Today’s forecast expected a largely dry day with some brighter spells happening. It’s just a spit over a mile on an interesting walking route from our campsite into the town centre of Berwick itself, so after a casual breakfast of yogurt and fruit, off we set.
Berwick’s Elizabethan bastioned town walls remain completely intact, are 1¼ miles long and can be walked around. [There are fragments remaining of older walls dating from Edward 1.] We started by crossing Old Bridge over the Tweed into the town. Old Bridge is two way for pedestrians but is one way to traffic, being open only to those driving out of the town. This pair of pedestrians was intrigued by an old sign which seemed to refer to pedestrians as “foot passengers”.
Having foot-passengered our way across the bridge we hung a right onto part of the town walls. We soon came across another sight of interest in the Main Guard, an 18h c. guard house. It contains an officers’ room, soldiers’ room and a “black hole” for miscreants [that has to be one of my favourite words]. What was most interesting about it was that it had been moved in 1815, just 10 years after the Battle of Trafalgar. Moving an entire stone building manually back then must have been quite some undertaking.
Berwick has what seems to be an iconic rather striking lighthouse – it’s red and white – out on the end of a long pier, originally constructed as a breakwater protecting the mouth of the river Tweed, We were heading for the walk out along the pier. More interesting to me was the collection of Eiders swimming about in the estuary itself. [Phone camera completely inadequate.]
‘T was time to scout out a lunch location. This is always a bit of a trial when you are unfamiliar with the establishments. We briefly flirted with a bistro which initially looked as if it had tapas but didn’t. We spotted a Dean’s Deli but that is now permanently closed. We ended up, rather luckily, at Atelier:
… a unique café, bar and restaurant … serving a range of British and European charcuterie, cheese and antipasti paired with craft beverages
We were lucky in that Atelier is very popular, modestly sized and busy. After a small round of musical tables we ended up sitting at the bar, which was actually quite entertaining, to destroy our sharing Seasonal Platter of charcuterie and cheese.
Beside the Atelier café itself is Atelier’s deli including a range of cheeses which, of course, I couldn’t resist. If you get a chance to sample some Doddington cheese, made at Wooler in Northumberland, do try it.
On the afternoon of our arrival, Francine had wandered down to the local Spittal Beach and found a wonderfully minimalist line up of that iconic Berwick lighthouse which she snagged on her phone camera. Having failed to get a long exposure of the water and rocks with Dunstanburgh Castle in the distance, I fancied a go at this lighthouse increasing the minimalism by smoothing the sea with the Big Stopper. We eventually left Atelier and foot-passengered our way back across Old Bridge in very pleasant sunshine.
We got back to Frodo to collect camera and tripod, then walked back downhill to Francine’s vantage point for the lighthouse.
Being red and white, Berwick lighthouse really needs sunshine on it to bring it alive. In shade, it looks as flat as a pancake. Enter landscape photographers curse: exactly as I arrived at the beach and extracted my tripod, in went the sun, covered by an extensive dark cloud. The lighthouse was transformed into a dull pancake. “Bother”, said Pooh, crossly. I got my kit set up, nonetheless, then sat down on a tuft of grass and waited, hoping for a break in that bloody cloud.
Some of the beach walkers, often with a dog, were gracious enough to pause, having spotted the tripod and camera. We thanked them and waived them through since nothing was happening. Francine kept an eye on the cloud, my back being turned, and, after about 30 minutes thought that a glimmer of hope might be approaching. Fingers firmly crossed, we began watching a sunlit patch work its way along the pier leading to the lighthouse. The patch of light finally hit the lighthouse itself and the red and white came alive. [CLICK: 20s @ f16] Not really being able to see quite what I was getting, I took several adjusting the settings and picked the best.
There were some old groynes a little way along the beach. With the tide now ebbing, these gave me a chance to have a go with my camera’s built in neutral density filters to slow down the water’s backflow. I didn’t know what I was doing but it was a bit of fun. I did it handheld and it would certainly have been better tripod mounted. The effect was interesting, though.
This had been a much more successful photographic experiment than Dunstanburgh, happily.
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