Alnmouth Station to Howdiemont Sands and Longhoughton

Nine days ago, we caught a train (well, trains...) home from "Alnmouth for Alnwick" Station, and today we travelled back. The nature of my job is such that I panic if I am away for too long; I'm also not sure whether I would cope with two solid weeks of walking, and I doubt I could carry sufficient clean clothes. However I really wasn't sure about a week of walking followed by just over a week back at work followed by another five days of walking. However Richard and I both had a very useful week back at work, and as we travelled back to Alnmouth we were looking forward to continuing our walk on St Oswald's Way to Lindisfarne and the Northumberland Coast Path to Berwick-upon-Tweed.

We left home around 7.15 am to walk to Downham Market Station to catch the 8.08; the journey, via Ely and Peterborough, was extremely smooth. We were only about 10 minutes late reaching Alnmouth Station; we were there about 1.15 pm. We walked towards Alnmouth behind two women who had got on the train in Newcastle, wondering why it never occurred to us when we were living in Newcastle, 30+ years ago, to get on the train to Alnmouth. We overtook a family carrying buckets and spades.

We crossed the River Aln and immediately turned right alongside the river on 'Lovers' Walk', which follows the river around the edge of the village, with good views in all directions. We passed Castle Hill and reached the southern extremity of the loop (now on a road where people obviously park so as to avoid paying to park at Alnmouth Beach) and turned in towards the village centre for refreshments.

We had tea and cake at The Village Tea Rooms but, much to our surprise, it started to rain whilst we were inside. The weather forecast had been for dry weather all week, perhaps turning a little too hot for our liking, but I don't recall mention of rain! It had stopped by the time we left the cafe, and although there were rain showers visible out at sea for the next couple of hours, we only felt a couple of drops of rain.

We retraced our steps to the gardens at the southern end of the village where we applied suncream etc., then we continued to walk around the perimeter road. A footpath cuts across the golf course towards the beach, but that is not the route of the St Oswald's Way and the Northumberland Coast Path, so we dutifully stayed by the road, then turned right down towards the beach car park. We passed the man collecting parking money from passing cars and reached the beginning of the car park. We have happy memories of Alnmouth Beach from when the children were small...nearly there...

Except that is, the route doesn't go down to Alnmouth Beach; I should have checked! Instead, we veered to the left and climbed quite steeply onto the bracken-clad Alnmouth Common, with good views to the beach and all the way back to Amble and Coquet Island. We passed the greens of Alnmouth Golf Club and three very sad looking caravans, then eventually we headed inland, bizarrely straight over the 18th Green. We went round to the left of the Club House.

Signposting to this point had been good, even if mention of St Oswald's Way had been omitted from signs on occasions. However at this point we missed a signpost and found ourselves wandering around the Golf Club car park looking for a non-existent footpath. We retraced our steps a short distance to the 7th Green, and then took a little slipway to the beach. At last! The tide was heading out and there was a good expanse of sand, with just a few walkers and dog-walkers to share it with, and occasional children playing in the sand.

We left the beach just before Seaton Point, climbing up to the dunes where we passed a motley selection of caravans and chalets. Boulmer came into view in front of us, and we walked towards the village, passing navigation markers which are presumably used to guide vessels into the shelter of the natural inlet without running aground on the surrounding low level rocks. We reached a little car park and some benches, and we sat for a while watching people on the beach (perhaps digging for fishing bait?) before going down onto the beach ourselves and clambering over lots of seaweed to the rocky outcrop to the north of the beach, and our first glimpse of Dunstanburgh Castle.

Back on the path and temporarily alongside a road, we skirted to the inland side of houses and the Fishing Boat Inn. We had originally planned to turn inland to Longhoughton here, past RAF Boulmer, but we had plenty of time so continued alongside the coast on a stony track marked as a "Byway open to all traffic" but sporting a "cars forbidden" sign. It got even more confusing when we reached "no overnight parking" signs; so that will be no overnight parking of the car you haven't driven along the Byway? Much more interesting were the increasingly attractive views to Dunstanburgh Castle to the north and the combine harvester and tractors working in a field to our left.

We reached the cove marked as Howdiemont Sands on the map, a lovely little spot. We crossed a little footbridge then continued on the path behind the beach, discovering to our surprise that a number of cars had been parked here. I say "to our surprise" because the only vehicular route down to the beach at this point is on a minor road from Longhoughton, which we were planning to take, and we had noticed, when planning, that there is a gate across the road at Low Stead Farm. We duly took the road, busy with cars coming and going. The gate across the road appears to be the owners way of encouraging drivers to pay a 50p parking charge into an honesty box by the gate.

We continued into Longhoughton, now a fair-sized village with small modern 'developments' alongside older stone houses. We'd have needed to turn left onto the B1339 to get to our B&B, but it was still quite early, so we decided to go in search of provisions for our evening meal (since Longhoughton no longer has a pub or restaurants) so we turned right onto the B1339 in search of the shop that we believed to be along here somewhere. After a couple of hundred metres, it felt as if we were walking out of the village, so we stopped to consult an iPad, to discover that we had walked past the Spa Shop. We turned round and found the premises, but it appeared that the shop had closed down. Thus we were not in the best of moods when we arrived at our B&B, Number 1 Springfield. Christine Wilson was in the garden and saw us coming; she alerted her husband RIchard who was at the front door before we had taken our boots off! He showed us to our room, 'Cuthbert', served us tea and cake - and told us that, yes the Spa Shop had closed down, but only because a Co-Op has opened further down the road, just past where we had walked to. So we were able to buy ourselves refreshments for the evening after all! Christine showed us where the cutlery and crockery were, and we ate our dinner and drank our wine in the guest dining room, talking to Richard about the launch of the Craster skiff tomorrow. A very pleasant evening!

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