I managed to span the list of things we did whilst on holiday in Northumberland to eight blog posts, representing the seven days that we were on holiday. Because it was a short holiday, there were lots of places that we could have visited, but didn’t have the time. Here are some of them.
Alnwick Castle
Whilst we did visit The Alnwick Garden, which is adjacent and shares a car park, we didn’t go into the more famous castle next door. It dates from the 11th Century, following the Norman Conquest, although it was extensively re-modelled in the 18th and 19th Centuries. It’s often been used as a filming location, with the first series of Blackadder set there. More recently, it was used in last year’s Dungeons and Dragons film, and featured in the first two films about that wizard boy whose enemy cannot be named.
Howick Hall
Not far from Seahouses is Howick Hall, the ancestral home of the Earls Grey. The hall itself is open to visitors, as are its gardens and arboretum, and of course there’s a café where presumably there’s an expectation that you’ll drink Earl Grey Tea. Whilst the Earls Grey have owned the site since the 14th Century, the current house is less than 100 years old, having been substantially rebuilt following a fire.
Craster
Craster is another pretty fishing village like Seahouses. Whilst Seahouses claims to be where kippers where invented, Craster Kippers are more well-known. Craster is also known for its lobsters and crabs.
Dunstanburgh Castle
Had we visited Craster, we could have also called in at Dunstanburgh Castle. It’s a ruin – moreso than Warkworth Castle – and it’s just over a mile’s walk from Craster where the nearest car park is. We saw it from a distance as it’s on the coast, but the long walk from the car park and the fact that it’s a ruin put us off.
Beadnell
One of the main roads into Seahouses from the A1 passes the village of Beadnell, and so we drove past it multiple times without actually going into the village itself. It’s also a harbour, and looked quite pretty in some paintings that we saw.
Grace Darling Museum
Up the coast in the village of Bamburgh, and just a short walk from Bamburgh Castle, is the RNLI’s Grace Darling Museum. Grace Darling lived on the Farne Islands and was a daughter of one of the lighthouse keepers. She came to fame in 1838, when she was 22 years old, by risking her life to rescue the stranded survivors of a shipwreck – of the 62 people on board, all but three were rescued. Whilst she died a few years later aged 26, she managed to go down in history as a local heroine. The museum opened in 1938 to mark 100 years since her dramatic rescue.
Whilst the museum was very close to where we were staying, we’d pencilled it in for a day of bad weather. As it was, we were really lucky with the weather and so didn’t need an indoor backup plan.
Northumberland Zoo
Our summer holidays normally result in a zoo or aquarium visit, but we didn’t find the time this year. Had we stayed for longer, then we may have gone to Northumberland Zoo. It’s less than 10 years old, and tends to have smaller animals; the largest are medium-sized cats like servals, lynx and snow leopards.
Morpeth Chantry Bagpipe Museum
Most people associate bagpipes with Scotland, but Northumberland has its own bagpipes, and there’s a museum about them in Morpeth. Indeed, it’s home to over 120 pipe instruments from around the world.
I’ve no doubt that we’ll have another holiday in Northumberland at some point in the future, and we may well visit some of these places that we didn’t manage to fit in.
