Tuesday 09/Wednesday 10 June 2026
We drove up to Northumberland in stages, staying on Tuesday night in a functional hotel off the M1 near Nottingham. On Wednesday we drove up past Newcastle, stopping first at Warkworth Castle. This was a surprisingly interesting castle: I'm slack at history so hadn't high hopes for being entertained. However, help was at hand with the audio guide, meaning JC was free to loiter and take pictures, whilst I ticked off the spoken tour.
The more I learnt of this site, and its 15th Century heyday, the more I felt blessed that I am a free woman of the 20th Century, able to work, have kids and create a home without feudal restrictions. The audio tour focused on one of the ladies who lived there and had a son - absolutely no freedom and pretty much one job in life, to procreate. It's also quite irksome that the history of the site by English Heritage only mentions men.
Moving on, lovely views of Amble. And lovely view of JC taking a snap for his parents - it's the rare time he uses his phone not his camera. ;-)
We drove on up to Craster and walked to Dunstanburgh Castle. As a trustee of the South West Coast Path I was interested to see the England Coast Path sign. I'll get onto that one day...
Dunstanburgh
Such wonderful, expansive coastline up here.
We dined at The Ship Inn at Low Newton (thanks for the recommendation team Granger) and loved the light over the beach after supper.
Thursday 11 June 2026
We were staying at Seahouses and had a planned trip, including landing, to the Inner Farnes today. Unfortunately, there was too much rain forecast so our trip was cancelled and we rescheduled to a 2 hour birds and seals trip. Although it was disappointing that we couldn't land on the islands to see the puffins up close, it was wonderful to sail past both the inner and outer isles wondering at the amazing wildlife. Lovely day for a sea trip.
The birds didn't mind the weather either and flew, squawked, soared and swooped as they should.
We saw numerous common guillemots, atlantic puffins, kittiwakes, arctic terns and shags (or were they cormorants?).
The grey seal were also bobbing around. You can just seen a head appearing in the shot of the Longstone Lighthouse.
The rain passed and we headed to Bamburgh to explore/take photos. What a beautiful castle!
I loved the Black Rocks Point Lighthouse which I found very anthropomorphic with its eyes and nose.
The rock pools were fantastic to explore.
I did get a tad bored waiting for the photographer to finish his photoshoot so I wandered to and fro to create a little message via Strava.
Friday 12 June 2026
Today was Lindisfarne/Holy Island Day. We drove across the causeway promptly after breakfast, to have a full day there whilst we were cut off by the tide. As expected, I got far more excited about this than most people would, as I love a tidal lock-down.
We parked up and went on a long(ish) explore of the island. We walked up to the neck (west of the image below) and admired the long, windswept sands.
It was pretty breezy, but the rain held off and we had a lovely walk around the coastline before heading to Lindisfarne Castle.
Lindisfarne Castle was a 16th Century fortress, that had served its purpose and became defunct, before being snapped up by Edward Hudson in 1902. He had it remodelled assisted by the architect Edward Lutyens and gardener Gertrude Jekyll.
We then visited Lindisfarne Priory, established in 634 AD. It was the home of Cuthbert and continued as a monastery, with the famous Lindisfarne Gospels dating from the early 8th Century. It was dissolved by Henry VII in 1536, became a naval store but fell into ruin.
It was such a remote and peaceful place to explore, and the last spot on our Northumberland trip before heading south...
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