Farming on Holy Island alongside thousands of tourists

Alison Brigham is the fourth generation of her family to farm on Holy Island off the Northumberland coast separated from the mainland by a tidal causeway which disappears under the North Sea twice a day. She has sheep on her 280 acres and grows vegetables and produces honey. But farming on an island barely 3 miles (4.8kms) long and 1.5 miles (2.4kms) wide which welcomes up to 750,000 visitors a year is a challenge. Tourists walk across her land, leave the gates open and their dogs chase her sheep. Some peer into the window of houses, even using binoculars to see inside. A further problem is that the causeway, the only route to the island, crosses a bridge which can only take single file traffic which means the islanders often get caught up in long queues of arriving or departing visitors around the safe crossing times.
A part of the island is within Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve, home to up to 60,000 migratory ducks, geese and wading birds, and Alison gave up one of her fields to provide space for people to exercise her dogs to help protect the birds and her farm, but says it has not helped. A new organisation, Holy Island 2050, has been set up to find a sustainable future for an island where more than half the properties are holiday lets and second homes, but Alison laments the loss of the community she remembers from her childhood and is not convinced she will stay in a place which has been her family’s home for centuries.

Presented and produced by Jo Lonsdale