Dunstan Hill

Wednesday 3rd May 2023

Beadnell Bay is a really nice site, broad and level, and the staff were excellent.

We wandered into Beadnell itself, the Chip Shop Van had updated its times to say that it was closed on Tuesdays…

Down to the bay itself, and it is a really nice Bay, we’d missed it when we arrived as we walked along the beach just across from the site, but Beadnell Bay is great.

They also have an “aire” like Motorhome stop in the overflow car park, looked nice enough, and almost on the beach itself.

After this, we went for breakfast in the Salt Water Cafe, definitely recommended, their “full breakfast” was great, and set us up for the day.

Before we headed to the next site, we popped back into Seahouses, and managed to find Scotty’s and picked up their chilli and maple sausages, and a cheese and onion slice and beef and potato pasty, these were great!

We wandered around the food shops of Seahouses, picking up a fresh sourdough loaf and some beer and cider.

There’s a good enough parking spot across from the Golf course, easier than trying to squeeze into a parking spot in the town centre.

And onto Dunstan Hill, we got there not long after 1pm, and picked a pitch handy for the only open toilet block, it was warm, but pretty windy.

First thing, was a wander down to Embleton Bay, and it was worth it, the OS maps app on my phone proved really useful to navigate the path down to the beach, as with the other beaches, it was pretty much deserted, I counted nine people in total, including us.

The ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle loom large on the cliff edge not far from the beach, making this one of my two favourite beaches of this trip (the other was Beadnell), again, there was little “beach detritus” visible, but there were some amazing looking black stones, so uniform that they looked like they’d been put there deliberately.

At this point, I wished we’d bought a book I’d spotted in Berwick, about the geology of the Northumbrian Coast to find out more, turns out I forgot that we had picked it up, and the stones were natural, Dolerite boulders, and it had a bit of detail on the formation.

The sand at Embleton is very sparkly, as Gayle said…“Magical to me”, and the sun was out, so…Embleton looked pretty much perfect.

After the beach, we wandered back up towards Embleton, and popped into the Greys Inn, after the cold wind, they had their coal fire burning, and it was a welcome respite, a couple of nice pints of beer (or cider for Gayle) and we were ready to walk back to the campsite.

A quick look at the OS maps app found a shortcut via some sheep fields, and we were back on site in around 10 minutes.

Sausages, beans and mash for dinner, a van staple.