18th September
Tonight we at at CaMC CL just outside of Alnwick.
Today has been a really great day. Breakfast done, we set off for Craster. It’s a small village with a harbour on the coast. Having found the only car park we were astounded to learn that it was £3.30 for just an hour! We paid up and set off on a walk. The village is fairly attractive with many small cottages. Quite a few of these are now rented out to holidaymakers. Dunstanburgh Castle is just along the coast. It is only a ruin now, but we set off on a walk towards it.
The beach here consists of big solid rocks, but pleasant to scamble over.
It was then on down the coast to Alnmouth. Here we found a really good car park right on the beach for £3.50 for all day. See that’s the way to do it Craster! These are the views from Bertie’s windows.
After lunch we went for a walk up into the village. Here a map showed another walk alongside the River Aln. After a few wrong turns we found this and made our way via the path back to the other end of the beach. A cup of tea in Bertie was called for and then another beach walk in the opposite direction and back alongside the golf course.
It was decided to drive to Alnwick to see if we could find a takeaway pizza place for our evening meal. The first hurdle was working out the strange parking arrangements. Parking is free, but you have to buy a ‘disc’ which is basically a sort of cardboard clock on which you record your arrival time and leave it in the car window! We did that but then couldn’t find the pizza place, or anything else of interest, so went to Morrisons and bought a Chinese/Indian meal to cook onboard Bertie. The weather today has been gorgeous, warm and sunny, which has made our last day really memorable. Unfortunately we head for home tomorrow
17th September
Tonight we are staying in the ‘Craster Arms Hotel’, not in the actual hotel, but in Bertie in their carpark!
A really good day today, we have travelled less than 10 miles, the weather this afternoon has been sunny and really warm.
We drove to Bamburgh to have a look at the famous castle. At first we thought that we would just look at the outside. But at only £18.75 entry we thought ‘why not give it a go’. I’m glad we did, there was lots to see and we were there for over an hour and a half.
We walked into Bamburgh village, had a wander around and bought some really good sausage rolls from a local butcher for our lunch. Next we drove the couple of miles down the coast to Seahouses (what an odd name for a place!). Here we had lunch in Bertie, then went for a walk along the lovely beach of fine white sand.
Another short drive down the coast to Beadnell to find our stop for the night. A quick chat with the barman in the Craster Arms regarding where to park Bertie, then off for another walk.
Most of the beaches around here are of fine white sand stretching away for miles. But Beadnell’s beach is of large pebbles and rock pools. We spent a couple of hours just mooching about looking at the wildlife. We saw Oystercatchers, Ringed Plovers and Redshanks among others.
16th September
Goodbye Scotland, we’r now in Northumberland, though today started off in Scotland. During breakfast the gas ran out whilst we were boiling the kettle. No problem we always carry a spare gas bottle. So I fitted it, but there was a problem. No matter how hard I tried I could not get the connection to the bottle to seal. So no cup of tea! We set off towards tonight’s planned stop near Bamburgh all the time looking out for somewhere we could swap our empty gas bottle. On the third attempt Morrisons fuel station came up trumps, and we had gas again.
We arrived at Budle Farm just after noon, had lunch and went for a lovely long walk along the beach.
The tide here goes out a long way.
