11 September 2023 - Bamburgh
Miles driven today = 12
Total Miles to date = 396
It seems we did our orchestral music loving neighbour a bit of a disservice. Lisa had a chat with him this morning and got the impression he is profoundly deaf. He also claimed that he had paid the £12 overnight charge and that he had no idea he was supposed to be in an allotted bay so we ended up not being quite so grumpy with him as we were when we went to bed last night.
We strolled up to the castle at about 9:30. The gates don't open until 10 so we had a few minutes to take a little wander and admire the views. After all the rain we have had over the last 24 hours we had a much clearer view of the Farne Islands from our lofty perch than we did from Seahouses yesterday.
Then it was back to the castle gates to join the queue of other early arrivers.
The Battery Terrace is bedecked with assorted ancient artilliary pieces. I'm not sure if any of these were originally installed at Bamburgh or whether they had been sourced from elsewhere.
When we were at Dunstanburgh Castle a couple of days ago the guide we spoke to there referred to Bamburgh as having been restored in a style that the Victorians thought a medieval castle should look like, i.e. rather unauthentic. You can see her point. The Keep on the right is the only part of the Castle which survives from the 12th Century structure whereas most of the rest of the buildings in the picture are late 19th Century.
A tour of the interior takes you through no less than 14 "Staterooms", all of which would have had different uses in the Castle's previous incarnations; as a school and a hospital as well as a stately home.
Most of the rooms have eclectic exhibits of pieces collected by the Armstrong family who have owned the Castle since 1894.
The King's Hall is a magnificent banqueting hall which currently houses an exhibition of props and costumes from the Netflix series The Last Kingdom.
The hero Uhtred is based on a real life character who may well have visited this very spot in the 6th Century.
The central painting in the Cross Hall is "The Card Players", which is a copy of the original by Theodore Rombout, which hangs in the Royal Museum in Antwerp.
Cloissone ware originated in China and then Japan, using copper wire to outline the decorative areas, which were then filled with enamel.
Moving into the 12th Century keep we found far more in the way of the sort of exhibits you would expect to see in a castle.
There are some gruesome scenes depicted in the darkness of the dungeons.
The view from the ramparts. I can see our van from here!
Bamburgh village beyond its lush looking cricket pitch.
The Keep viewed from the northern side.
An old windmill stands at the northern end of the Castle overlooking the sandy beach. You can just about make out the Holy Island of Lindisfarne in the distance. That's our destination tomorrow.
It was starting to drizzle again so we popped back to the van for waterproofs before wandering into the village. Very quaint with lots of cafes and restaurants all vying for the tourist dollar.
St Aidan's Parish Church is where Grace Darling and her family are buried. Grace along with her lighthousekeeper father were responsible for saving 9 lives following the sinking of the "Forfarshire" on the Farne Islands in 1838. She died of consumption 4 years later aged just 26. There is a small museum dedicated to her in the village although unfortunately we didn't spot it until we were driving past on our onwards journey.
The central park area was once a quarry where stone used for building the castle and village was extracted.
We had a short stroll on the beach but the rain was getting heavier so we headed back to the van again. We did a bit of planning and have now not only decided on the remainder of our route from here but booked all of our stopovers as well a whole week in advance!
So on to our most northerly point for this trip. We want to get to The Holy Island tomorrow so we are spending the night at the closest campsite to the start of the causeway, barely a mile away. We are at The Barn at Beal, which has a nice little restaurant and also a bar, neither of which are open on a Monday evening unfortunately, although we did manage to sneak in for a quick cider before the restaurant closed this afternoon.
At £36 a night including hook up it's even more expensive than the site we stayed on at Whitby but we can clearly see the Lindisfarne Priory from our windcreen. We've checked the tide times and the bikes will get another airing to pedal over there tomorrow.
In the meantime we've got our Cadac BBQ out for just the second time this year. Food always tastes so much better when it's cooked outdoors.
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