Northumberland 2021: Part Six

8 and 9 June 2021

After struggling to sleep, I got up at 4, got ready and bounced down to the check in point – only apparently we were all in the wrong place so had to follow in convoy to the correct one. What a start – it kind of forewarned of the day I was about to have, although I had no idea at the time of course. The day proved to be one of the harder days on set, and much worse than I expected. The shoes hurt my feet terribly, and by 2, I was hobbling badly everywhere, fluids were minimal (well for someone that doesn’t like water they were – few chances to get tea and no squash to flavour the water they offered). Any breaks to get them anyway, were in short supply, and strongly curtailed, so the queues at the tea table made it almost impossible to actually grab a cuppa in time before being called back, although I did manage to get to my own squash bottle to get a drink on two occasions. Food was a running lunch – translation: a few of you are sent to eat as fast as possible and you have to get back to set as soon as you are finished – others are waiting! Rest breaks were few and far between, and rather annoyingly, the lead actors kept playing around, making us stand about waiting all the time. By 3, the icing on this cake was the rumour that had started to spread – we were all being cancelled tomorrow (which worried and annoyed a number of us who had come a distance or who had paid for digs for 2+ days)

Sure enough, when I eventually got to my phone, we were cancelled. 🙁 One day pay for all of this discomfort and inconvenience. Thank goodness I had planned to utilise this time for a mini photographic break for myself… others weren’t as fortunate and it had cost them financially for this productions pleasure. I can’t say that I wasn’t chronically disappointed as well however, despite my alternative plans and the pain I was in. The money I expected to earn from this was supposed to cover costs of my own trip at least… Le sigh – thus is the nature of this job these days! We wrapped at 5, and were duly released. Feeling very dejected I decided not to stay there the night and headed instead to Bamburgh. If there was a nice sunset at least I would be there this time!

It was empty when I parked up, but my feet were terribly painful still so I decided to relax for a bit before I needed to go out. Once seated on my bed, chilling and waiting for the sunset, I fell asleep – I didn’t even feel it coming. I was out! It was a couple of hours later when I finally woke but I felt really, REALLY, strange and very out of it. I picked up my phone to text my friend, and my son, but I couldn’t feel anything in my hands. This left me a little concerned so I did no more than have a cup of sweet tea, and a little supper before just sitting and watching a programme on my tablet. By the time that was finished an hour later, I could barely keep my eyes open, and decided that, no matter what was going on outside, I was definitely not going to play tonight. So, despite being barely 9pm, I went back to sleep and didn’t wake fully until gone 8am the next morning.

After a better sleep, and the weird evening last night, I decided that today I needed to rest, and that I wasn’t going to push anything. I couldn’t focus on where to go or what to do anyway, so decided to just stay put. I think a big bulk of the weird sensations of last night, and in fact the fuzzy lack of being unable to focus on anything today and on the Dunstanburgh day, may have been dehydration and exhaustion – so fluids and gentleness were my self prescribed instructions for the next day or two. I slowly got myself ready, had plenty to drink, some food, and at 11 thought I would go for a gentle walk just to get myself moving. My feet still hurt, so I took it slowly down the beach, taking a large bottle of squash with me.

On the walk, I spotted a group of interesting looking sea birds sitting on the seaweed through my binoculars, and after getting a reference photo (using my mobile up to the eyepiece… that was a weirdly complicated effort!) I headed back. I successfully identified the birds as Eider Ducks (yes, those of the ‘down’ fame, I had no idea that was from a specific bird – gotta love Google!) and planned a return to photograph them at some point before I left here. I mooched around in the camper for several hours after, making lunch, having a bit of a tidy and trying to take photos of a particularly loud pheasant in the field next to me (so good with the bird photography yesterday, so pants today!!!) I then tried to take a photo of the castle from the rape field next to me, after I saw another photographer nip up there.. As I left the camper though, the clouds rolled across, and by the time I got into the position I used last time, the sun was well and truly gone, so I walked all the way back feeling just a bit disappointed. Ultimately, the rape was well past its best, so it probably wouldn’t have been any improvement on the shot I took 10 days ago, anyway. On my return, I had a nap (I was obviously still exhausted!) then went out for a gentle walk in the evening. I had extraordinary light on the castle for a short while, and as luck would have it, had my Canon on me, so I snapped the shots while I could.

As I did, some other tourists took the same photos next to me, and I got stopped 3 times by people asking if I was trying to photograph Indie/Harrison Ford. Apparently they had been filming the new Indiana Jones movie here over the last few days. (Northumberland – the new Hollywood? Seemed like a whole bunch of filming was going on here right now!!) This put me off a little, as I felt like everyone was assuming I was a stalking paparazzi photographer even though I was anything but! – so went back to the camper, ate dinner, and watched the light outside just dim again without any drama. I found myself in bed relatively early again, and was asleep before the darkness was complete.