HOGWARTS AND ALL

It is possible to enter Alnwick Castle, but we thought it would look more attractive from afar.  It did.  But it was a miserable old day to go tramping across the fields to get our view.  And we nearly came a cropper when we found a field run-off had turned into a small river.  Anyway, we first went into Alnwick Castle gardens.  Not much to see at this time of year, but they have a nice tree house.

 

Don't let my grandchildren see that!
And there is the castle eventually from the middle of the fields.








You probably now recognise it as the place that Harry Potter learned quiddich.  There are statues on all the corners of the battlements.

 

Here's the castle from the bridge over the stream.

And this is the stream!


You may have read that the road south from Alnwick was blocked by floods while we were there.  We were in effect trapped.  Although I can't think of a nicer place to be trapped.  Except perhaps the Maldive Islands.  Anyway, you can see how much rain has been falling round there.  That is the back road to the castle on the right of the pic.  I think the gate is open!

COAST ACCOUNTING

We walked a fair bit along the Northumberland coast.  It is bleak, unspoilt and ruggedly beautiful.  This is the village of Caster, which still makes its income from smoking kippers.

 

Here is the coast we had just walked.  It was a real wild day.

 

And here is one of the smoking houses.

 

If you don't have a map, you can find Caster by smell.  If you don't like kippers on the other hand, give it a wide berth; even the fish cakes I had for lunch in Newton, a nearby village, were made with kippers.

Newton is no more than a collection of old fishermen's cottages and a pub. Indeed there is nothing else around for miles.  We had heard good things about The Ship, although they did rather let us down.  Here is the coastline.  You can just see the cottages in the distance.

 

And here they are, with The Ship in the corner.

The inside is pretty functional, but it was soon packed.  We had got there early to make sure we secured a seat inside. Despite the weather, the outside was soon packed too.

 

But when we realised others were being served before us, we queried our order and found that they had lost it.  These things can happen, especially when a kitchen is busy.  But they had insisted on prepayment (cash - no plastic acceptable around these parts!) and now told us they had sold out of what we had ordered.  I thought this was pretty poor (it might even be illegal) and it took the edge off our enjoyable day.  Moreover, I can't tell you whether the food is any good.

Near Newton is a famous iron church I also wanted to see.  It was built in prefabricated form in late Victorian times to serve the tiny community.  It is probably the smallest church in the county, but it is rather sweet.  It sits inland a little way, under the coast guard station, but otherwise in the middle of open countryside.

 

One of the things I intended to do whilst travelling here was to take a boat round the Farne Islands.  These are uninhabited islands a little way offshore, which are teeming with wild life.  You can get the boat captain to set you ashore for a an hour to wander amongst the flocks of seabirds and seals and take pics to your heart's content.  But only when the weather permits.  The boats go from the town of Seahouses, which consists almost entirely of enormous fish and chip restaurants.  I guess coach loads of visitors arrive during the season.  I was amused by the name of this boat.

 

Despite the claim, there were no boats going out in the distinctly unserene sea.  The tide was low most of the time we were around there, which mitigated against us too.  I was still prepared to go, but then found that there were no puffins on the islands at the moment.  I didn't realise that they migrated somewhere.  So that reduced my interest in pics of seabirds.  I'll have to do that trip another time.
 
We didn't visit Dunstanburgh Castle either.  I'd become a bit castled out by now and anyway Dunstanburgh is now a ruin and looks better from a distance.

 

Here's a slightly closer view from the headland.

 And you can just make it out here from the north across the bay.

BEACH HOUSE

We managed to see several castles whilst in Northumberland.  As the northernmost (and nearest to Denmark) county of England, this area was constantly under attack and anyone who could afford it built fortified homes, so there were plenty around.  One of the most complete, and arguably most beautiful, is Bamburgh Castle, still lived in today.  Here it is from the town.

And this is it from seaward.

Northumberland still has some of the most spectacularly unspoilt coastline in Britain and the castle stands out clearly on the beach.

Here it is from miles further along the coast.

 

It will have had a commanding view of any maritime invasion.

 

The first castle on the site was built around 800BC.  The Vikings destroyed what remained of that wooden structure towards the end of the 10^th century AD.  A hundred years later, the Normans rebuilt it - in stone.  And there it stood impregnable, until it became the first castle in England to be taken with the new-fangled gunpowder, ironically not by a foreign invader, but during the War of the Roses.  This is the keep.

Inside, this is the very beautiful main hall.

 

It was quite extraordinary to see so much carved stonework and indeed wood uneroded and undamaged.  This is the living area.

And here is part of the dining room.

There were lots of weapons and pieces of armour around to look at.  I am always amazed at the detailed decoration on military equipment.  Somehow it seemed as though more time was devoted to making it look pretty than to making it effective.  Here is a helmet I liked.

 

SILVER LINING

Just to let you know.  Although the weather reports are dire, we seem to have missed most of the bad rainfall and winds.  Today we went for a walk across the fields behind Alnwick Castle and then drove across the causeway to Holy Island.  There were a few drops of rain, but there was also sunshine and we had a fabulous day.  The River Aln , however, usually a pleasant brook, was a raging torrent three times its usual width. 

The road south of here seems to be closed however, so we might not be able to end this holiday as soon as we had planned . . .

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I am not likely to be around tomorrow, as we're walking another leg of the Sussex Border Path.  Then, on Friday, we are off to Northumberland. 

When I retired, I decided that, as I hadn't travelled much in the UK, I would visit every major town and city and then maybe smaller towns and villages, starting with what I thought were the most well-known.  That sounds quite a lot I know, but I anticipated having few commitments and, perhaps once a month, that we would visit somewhere almost at random. 

The first city I chose was Great Yarmouth.  I don't know why I settled on Yarmouth.  Perhaps I subconsciously thought we'd start at the end of the alphabet and work our way backwards alphabetically.  But maybe I went about it the wrong way.  We didn't do any research; I thought we could just turn up, drive around a bit, walk around a bit, go to the Tourist Information office, have lunch, see the recommended sights and come home.  But Yarmouth wasn't 'great' at all.  In fact it was all rather horrible.

We didn't find any of the sights especially interesting and the fresh fish lunch was not particularly tasty either.  We were a little discouraged after that.  In practice, we now go down to the West Country once a month and wander around there instead.

But we are now attempting to reactivate our plans, if in a slightly different form.  So we are going to Northumberland, the most northerly county of England.  We have decided what we want to see while we are there and I have decided what I want to eat.  We will walk a little and no doubt eat a lot.  We are expecting it to be great.  See you in a week or so.