To Banburgh Castle. We'd last seen this more than 40 years ago from the beach, but we had tickets to go inside today. The small town was heaving and we follow signs to the overflow car park, a £4 field. When we walked up to the castle we saw the nearer main car park had plenty of spaces and then the carpark at the top of the castle hill by the castle entrance had many free spaces.
Banburgh has had many names over the centuries, one was Bebbanburg which was the home of Uhtred of Bebbanburg in Bernard Cornwall's saga and Last Kingdom, the TV series based on the books. But, unlike Alnwick which caters to Harry Potter fans, there is no mention of Uhtred at Banburgh.
We toured the rooms, and tried to get lunch in the castle but they had few outlets and couldn't handle the numbers of visitors, so we left, feeling a little deflated there was so little to see in such a huge and impressive castle.
We managed to get a coffee and cake on the way to our next destination, Seahouses, which had grown to mythical status in our minds after a visit 40+ years ago when we enjoyed the most memorable fish'n'chips.
But that was then. Now it's teeming with tourists and shops are full of tourist tat.
We had a short walk along cliff tops to the harbour (above) where we sat for a time.
Having time to spare we went to Alnmouth, where the River Aln flows into the sea. A helpful attendant taking money at the entrance to the beach carpark told us where we could go to park free of charge. Alnmouth was small and quiet, and had a wide sandy beach (above) which the river cut through.
Back for our last night at Hog's Head Inn, we enjoyed a glass of Prosecco (with raspberry) then fish'n'chips and a so-so bottle of Picpoul de Pinet.
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