Saturday 7th May 2022

We started off the day with the Pastures parkrun, overlooked by the magnificent Alnwick Castle (pronounced to rhyme with ‘panic).’

An interesting route over countryside so it was bumpy underfoot, hilly at points, splattered with cow pats and involved three lots of running through a particularly muddy bog. Michael the Run Director and his team of volunteers couldn’t have been friendlier though and we thoroughly enjoyed our visit here.

We drove straight from the parkrun to Alnmouth where we had decided to park up and catch up a bus to our coastal path starting point of Craster. We enjoyed a hearty Eggs Benedict breakfast and lashings of tea before boarding the bus, so that was us nicely set up for the day. Our mission was to walk back from Craster to Alnmouth along the path, retrieve our car and drive back to our accommodation in Berwick. This is all a bit higgeldy-piggeldy this time in terms of where we walk, but bear with us, it will make a complete jigsaw by the end of the fortnight.

The very first part of the coastal path was through a pub garden – it was quite amazing that we got any further!! From A to B it was a fabulous path … a real coastal path in its terrain and views of the sea, we loved everything about it. A few hills here and there but nothing too horrendous. We even walked a stretch of golden sand as we neared Alnmouth and finished off by walking alongside the village golf club.

It was a day of views, of birdsong, of seaside smells … and eventually of sunshine. With my blog head on I couldn’t help but notice a whole load of yellow and gold today. Mostly from the flowers – huge swathes of brightly coloured gorse lined the majority of the path … then there were primroses, buttercups, cowslip, even late blooming daffodils and tulips … and of course Mr. Dandelion! And as the walk progressed there was more evidence of that large yellow ball in the sky peeping out. “The sun has got his hat on ….”

We had excitement too watching a group of reluctant coasteering victims as well as a flock of young lambs exploring their independence whilst Mum called fervently from nearby.

It was just over 7 miles of walking today + our 3 miles of running … so not a bad day’s effort. Revived ourselves in the gorgeous bubbly hot tub on our return and now chilling with wine and pizza, watching and listening to the waves.

So, it’s been a yellow sort of day between the flowers, the sunshine, the sands and also the rapeseed fields seen so much in this area. Maybe I should order a bowl of custard!!!!

p.s. did you notice that I haven’t mentioned being ill – I think that Northumbria air is kicking in!!