The Secret Kingdom Pt1
We're Back! (...well, we were.)
Can you believe this coastline is where our home is? Well, probably yes as I've written extensively about it, but you will allow me a little rhetorical flourish I'm sure.
So we are back in the UK for a chunk of the summer holidays. One of the huge perks of working in a school on the academic side is the long holidays and ability to take them at the same time as your children - teachers don't bang on about this as we're usually too busy complaining about all the other stuff, but the holidays really do make the job bearable. If you really want to see a recruitment and retention crisis in education just watch what happens if any government increases the number of days directed to be completed in school!
Sadly, over a week of our time got wiped out when we all tested positive for covid. We were not well at all. It could have been worse - I have, as I said, worked through worse - but it was still not pleasant and it made the time we had near our friends and family at the coast much more curtailed. We had to cram into less than one week what we had planned to do in two and this made the situation somewhat fraught. Add to that having to move to different accommodation just to extend our time at the coast and the whole situation got a little... let's just say complicated and leave it at that.
The view from the back of our rental flat was less impressive, but the location was great.
A two minute walk brought us to this promenade above Brown's Bay
This is the view from the bottom of Holywell Dene - not bad at all - some good walking and trail running to be had here.
More gratuitous shots of trees and light.
We did have the chance to get out onto the beaches, walk the local trails and I even got a decent trail run in. What I noticed is that running post covid in the UK is no more taxing than running in Malaysia full stop.
What has become apparent, or at least we've been reminded of, is what a great place Northumbria (again, here I refer to everything north of the Tyne, south of Scotland and east of Cumbria) actually is to spend your time, either as an inhabitant or a visitor.
Whilst we were home it seemed that there was an increase in the amount of visitors compared to previous years all across the region. The beaches of Whitley Bay, Cullercoats and Tynemouth were jam packed during the heatwave (unsurprisingly) and in general there was more traffic and more business than we'd seen in the area for a while. Maybe this was just a perception of a post covid bump, but I do think that there was a real sense of increased activity and energy in the place. This didn't stop us from being able to snag some last minute accommodation to extend our coastal stay, but options were not abundant I can tell you.
Our stay was facilitated by the fact that Nicola's parents very kindly let us use their caravan for the bulk of the time we were home and we stayed between there, some rented holiday flats and a handful of nights at both sets of parents' houses.
Views from the caravan
The stay in the caravan meant that we could explore parts of Northumberland we had never really spent much time in prior to this point.
Again Northumberland proved to be a place of hidden treasures (metaphorically only, more's the pity) and we had a great time exploring interesting parts of the borders that we had never set foot in prior to this point.
Berwick Upon Tweed
We had stayed here twice before, but never for more a couple of days at a time. This summer though we had a chance to spend much more time and discover some frankly excellent spots.
Lots of swans in the estuary - the walk from Spital into Berwick was both easy and pleasant. The route across the footbridge gives some fantastic views too.
Berwick is an interesting place. Like many Northumbrian towns it is a place of stark socio-economic contrast - there are the craft coffee roasteries and gift shops, but there are also empty windows and charity shops. During the summer the place is alive with tourists and if you spend any time here it is easy to see why. Berwick is capitalising on this and rightly so. It is also still a port and fishing town, although both of these industries are far from the heights they knew in decades past and as a result tourism and service industries are vital to the area.
The walk around the wall is a must and gives excellent views of the town itself, the coast and the Tweed estuary.
Berwick is a place that is well worth a visit - I was surprised at the mix of shops - any town that can support two independent gaming stores with geek merchandise aplenty is going to be a winner in my book! There are also plenty of places to eat and drink that are not the usual high street chains.
I can recommend the Mexican restaurant 'Taco' (https://www.tacomexicanfood.com/) and the takeaway pizza restaurant 'Pizzaiolo' (http://www.pizzaiolopizza.co.uk/). Both of these are really very good and great value.
The Borders
Norham and Etal
We spent time exploring a part of Northumberland that we had never really spent much time in prior to this point, beyond passing through on our way to Edinburgh. Our first stop was Norham.
I often think that the stereotype that Americans collectively hold about everyone in the UK (okay I genuinely don't believe that Americans think this, but please allow me the poetic license of using the stereotype) having a castle in their back yard or living in a thatched cottage is basically borne out if you spend any time in the rural communities beyond our major cities.
Norham Castle - It's quite impressive when you're close up, honestly!
Norham is a good place to do some low level walking if you're looking for a change from the hills. It has a decent amount of parking (we parked at the castle) and there are a few shops, although in typical rural village style none of them seemed to be open during the middle of the day on a Tuesday - I mean what sort of maniac wants to shop between the hours of 11am and 3pm? There was a bespoke gun crafting shop - I'm not really sure what the exact term for this is and I was a little taken aback that there even was such a thing, but given that it looked liked it was selling shotguns for people engaged in country pursuits as opposed to assault rifles I guess that's okay?
Anyway we used this as a start and end point for a riverside walk which was very nice indeed. The going was varied and the paths were mostly easy to follow (one small section being a little overgrown). We tracked the Tweed for a good 1/3-1/2 of the distance and got some great views. We even contemplated popping over the boarder to Scotland just to say we had, but left that for another day.
That's Scotland on the other side of that bridge!
Stunning scenery and amazing weather
Arty shot of a thistle (or what I think a thistle is, but may be something else).
After we finished the walk we were in need of lunch so I plotted a course to Etal (pronounced ee-tal apparently...). Here we found another castle (I wasn't joking about the castle density of Northumberland - it really is extraordinary when you look at it from a kind of outsider's perspective) and a very nice tea room. There is also a steam railway for reasons that I am sure are logical, but I don't know what they are. However this combination, along with a pub (the oldest thatched pub in the UK) and brewery and local shop/post office/bakery make it a charming village to visit.
Etal is part of the wider Ford and Etal estate and has been a tourist draw for a while and it is easy to see why when you visit in the height of what was a fairly glorious summer. There is something quintessentially English about the whole place. It was a kind of distillation of all the things you see on post cards rolled into one. I guess the stereotype does have origins in truth.
We had lunch at the tea shop and I opted for the ploughman's - well, when in Rome (okay, when in England). It was great! In fact I would go so far as to say it was glorious!
Thomas continued with his quiche addiction, something which had begun on our journey to the caravan when we stopped of at Carnaby's and he first got a taste for the eggy, veggy, cheesy treat (I know autocorrect, 'veggy' is desperate to be spelled 'veggie', but I'm using it as an adjective so forgive me for doing a bit of creative morphology- come on, catch up!). I know one or two of my readers will recoil in disgust at the very mention of quiche as I have a couple of friends who have surprisingly strong opinions on the subject, but Thomas was a quiche convert! Nicola had a cheese toasty - not the most exciting of choices it would seem, but all of our food was rendered magnificent by the sheer quality of the ingredients - namely the cheese itself.
Now I have written about the dearth of high quality cheese available out here - or rather I should say the scarcity and expense of good quality cheese. However, what is more the case is the availability of very high quality cheese at relatively reasonable prices in the UK.
Right, before I go any further I want to say that I am not engaging in some weird jingoistic cheese mongering (see what I did there?) a la Liz Truss in that weird post-Brexit speech she gave to the Conservative Party conference where she delivered that bonkers polemic about imported apples, punctuated by those uncomfortable pauses and her trademark unhinged grin, which manages to be at once both vacuous and malignant.
I am saying British cheese is great! It was something we noticed straight away upon our return. Even closeted away during our covid recovery we were able to access decent supermarket cheese which was a cut above the stuff we can get here.
The lunch we had in Etal was a showcase of this (all the cheese came from the Northumberland Cheese company - a brilliant regional business) and other fresh, local ingredients. The quality of the salad was brilliant, the bread, from the in house bakery was brilliant and the pastry was brilliant.
The UK has an outstanding food culture - it's just one that hasn't always been marketed well and in many cases can fall short in terms of the powerful flavours that come with highly spiced cuisines from other parts of the world. However, I would contend that the quality of our fresh, seasonal produce can make for some excellent eating and our dairy produce is exceptional.
I was talking to a friend of mine out here about the quality of British beige and brown food - we do a great line in bread, cheese, pastry, puddings, gravy etc. This even extends to our drinks - tea and beer specifically within the 'beige-brown' spectrum (yeah, I know, not colours of light and therefore not in the spectrum, at least not if your eyes are functioning or the air quality is any good). This is true and it's something we enjoyed immensely about being back home.
After our late lunch we returned to the caravan via the supermarket - that evening I had come up with a plan. We decided on an 80s style dinner - no, not Findus Crispy Pancakes and potato waffles, we picked a good one. We based our evening meal on childhood memories of summer salads and the 'picky teas' of our younger days where you had a range of bits and pieces to which you could help yourself. Again, this was great. We were clearly at the perfect time for these ingredients and even the big chain supermarkets were packed with British salad stock and locally sourced items.
Coldstream
The next adventure in the borders took us to 'the other side'. Yes, we went to Scotland. Not a great feat from Berwick as it is literally on the border.
Coldstream, like Berwick itself, sits on the banks of the Tweed, however at a point where the river itself forms the border between the two countries. Like most border towns in this part of the world it is difficult to characterise it as either distinctly Scottish or English, it is its own thing.
We did a circular walk from the river, up through the Hirsel Estate and back down and along the river bank into Coldstream again. The day was perfect, a balance between sunshine and cloud cover, warmth and a cooling breeze - literally ideal weather.
Big skies above Coldstream as seen from the banks of the Tweed.
The rolling hills of the Scottish borders.
An 18th century galleon that someone has in their back garden for... reasons?
One thing that we did note, not just here, but all throughout our time back home, was the fact that the environment had suffered this year. The storm damage that the repeated high winds of the winter had inflicted was visibly apparent as we were out walking and the lower levels of rainfall were clear in the river levels and dry ground. Northumberland is a wooded and wet county and wind and drought leave their mark.
We had to double back on our walk at one point as the path was closed due to fallen trees and the level of the Tweed was below normal even for the height of summer.
One upshot of this was that one of my favourite spots in the whole world was closed: Thrunton Woods. This Forestry Commission managed area was deemed too unsafe to be open to walkers until further clearance and replanting work had taken place. I was really disappointed as I had hoped to visit here again - it had been one of the last spots we went walking with friends before leaving for Malaysia and it has a special place in my heart.
Fortunately the winter had not damaged the sections of the borders we were in to the extent that we had to abandon our plans, just a couple of minor diversions and nothing more.
I can definitely recommend Coldstream as a base from which to do a day walk. We had driven through and even stopped to break the journey to Edinburgh, but we had never spent any time here. We'll definitely be back.
St Abbs
The next day we decided to do something a little shorter as we were planning a fairly hefty walk with friends the following day, so we took a little jaunt to St Abbs - or New Asgard as it appears to be calling itself now.
Thomas wielding the replica Mjolnir and Stormbreaker that the tourist information place will lend you for photo opportunities.
We did the walk from the National Trust car park, up to the lighthouse and looping back through the nature reserve before dropping down into the village to get the picture featured above and refuel at the the Old Schoolhouse Cafe - a recommended spot as it is just outside of the main village and therefore a little less crowded, but with excellent food. Thomas topped up his quiche quotient and I discovered an amazing invention - a variation on the old Mars bar crispy involving, not one, not two, not even three, but four Tunnocks products melded into one! I didn't even know Tunnocks had four different products (I suspect that they count the milk chocolate and the dark chocolate variety of the teacake as separate entities, but I'm not going to engage in a pedantic confectionery based taxonomical argument here...).
I can recommend visiting the cafe on the strength of that alone!
St Abbs from a short distance out
One of the many bays and coves nearby
Gratuitous attempt and an 'arty' perspective shot - please don't judge!
The natural environment around St Abbs is spectacular and we had a great, if windy, walk. I noted that the rocks looked similar to those further south around Craster and this is no surprise when you learn that the geology of the region is as distinct as the culture and history. This part of the world sits on what is known as The Great Whin Sill - these are geological features that came about as England and Scotland were forced together some 295 million years ago, when previously they had been parts of separate continental plates. They stuck when the plates started drifting again and the evidence of the collision is visible across the north of England and very southern areas of the Scottish borders. In fact Hadrian's wall largely built on the ridge formed by this event, taking advantage of a natural border and reinforcing the geology to make a political statement about who owned what.
Anyway, history and geology aside, it looks impressive.
St Abbs can definitely fill an afternoon or even a full day if you care to extend your walk a little further and is well worth a visit if you have never been, or haven't been for a while.
Bye for now!
Love and best wishes to all from John, Nicola and Thomas.
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