the mainland at 12:53 pm. A journey that would normally take thirty, maybe thirty five minutes has taken eighty-eight. Okay, so we’ve only got about ninety minutes left, but that’s not too bad. Particularly since we’re on the North East coast at the start of February, it’s windy and it’s bloody freezing!

Walking across the causeway, and trying to explain what the purpose of a “lighthouse” is to Bryn (my three-year old), he suddenly pipes up that he wants to go inside it. Now I know it’s not a working lighthouse any more (it closed as a working lighthouse in 1984) and it’s got a visitor’s centre, so I tell him that we’ll go and have a look and see if we can take him in.

Sure enough, the visitor’s centre is open, and while you’ve got to pay £2 for adults to get in, the kids are under five so we don’t have to pay for them. Unfortunately, while the three year old is capable of going up a few stairs, he’s not capable of walking up the one hundred and thirty seven high, steep steps by himself, particularly because I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea of him slipping and falling down. On top of that, the one year old (Sean) is in a pushchair — wrapped up like a polar explorer with little visible other than his nose — so I can’t imagine we’ll be getting that up the stairs either.

Fortunately (and perhaps very sensibly for her) my wife decided that she didn’t particularly fancy the idea of climbing up one hundred and thirty seven steps just to collapse in a heap at the top, and so she’d wait at the bottom with the pushchair. Meaning that the expeditionary force that set off up St Mary’s Lighthouse consisted of me, my three year old and a pair of grandparents tagging along.

So, at the bottom of the steps, I pick up Bryn (who by now feels heavier by the minute) and start trudging up the stairs. We have to stop a couple of times on the stairs so we can press ourselves into the wall to let people come past us down the stairs — and there’s no “passing places” are suchlike because the darn thing was never designed as a tourist attraction in the first place — but to be honest I don’t really mind having to stop because my arms killing me from holding the not-so-little lad, I need to get my breath back as I’ve just climbed ninety stairs without a break (about the equivalent of seven flights).

Eventually, we make it to “almost the top” which proves to be … well, nothing much. Just a flat bit, with what is probably technically a set of stairs, since it’s built into the wall, but it’s so steep it looks like a ladder, leading up to where the light and observation platform is. Hang on, did I just say like a ladder? Bugger. That’s going to be tricky to climb with one arm out of action with holding what now seems like a four-ton three year old…

But I managed to make it up the ladder, squeezing through one particularly tight spot where the options seemed to be to either smash my head against the ceiling or crush my little lad against the steps. So I compromised — I squashed him a little bit, and banged my head a little bit.

And there we were at the top. A fantastic view all around. Obviously Bryn was more impressed that we could see the car park where we’d parked the car, rather than for miles out to sea, and miles up the coast and so on. But to be fair, I was mostly concentrating on leaning on something and trying to get my breath back. By the time I’d managed that, I just had time to have a quick glance out of the windows and then it was time to head back downstairs again, stopping only to pick up a certificate (to be signed — and obviously paid for at the gift shop) saying “I’ve climbed to the top of St Mary’s Lighthouse all by myself” — or words to that effect — for my little lad, which seemed to cause much amusement to everyone who didn’t have to carry the increasingly heavy child.

The ladder didn’t prove as difficult as I expected — I just gripped it tightly with my right hand and slid my hand down the rail with each step (as I didn’t exactly want to risk just letting go…). And then it was just a simple matter of trooping back down the one hundred and thirty seven steps again, and heading back over to the car for a well deserved sandwich that we’d brought and cup of hot chocolate from a nearby burger van — because by that time warmth was a very high priority.

After sitting in the car for twenty minutes and feeling somewhat refreshed, we decided to have a wander back down to the causeway, as by now it should be approaching the time at which it was due to be covered. We arrived just as the water was up to either side of the causeway but not going across the top, and with the three year old sat on my shoulders, we walked back over to the middle of the causeway and watched the first waves begin to spill over the top.

Within about two minutes, we were forced to beat a hasty retreat further back up the causeway as the sea level was rising by probably about two to three inches every minute, and we headed back towards the mainland slowly, keeping just ahead of the advancing waves.

In that regard, we did better than a lot of people on the island who had initially seemed oblivious to the fact that the causeway was going to be covered with water any minute now leaving them trapped on the island (where by now all the gift shops etc have shut, as everyone with any sense is back on the mainland) for about another seven hours until the tide was low enough again to uncover the causeway. However, they did notice in the end, and as the last of them jogged past me — carrying his boy on his shoulders too, as the water had been more than ankle deep at one point by then — he called across to me and said:

I had wondered why everyone seemed in such a rush to get off the islandWet Causeway Man

Hmm. Yes. Presumably because they didn’t want to be there until well after dark, would be my guess.

And that was it. A fun day out, a climb to the top of the lighthouse, a nice cup of hot chocolate and a few splashes in the water. Aah. You just can’t beat a day on a freezing North-East seaside in February, can you?