Walking the Northumberland Coast: A Puffin Dream and a Coastal Scheme
In the final week of June, we laced up our boots for another long-distance adventure, because clearly, I have a habit of tackling epic walks within months of knee surgery. In 2022, it was Hadrian’s Wall, followed promptly by an arthroscopy. This year? A scenic trek from Cresswell to Berwick-upon-Tweed… and yes, another knee op is scheduled for October. Here’s hoping by the end of it all, I’ll be part bionic and pain-free!
This trip was a little different. While planning the route, I scheduled a mid-walk “rest day” for something I’ve had on my bucket list forever: seeing puffins. Believe it or not, in my fifty-odd years, I’d never seen one! So we planned two nights in Bamburgh to make it happen.
There are many maps, books and websites to help you plan although we used the Harvey map XT40 and the Northumberland Coast Path Official Guidebook and I got most of our hotels through booking.com. As with the Hadrian’s Wall Path it was suggested to walk a specific direction (South to North) to ensure the sun wasn’t in our eyes (With HW it was the wind direction.) I have named the places we stayed within this blog and they were all very convenient, bar perhaps Embleton if you don’t want to use a bus at all.
The walk itself follows the Northumberland Coastal Path, which conveniently overlaps with St Oswald’s Way and St Cuthbert’s Way in parts. It’s also labelled in places as the England Coast Path; confusing, but fortunately hard to get lost since the sea is almost always on your right. That said, some beach sections are off-limits during bird nesting season, and tides can change your plans quickly, so a little pre-planning goes a long way.
Day 1: Cresswell to Warkworth
Our walk began in Cresswell, handily close to where my cousin recently relocated (she also helped us with our Hadrian’s Wall walk, convenient relatives are priceless!). The first leg took us 13 miles to Warkworth, mostly along tarmac and the sandy stretches of Druridge Bay and the country park.
Footwear on this walk is tricky. Trainers lack ankle support; hiking boots can be overkill. I wore lightweight boots that had served me well in Ecuador, but I hadn’t realised I already had a blister. By the end of day one, my little toe was in serious protest, and it only got worse from there. In hindsight, a pair of walking sandals would have helped mix things up and given my poor toe a break.
The heat didn’t help either, but thankfully the café at Druridge Country Park refilled our bottles. That night, we stayed at The Sun Hotel in Warkworth, complete with the quirky “Throne Room.” Dinner was at Bertram’s thanks to my cousin’s tip, a Sunday Supper Club gem and well worth the visit.
Day 2: Warkworth to Craster
We made our way along the coast to Craster on another blazing hot day, rewarded with sea views and charming villages. Oddly, despite it being a coastal path, there were sections without a glimpse of the sea. Nearing Alnmouth, we hit a frustrating stretch: after walking 8 miles, we faced a 2-mile detour inland around a river mouth we couldn’t cross. Mentally tough, but the village charm and a cold ice lolly made up for it.
From Craster, we caught an eye-wateringly expensive taxi to our hotel at The Dunstanburgh Castle Hotel in Embleton. In hindsight, staying in Craster might have been smarter, as we ended up doubling back the next day.
Day 3: Embleton to Seahouses
This was perhaps my favourite day. We grabbed coffee and croissants from Embleton village shop (a far better value than the hotel breakfast) and passed through Dunstanburgh Golf Course. Many of the golf courses open for food to non-members, so if you want a full English, this might be a good alternative.
The weather was still warm, but a breeze kept things fresh. The highlight? Walking barefoot along the beach near Beadnell, past thousands of nesting Arctic terns. It was blissful, and a relief for my mashed-up toe. After covering around 10 miles, we reached Seahouses and made the decision to take the bus the rest of the way to Bamburgh, prioritising enjoyment over pushing through injury.
Rest Day: Bamburgh & Puffins!
In Bamburgh, we stayed at the lovely Victoria Hotel, enjoying a little luxury for our two-night break. Dinner at the Potted Lobster (next door) and the hotel’s restaurant both impressed.
The next day, we returned to Seahouses to take a boat trip out to the Farne Islands, run by the National Trust. From the harbour, the islands look deceptively close, but oddly, no puffins are in sight from shore. It’s as if there’s a “puffin force field” keeping them at sea. But once you’re out there? Puffins galore! Alongside them, terns, gannets, seals, and the moving story of Grace Darling, the young lighthouse keeper’s daughter who helped rescue shipwrecked sailors in 1838.
Day 4 – Bamburgh to Lindisfarne
Day four of the walk took us away from the coast and deeper into the Northumberland countryside, a refreshing change of scenery after days of sea views. The route splits in places, offering the option to visit St Cuthbert’s Cave, though legend exaggerates his presence there, it’s likely the cave served as a resting point for monks on pilgrimage. With the weather on our side, we opted for a slightly shorter route by catching a bus across the A1 to spare my aching knee, trimming the day’s distance to a more manageable 9–10 miles. Our hotel for the night was just the other side of the A1, so rather than venturing all the way onto Holy Island and back, a 10-mile round trip complicated by the tides, we saved Lindisfarne for another time. Coming out of the woods into Fenwick, we hit tarmac and, much to our delight, discovered a lovely little coffee shop that served much-needed refreshments and ice cream (though the name now escapes me). By then, I was limping thanks to both a dodgy knee and a blistered toe, and a brief rain shower nearly caught us, but quickly moved on. We pushed on the final three miles to our hotel in Beal (The Lindisfarne Inn – of course!) even after being kindly offered a lift by some fellow walkers we’d met earlier. With time to spare before dinner, we wandered down to the famous causeway to catch a glimpse of that iconic view—though the monastery was hidden from our vantage point, the sweeping sight back toward Bamburgh Castle was truly stunning.
Day 5 – The Final Stretch to Berwick-upon-Tweed
I won’t sugarcoat it: Day 5 was brutal. Not because of the weather, we were well-prepared for the drizzle and wind, but because of the sheer monotony and mental challenge of the route. The day started with promise, crossing the marshes from Lindisfarne toward Goswick, where we were treated to sightings of birds and remnants of history in the form of pillboxes. But then came the dunes. Not the scenic kind you stroll atop for sea views, no, these were towering walls on either side of us, obscuring everything, including the coastline and any sense of progress. For nearly eight of the eleven miles, we trudged through this endless sandy corridor, Berwick feeling impossibly distant. When we finally emerged, we faced a climb to the cliffs. At one point, I hallucinated that a house in the distance was a pub, complete with toilets and a cold pint. It wasn’t. Just a lovely home with no beer in sight. By now, R and I were barely speaking, both of us completely spent from the physical and mental effort of just putting one foot in front of the other. We eventually reached a viewpoint overlooking Berwick and collapsed behind an outcrop for lunch. That’s when we met a few more walkers, including a young solo backpacker with whom we had a chat, and, just as I was questioning whether I’d ever want to walk again, a pod of dolphins appeared below us, leaping and playing in the water. It felt like the universe was giving me one last boost. We wouldn’t have seen them had we walked on earlier, and I truly needed that moment. The final two miles into Berwick were pure agony: all tarmac, mostly uphill, and a long detour to cross the estuary to reach the train station. But once we boarded the train back to Newcastle, our journey racing by in minutes instead of days, it was almost laughable how quickly we passed our starting point. Sixty-two miles on foot undone in under an hour. Still, despite everything, aches, blisters, and emotional exhaustion, it was unforgettable.
