Northumberland in Winter

An introduction to dark, wet and windy North East England.

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Howling gales batter the cottage, thrashing pine, larch and alder trees in the adjacent forest, but we’re fast asleep and none-the-wiser, with thick stone walls silencing the menacing weather to not even a whimper. We’re in Northumberland, in the very north-east of England, just south of the Scottish border, and it’s the middle of winter. The sun is slow to rise this time of year, and doesn’t get too high in the sky before it sleepily tucks itself back in for the night. The tendency to hibernate is strong but we need to move quickly if an adventure to the coast is to be had.

The day begins with tea – always tea. The sound of the kettle boiling raises spirits and eyelids and after several minutes of brewing, tea is poured and milk is added to the desired color, with every member of the household preferring theirs slightly differently. Strong and milky, strong with just a little bit of milk, not-too-strong and milky, and so on… It’s a comforting tradition. Sometimes breakfast is as simple as toast or sometimes it is a fry-up of eggs, bacon, black pudding, mushrooms and tomatoes, but today it is Craster kippers (oak-smoked herring) with buttered bread.

We hit the road, making our way north and east. Ancient stone walls and hedgerows line our route, passing by in a blur of gray and pale purple.

We pass ruined barns, swollen rivers and flooded fields – it has been the wettest winter since records began. Wind turbines churn away, giving a hint of what the trees have to endure as they grow. Their trunks and branches are twisted and tortured, shaped by the wind.

It is undoubtedly bleak this time of year, but the beauty lies in the bleakness. Instead of the lush wildflowers of spring and summer, moss and lichen provide vivid color in winter in astonishing shades of green, yellow and orange.

Sculptural forms of bracken and thistles are highlighted with frost, the hilltops get dusted with snow and the river valleys fill up with fog and mist. We can’t resist ditching the car every so often to go for a wander.

We pass signs for towns with names like Kirkwhelpington and Throckrington and great houses like Wallington and Cragside. Sheep dot the countryside at every turn, sharing their pastures with flocks of crows, seagulls and jackdaws. This land has a long memory – Roman settlements, an iron age fort, bronze age artworks carved into sandstone still visible thousands of years later.

By the time we reach the Northumberland coast, the rain is pouring down and although it is only mid-afternoon the light has already begun to fade. Our efforts to get to Bamburgh Castle and Stag Rocks are stymied by flooded roads that we rightly think better of crossing and so we only get as far as Seahouses.

We park beside a grass-covered sand dune and make our way up and down its sandy paths to the beach. The North Sea has been worked up to a froth by the storm, obscuring distant castles and the nearby Farne Islands. High tide has left behind seaweed, limpet shells, unusual rocks and even a tree trunk. It is wild and mesmerizing.

The wind sees to it that we cannot linger there, our cheeks are red and our fingers are numb. The driving rain tests the waterproofing of our jackets and our thoughts turn from the interesting things we discover on the beach to cups of tea, being warm and dry, and tucking in to a feast of fish and chips with mushy peas, mandatory for a trip to the coast in Britain, no matter the weather.

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