Bamburgh Castle - Seahouses - Dunstanburgh Castle

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It was a bit sunnier this morning, but quite cool and windy! Our first stop today was Bamburgh Castle the ancient capital of Northumbria and home to its Kings. The oldest part of the castle is the Norman Keep a 900 year old legacy left by William the Conqueror and it remains the most imposing part of the site. Unfortunately Bamburgh is privately owned and we had to pay for our visit today!

When we went through the Great Hall we were fortunate enough to hear a couple of instruments being played for a tour group. It seems that the tour group was due at 10.00am and the entertainment had been organized for them between 10.00am and 11.00am before the rest of the paying public started to arrive. Having chairs laid out in the Great Hall and having the entertainment there certainly clogged things up. The attendants were at their wits end trying to keep people moving through!

The castle incorporates The Armstrong and Aviation Artefacts Museum in the old laundry of the castle. The collection gives an insight into some of the brilliant work of the 1st Lord Armstrong who was an engineer and inventor although formally trained in law. The collection of aviation artefacts contained relics from two world wars and the wreckage of a Spitfire that crashed nearby in the Cheviot Hills during a training exercise.

From the castle site itself we drove around looking for some vantage points to take photos from. The castle was too big to photograph it up closely and do it justice! We took a couple of photos from the overflow car park at the base of the bluff and then drove down to the beach where we took far too many photos of the same thing!! We took some photos with sand dunes in the foreground and some with ocean in the foreground to make the shots more interesting. We have read so many photo magazines that we have become total photography nerds - always looking for a killer shot rather than just a snap!

Next we drove down the coast to Seahouses as we had been lead to believe that it was a particularly picturesque fishing village. We were seriously disappointed!! The only attractive thing we saw in Seahouses was some vintage Lagondas that were in town on a tour of the north.

People who want to take a boat out to the Farne Islands can book their trip from the harbor in Seahouses. We found it entertaining to watch the brave souls who were actually courageous enough to take the trip on such a windy day! We stood at the end of the pier and watched a group of school kids going out. They were screaming their heads off before they even sailed out of the harbor. We reckon they would have been barfing over the side before they went much further?! The swell was unbelievable with the boat all but disappearing into the troughs between waves as we watched!!

After some very average toasted sandwiches in a rather ordinary café we headed down the coast through North Sunderland and Beadnell. At Embleton we drove out to the beach to see if we could see Dunstanburgh Castle across Embleton Bay. The guide book says that Dunstanburgh is only accessible by walking along the cliff top from Craster, but we thought that we might be able to see it quite well from the beach at Embleton. When we walked out to the beach we discovered that the view of the castle was quite stunning from this angle. We pretty much repeated what we had done at Bamburgh: photos with sand dunes in the foreground and others with ocean in the foreground, but we also added some with interesting looking rocks to add interest to the foreground!!

After our invigorating photo shoot on the beach we programmed Edna to take us back to Wooler. She excelled herself today and took us along some very interesting minor roads to the A1 and then across the B6348 to Wooler!

It was curry night tonight at the Riverside Country Park Bar & Restaurant so walked down there for a curry. Because it is pretty slow at the caravan park this week they only had a Balti on offer rather than a selection of curries. It was OK, but not very spicy. It was £4.95 each for a curry and a pint. With Kath and I not drinking beer, Bernie and Albert managed to drink two pints each!

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