Today we were moving on to Berwick-upon-Tweed. Earliest check in time for our new site is 13:00 and we needed to leave our Dunstan Hill campsite by about 11:00, So, with about a 1-hour drive, we’d need to kill some time somewhere.
First, though, we occupied ourselves before departure time by lugging my camera bag and tripod bag down to the beach at Embleton Bay, once again, thinking that mid-tide [about 10:30] might give us water sloshing around the rocks. However, when we arrived the flooding tide was still way short of the rocks. Francine, however, found me a photogenic formation of green shelves pointing out to sea to play with. I got what I think is one decently illuminated shot before the light faded and the shelf became rather dull. Still, one is all you need.
We wound our way back once again into a headwind and packed up Frodo getting him ready for the road. Taking the slower coast road, since we were not in a hurry, we picked our way through Beadnell followed by Seahouses, failing to find a decent stopping point. Eventually we found a decent roadside parking area with a few cars and spaces available. We bailed out. A style led over a fence, through some long grass and down onto the beach just opposite Inner Farne. We were just a spit south of Bamburgh Castle.
On the beach we had a good view of Inner Farne and some of the rock formations on the coast made for an interesting photographic subject. We meandered up and down the sand for half an hour or so, occasionally being sandblasted as the now familiar wind whipped the grains up into a storm. We were here once before many years ago and I well remember the sand blowing across the shore then.
We’d killed almost enough time so we returned to Frodo to continue our short journey. Bamburgh itself was heaving, not unexpectedly. I’m going to make myself very unpopular by calling Bamburgh Castle an ugly lump of a building. Attractive it ain’t so I was quite happy to keep driving straight through but we noted that there were a few parking areas that accepted motorhomes had we wanted to stop. Bravo!
Eventually we ended up in Berwick itself where, to use a little more time, we called in the the local ASDA which had a handy-dandy fuel station. We’ve driven 300 miles all the way from home and still had 3/8ths of a tank, which was quite pleasing. Topping up the fridge after topping up the tank completed our stop.
We checked-in shortly after 14:00 and chose our pitch. Our neighbours were absent and their caravan awning was doing its best to be absent as well. Two of three poles were down and the canopy was flapping alarmingly in the strong wind. I reset the two naughty poles and tightened the guy ropes. One pole remained upright but the middle pole once again collapsed. Our neighbours finally returned and wisely decided to take the awning down altogether.
The winds in these parts really have been brutal for the week that we’ve been here.
Recent Comments