---

Northumberland 2021: Part Three

28 May 2021

I woke up in good time, had breakfast and wandered over for my costume fitting. Once this was done I had a think of what to do today, and settled on having a look at Dunstanburgh castle, and Howick bathing house. To start with I thought I would just gauge the area, so headed to Craster to look at the nearest car park in readiness for a higher tide later today. There were only a couple of spaces in the car park, and, (much to my irritation) I had to park in one of them just to get out and have a look at the parking prices for later. It took a couple of minutes to read the prices and then get back to the van to leave, but several cars passed through in those moments and found no available spaces for themselves. My apologies to those that were right behind me but who had to leave when I ‘took’ the last space!

When I did leave, I headed further along the coast, to check out Howick bathing house. This area had looked really intriguing when I saw photos of it online, but when I got there, I realised none of the photos I had seen, were doing the area any justice. I had never seen a coastline quite like this before! The sections of sandstone were broken by swathes of a hard black/grey rock sliding down at a gentle angle into the sea. They formed a striking line against the edges of the white surf washing up against it. This location shows its former volcanic past here. It was once a lava bed and forms a huge area of volcanic dolerite in Northern England, which spreads all the way across from Cumbria. Research shows there were numerous lava flows in this area around a similar time (approx 300 million years ago) which form several small ‘sills’s’. These sills together make the overall region known as the Great Whin Sill and this particular flow, the Alnwick Sill, can be seen in patches all along the coast to Dunstanburgh. I found it awesome to stare at!

Eventually, I wandered further along a small path, just having a gentle stroll, no kit, no pressure, and making my way down to the waters edge. (being very careful as the tide was coming in, and some waves were really strong). I spent some time here just watching waves crash against big crags in the rock, falling away and making loads of mini waterfalls as they retreated… each wave being different to the last. It was very hypnotic, and I fell in love with this area as I just sat here. I had two thoughts for photos – Ideally this would look great with a high tide at sunset or sunrise… but did the two coincide for me..? Not during this visit… maybe its worth popping back later though… The second thought was to capture intimate shots of these small waterfalls… but I had sat here too long for that. The tide was getting high and missing the particularly picturesque craggy rock face which showed the waterfalls off at their best. I needed to come back and try that one at another time too…

Looking at the map, I realised Craster was the wrong side of Dunstanburgh for the shot I wanted, so I looked for an alternative spot, finding a long layby the other side of the castle that I could use instead. The sun was beaming, the temperature was hot, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. None of these lent themselves to any photographic excitement for me, so rather than trying for photos, I left my kit behind, and just went for a second long, relaxing, exploratory walk instead. I found a huge field of rapeseed in full bloom, and when I followed the farmers track into the field, the view with all this yellow – added to the beautiful fragrance here – blew me away! I sent this video to friends and family… and I ask you the question I asked them…When yellow is your favourite colour, is this the definition of being in heaven… I think it is!!

 

I walked down to the pebbled part of the beach and found the rough spot where many classic shots of Dunstanburgh are taken, but the sun was so hot, none of the stones stayed wet for long, and the shot I hoped to recreate looked drab and uninspiring to me. I ended up leaving this spot for now, perhaps when the tide had peaked and was on its way out, this would work better – and the light definately needed to be much gentler. For now, I decided to go back to Howick to try and capture the bathing house there, with a high tide lapping on the dolerite rock face. It was a few hours off sunset still, but the shot was worth taking now the tide was nearly at its peak.

The Howick Bathing house was built by Charles Grey, (Viscount Howick, the second Earl Grey and yes, he of the Tea fame) in the early nineteenth century. He had 16 children and built the bathing house as a spot for them to get fresh air and to bathe safely in the sea. As I stood fully enjoying the movement of the water with this lovely house in the background, I took loads of shots with the waves falling in different positions. I was loving all the variations each of the shots gave me, and I tried lots of different exposure lengths to see which worked the best… this one was my favourite in the end.

After this I sat for a while trying my hardest to get to grips with hand held photography. This has always been one of my weak points, and I am not very good at it. After some experimenting however, and careful thinking, everything finally fell into place in my head. I was able to capture pin sharp waves for the very first time, following them in with the camera and pressing the shutter at optimal moments. I was over the moon and excitedly snapped over 50 waves… now I just need to find a perfect spot and go out on a super stormy day!!!! (if I can actually remember what I did here of course – the excitement and exhilaration of an awesome storm is very likely to obliterate my memory banks entirely!!)

As the time went on and sunset approached, I considered going back to Dunstanburgh and capturing the castle in a nice light, and hopefully with the tide now heading out, with wetter rocks. I reluctantly left the waves here and headed back, but as I reached the camper, my phone suddenly leapt into life and a bunch of messages pinged to my phone. (clearly I’d had no signal down by the water) Most were just rubbish, but to my dismay, one was from an agent about a job I was due to do towards the end of the following week. They told me that a covid test had been posted to my home for me to do, and that I needed to post it back first thing Monday, in time for the results to be given to the production. This was unexpected, as no-one had said anything about doing a test in advance, and I had assumed it was going to be done on the day.

My dismay was sparked because it also meant that my trip was to be cut short by 4 days.

This threw me and I struggled to think on what I wanted to do, and where my mood suddenly dropped, Dunstanburgh didn’t feel like where I needed to be. I had so many places I wanted to explore before going home!!! Do I want to stay here? Do I want to cram in another new location quickly, do I want to go somewhere familiar in the hope of a sunset… what should I do, where should I go?!! My brain went into a real tizz trying to suddenly think all the planned locations through, and the only thing I could finally settle on was going back to Bamburgh, where I knew I had somewhere safe to park for the night and calm my thinking down.

As I very sadly drove back there, I noticed a haze affecting the orange evening light. As I got closer to Bamburgh, driving into it made the sight ahead of me look stunning – Deep oranges fading into layers in the mist, and the silhouette of the castle standing high on a hill, lay in front of me. I literally gasped at the sight but once my brain had engaged enough to realise what I was looking at, the roads were lined with double yellow lines – there was nowhere for me to pull over!!!! I regretted not having the camera on the passenger seat ready to quickly grab (I might have been cheeky, and stopped for a quick shot), but my mind was so distracted that all I could do was keep driving.

I pulled into my camping spot a few minutes later, and on seeing that the haze was actually a sea fog coming in, I quickly just grabbed the camera and hurried down onto the beach. The sight here was just SO beautiful!

With my back to the setting sun, the evening colours this way were all muted into pastel tones by now. With just one cloud over the castle picking up the warm hues, and two surfers to the far left in all black, giving it a little scale, I captured what was to be my favourite photo of the trip. This eased my current mental state, and as the fog began to thicken, I went back to the camper for the evening to eat, relax and to consider my options.