Longhoughton to Howdiemont Sands and Beadnell

Our B&B in Longhoughton, Number 1 Springfield, was excellent; it's a nice house, but on a small modern up-market development, so we weren't really sure what to expect. However the room was extremely comfortable and Christine and Richard Wilson couldn't have done more. We had delicious locally smoked kippers for breakfast, and after chatting to Richard and Christine and the other two (rather talkative) guests, we left around 9.20 am. Longhoughton also had the advantage of a reasonably sized shop (the Co-Op that we'd had some difficulty finding yesterday); we'd realised last night that we had forgotten to bring toothpaste, so we visited the Co-Op before setting off back to the coast.

We walked back along the route we had followed yesterday, past Low Steads Farm to the beach. It was much quieter than yesterday afternoon, presumably because most people don't get going anything like as early as we do on Sunday mornings (most of the curtains are still drawn at the holiday cottages at Low Steads Farm). We went down onto Howdiemont Sands; there were a few other walkers about, but we managed a photo with no-one on it. We returned to the path and walked along to Sugar Sands, noticing that a young couple who had been on Howdiemont Sands walked straight from one beach to the other; the benefit of local knowledge! As we headed north, we realised that we'd been here before; when we were on holiday in Northumberland in August 2014 we'd parked at NU258174 to the southeast of Howick and done a circular walk. Past Howick we were on even more familiar territory, with some landmarks that we remembered from previous visits including a house right on the coast and an outcrop of Whin Sill.

The village of Craster came into view with Dunstanburgh Castle beyond and we continued along the coast to Craster. We left the coastal path at The JollyFisherman, and stopped to admire the kit built skiff which will be launched later today. Richard Wilson (from last night's B&B) is a member of an Alnmouth crew who are rowing north for the event, and after he told us about it last night we'd done some research. The kits for these St Ayles Skiffs are made by the auspiciously named Jordan Boats, and they seem very popular. The man we talked to outside The Jolly Fisherman told us that they started building their skiff in January, and just five of them have done the work - impressive stuff!

We walked down to Craster Harbour where there was a little fete taking place, presumably in honour of the event, and visiting skiffs were being launched. We stopped at the Shoreline Cafe for an early lunch (crab sandwich for me, chowder for Richard; delicious!); we sat outside because it was rather warm in the cafe. We walked down to the harbour again, and this time we continued towards Dunstanburgh Castle. This is one of our favourite stretches of coastline, but was incredibly busy - until we turned off the direct path to the Castle and took a path around the western side of the outcrop. There were still people about, but nowhere near as many as between Craster and Dunstanburgh. The Castle sits on a Whin sill outcrop and there are sheer cliffs to the north.

After we'd skirted around the Castle, the route of the Northumberland Coastal Path and St Oswald's Way was signposted to the left again, away from the shore across yet another golf course (the Dunstanburgh Castle). However I was wondering about walking along the beach at Embleton Bay and didn't want to head too far away, so we kept straight ahead. We reached the beach, but it was high tide and there only appeared to be soft sand (difficult to walk on) and rather a lot of people, so we kept walking through the dunes. It was an attractive path, with good views to the coast, but there were rather a lot of ups and downs and the undergrowth was up to our shoulders at times. Therefore, when we reached the track down to the beach from Dunstan Steads we turned left to the official route of the Northumberland Coastal Path and St Oswald's Way further inland; we followed this to the Club House.

We stopped on a bench to sort my feet out, then, still on the route of the two paths, we headed back towards the dunes. We had some difficulty finding our way round to the north of the Embleton Burn (the river which flows into the beach), but once we had done this we decided that it was probably easier to return to the beach than to do battle with the dunes. There was initially still not a lot of firm sand, but it got better., and there were still good views back to Dunstanburgh Castle. The beach ends at Low Newton-by-the-Sea, which we last visited in 1998 with my mother.

We climbed a short distance up the road, then took a path at an angle across a field, some distance below a radio mast. We continued across scrub to the Newton Links carpark, and this time we went straight down onto the beach at the southern end of Beadnell Bay. We stopped for a brief rest and an apple then walked along the beach. Whether it was because the tide was further out, or perhaps just that there were fewer people about, this section became a highlight of the day. Like Embleton Bay, Beadnell Bay is bisected by a river flowing down to the sea, in this case Brunton Burn. We could have headed to the back of the beach and used the footbridge that we could see there, but instead we decided to take off our walking boots and paddle across. This was fun, and we felt impressively well equipped for the exercise because we were carrying a camping towel; though removing sand from between the toes before putting walking boots back on proved almost impossible.

As we approached Beadnell there was an increasing amount of activity out to sea, including water skiing, jet skiing, canoeing and surf boarding. It turns out that Beadnell has become something of a water sports centre, and we enjoyed watching it all - and amazingly there were still views to Dunstanburgh Castle. We walked right to the end of the beach and emerged by a little harbour and some old lime kilns. Note that the official route of the Northumberland Coastal Path and St Oswald's Way don't go past the lime kilns and the harbour, which seems a pity.

Beadnell is a village of two centres, the area around the lime kilns and harbour and the area around the Church, where we were staying, and the walk between the two, through a rather boring residential area, was not thrilling. We turned left at a little green, with displays for 'Britain in Bloom' that were so enthusiastic that flowers were growing through the benches. We walked past several big houses and a delightful little church, and there was our hotel, The Craster Arms, again bedecked with flowers. A girl showed us to our room in the front part of the hotel; our room was more of a little suite really - we certainly had plenty of space. We later discovered that we were sleeping in what was once a Peel Tower. We booked a table for dinner at 6.30 pm. We'd realised that they were busy, but nothing prepared us for the sheer number of people eating in the bar and restaurant and it didn't quieten down until well after 8 pm. Some people were clearly having to wait a long time for their food, but somehow we got lucky.

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