puffins

Our 2024 holiday: The Farne Islands

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A photo of the Farne Islands.

This is the fourth blog post about what we did on our 2024 holiday to Northumberland. Previously, I wrote about The Alnwick Garden, and today is about our visit to The Farne Islands.

I’ve mentioned the Farne Islands in my previous posts about Seahouses and Bamburgh Castle. They’re a collection of 15-20 islands just off the Northumberland coast – the number of visible islands depends on the tides. People have lived on the islands in the past, but nowadays there’s no year-round human residents. They’re now looked after by the National Trust.

Whilst humans may no longer live there, plenty of birds and seals make it their home instead, and so there are plenty of boat tours from Seahouses to go and see them. We went on a two hour tour with Billy Shiels; ours was a ‘non-landing’ tour that visited several of the islands but didn’t dock at any of them. Other tours do land at one or two of the islands; if you’re a National Trust member then you can land for free but non-members have to pay a landing charge.

A photo of an Atlantic Puffin sat on a rock on the Farne Islands

Bird life on the Farne Islands

Probably the biggest draw for people visiting the Farne Islands is the opportunity to see Atlantic Puffins. They’re not there all year round – indeed, when we visited a couple of weeks ago, they were grouping up to get ready to fly out to sea. They’ll stay out at sea until the spring, so we were lucky to see them. Indeed, we probably saw thousands of them – swimming, flying, eating or just lounging around on the rocks. Puffins are one of my favourite birds – I’ve seen a few at a distance at RSPB Bempton Cliffs in East Yorkshire, but I had never been this close to them before. I managed to get lots of photos of them, and it was amazing to see them flying overhead.

Besides the puffins, we saw shags, razorbills, cormorants, oyster catchers, eider ducks, terns and kittiwakes. Indeed the kittiwakes still had some quite fluffy chicks in their nests on the rocks when we visited.

A photo of a grey seal sat on a rock, on the Farne Islands

Grey seals

As well as the birds, there were hundreds of grey seals. Many of the females were pregnant, so there will hopefully be lots of pups in the autumn. Whilst we saw plenty lounging around on the rocks, there were a few out swimming as well. At other times of the year, it’s possible to see thousands of seals on the islands.

The boat trips are not cheap – expect to pay around £25 per person for a two hour trip. But it was absolutely worth it – I keep using the word ‘amazing’ but I can’t think of any other words to describe what an experience it was. We got really lucky with the weather too – nice and sunny with not too much wind. It was definitely one of my top life experiences.

RSPB Bempton Cliffs nature reserve

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RSPB Bempton Cliffs

A couple of weeks ago, at the height of the recent heatwave that hit Britain, we decided to head for the East Coast, and specifically the RSPB nature reserve at Bempton Cliffs.

Bempton is to the north of Flamborough Head, and the tall chalk cliffs are full of nooks and crannies that provide plenty of nesting opportunities for seabirds. Consequently, over 200,000 birds make Bempton their home during nesting season, including puffins, gannets, herring gulls, shags and kittiwakes.

I’ve been to Bempton a few times before, as my paternal grandparents used to live nearby. But this was my first visit in many years, and Christine had never been before. We expected the usual seaside locations like Scarborough to be incredibly busy, and so this would be a quieter alternative. Plus, June is peak season for spotting puffins, which are one of my favourite bird species.

The visitor centre at Bempton has expanded a little since my last visit. There’s now a small café with outdoor seating, toilets and a bigger gift shop. Entry is just £4 for adults and £2 for children aged 5-17, with family tickets also available, and parking is free.

RSPB Bempton Cliffs

Bird spotting at Bempton

Once you’re out of the visitor centre, a network of footpaths takes you to various viewing platforms along the clifftops. On weekends, volunteers will have some telescopes set up trained on key points of interest, including the ever popular puffins. Whilst the platforms over-hang the clifftops, you’ll need to bring a decent pair of binoculars to be able to see anything up close. If you’ve not brought any with you, there’s a good range back at the gift shop to buy or rent.

The platforms nearest the visitor centre are all accessible, with lower barriers for those in wheelchairs (or pushchairs in our case). There are also various information boards for kids to introduce them to the various bird species that can be seen on the cliffs, and how to tell them apart.

Puffin

I was delighted to be able to take this photo of a puffin. It has been cropped somewhat; my longest lens has a 80-250mm range, which is better than nothing but still not really up to taking photos of individual birds. There were plenty of people there with huge zoom lenses and high-end cameras.

Although there was a café, we brought a picnic and there are several picnic areas across the site.

We had a really good time at Bempton. Seeing puffins was a real highlight, but there’s a wide variety of other seabirds there too. If you’re planning a visit, I would recommend doing so sooner rather than later, as some of the birds (the puffins especially) will depart soon.