An Angel and Holy Island

9^th May

The day started early, to the sound of rain pounding on to the roof, the sky was dark grey and we went back to sleep.

Second time around for wakening, the sky was clearing and was promising some good weather for travelling further North. Our destination, Beale, at a small farm campsite, for just caravans or motorhomes, the nearest site to the causeway over to Lindisfarne, The Holy Island.

Shortly after leaving Durham we came to The Angel of the North, which I was looking forward to seeing. I expected it to be on a higher hill than it actually is is but was still very impressive and extremely accessible. Only downside to this is, we left the A1 to go and see the Angel.  You have to go onto a dual carriageway to park up, so when you leave, there is only one way you can go and that is towards Gateshead. As the Angel is quite an attraction, you’d expect them to have considered this and put a roundabout in for folk to get back to the A1 but no, you have to carry on being forced to go in the wrong direction, this meant taking the first turning I found, which was about a mile on and having to do a 3 point turn in a residential road, which seemed plain silly.

Travelling further on we turned into Alnwick, in the hope of seeing the castle. We didn’t want to go around it, just see it. Well you can’t! Big wall, all the way round the grounds and the car park was on the other side of the main road, so not a chance. We could have got back onto the A1 further up this road but I’d seen Bamburgh signposted and Coastal Route. In truth, we’d avoided this, as it was a B road and many coastal B roads are hellish if you’re driving a Motorhome but as we were already on it and it seemed OK, I decided I wanted to go that way. And I’m the driver, so no discussion there. To be fair, Mike had selected the A1 to make it easier for me.

I’m so glad we took the Coastal Route. By now there was a lot of blue sky, with dramatic clouds and we parked up just outside Seahouses, for free, in the long stretches of roadside parking there. We would have parked in the town and done some shopping too but the ludicrous, powers-that-be, had put height restrictions on the car park, so bad luck! They didn’t get a penny out of us and we had a beautiful walk.

We headed on through Bamburgh but thought we ought to check the Site out first, so drove down the long lane to it, saw it had a reserved sign on our pitch and quickly headed back to Bamburgh, as there were some shots I really wanted to take.

We’ve seen some lovely beaches on our travels but these have to be the best so far. The almost white sand is so fine, it’s perfect for walking on and I couldn’t resist a paddle. The sea looked dark blue, with luminous, white tipped waves splashing onto the beaches and it was just so lovely, I didn’t want to leave. There was something spiritual about the beauty of the place.

That night we were having a special dinner, courtesy of birthday gifts, food provided by my daughter, who gave us an M & S voucher to buy a birthday meal. So Beef Wellington, with Parmetiere Potatoes and side salad, preceded by Coquille St Jacques and washed down by a bottle of Champagne, which was also a present.

The sun was still shining after dinner and the wind dropped enough, to watch some telly, then bed, ready for an early start tomorrow for a day on the Holy Island. I was childishly excited about getting over there and watching the sea come in and cut us off from the mainland, making us ‘prisoners’ for a few hours.

One of the delights of this trip is how, just sometimes, that bubbling excitement of youth comes back and I end up grinning to myself, for minutes at a time.