Most of the walks which appear in this column are in Yorkshire, and West Yorkshire at that.

Occasionally they stray over into Lancashire, and a few have been in the Lake District, because walkers don't mind travelling for an hour or two to reach a decent location.

This one, though, goes further afield and is best undertaken as part of a weekend break because Northumberland is rather a long way to drive there and back in a day and fit in a walk in between.

And there is the additional complication that before you decide when you're going to do this walk, you need to find out the times of the tides to enable you to drive across to Holy Island - and, of course, drive back, because if you miss the tide the causeway will be underwater for six hours.

Northumberland is, in fact, one of my favourite places. It's full of relaxing wide-open spaces and broad horizons. I know of nowhere else in the country where you could find an expanse of sand as broad as that at Beadnall Bay, walk on it for half an hour in one direction and retrace your steps, and have only your own line of footprints for company. But Northumberland's beaches are like that in winter.

The art of standing and staring is lost to most of us, for most of the time. Northumberland is where I rediscover it - particularly standing in the towering shadow of Bamburgh Castle looking out at the Farne Islands sitting low in the white-flecked sea.

A few miles up the coast is Lindisfarne Castle on its rocky perch - our destination for this walk.

We checked the tide times at our hotel at Warkworth - a lovely little village with its own splendid, ruined castle and riverside walk. They were perfect. The causeway would be passable from 8.30am to 3.45pm on this mid-November day.

We followed the coastal road to Alnwick (yet another castle) and joined the A1 there, driving up this straight, fast highway for 20 miles to find the turn off to Holy Island. The minor road to the causeway took us across the East Coast main-line railway which carries the trains from Yorkshire to Edinburgh via Durham, Newcastle and Berwick, a constant companion for the A1.

The tide was well out. The straight causeway led between stretches of rippled sand, with the dunes of the nature reserve directly ahead at first until the road swung round to head towards the village.

My wife and I were driving along this road a few years ago with the car radio on, and the record which began to play was Fog on the Tyne, by Lindisfarne. The coincidence only added to the magic of this special, mystical place which was called Lindisfarne before it became The Holy Island, birthplace of Christianity in Britain, home to St Aidan and St Cuthbert.

Their presence is still felt. Aidan's statue stands beside the ruins of the priory. A cross still marks the place on the tiny low-lying outcrop of land, cut off at high tide, where Cuthbert spent his months in solitary meditation.

Our walk took us from the village and past the harbour towards Lindisfarne Castle, now owned and maintained by the National Trust. We took this raised track along the back of the castle, with lapwings and curlew rising from the field, and climbed up on to the grass-covered sea defences, following this ridge with the sea on our left and cultivated land on our right.

The wind was blowing softly but bitterly from the North, bending the reeds on the wildfowl lake beyond the pathside timber hide.

Ahead, a ram blocked our path, eyes watchful and challenging and raddle harness strapped to his chest. The ewes, most of them already marked, grazed quietly on the lower ground. He decided better of it and limped off to join them (why do so many rams limp?).

Before long we were heading over the dunes of the nature reserve, crossing territory riddled with rabbit warrens to reach a remote beach lined with stranded seaweed and driftwood. We walked along the firm sand, watching the cormorants on the rocks out in the bay and the oyster catchers scouring the water's edge.

From the end of the bay we cut across a plateau and skirted an ancient quarry to the place where, two years earlier, we had watched the seals huddled together on their wave-lapped rocks and listened to their mournful chorus.

Today, though, there were only more cormorants.

We stood and stared for a while - out to sea and up the coast towards Berwick. And then we cut back through the dunes to find the end of the Straight Lonnon, or Straight Lane, which led all the way between walls to the village, passing along the way a splendid collection of exotic hens, ducks, geese, ponies and a solitary pot-bellied pig free-ranging in the fields near a farm.

We drove off the island as the tide was lapping across the sands towards the causeway, reluctant to leave this magical place behind.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.