Hidden Gem in Tyne and Wear

Beadnell is a small village on the Northumberland coast whose harbour is the only west-facing harbour on the east coast of England, a geographical curiosity that gives the settlement an unusually sheltered anchorage and a distinctive character among the fishing villages of this beautiful coastline. The eighteenth-century lime kilns on the harbourside, among the finest examples of coastal industrial archaeology on the Northumberland coast, are maintained by the National Trust and provide a powerful visual reminder of the lime-burning industry that once made Beadnell harbour commercially significant. The beaches either side of Beadnell are among the finest on the Northumberland coast. To the south, Beadnell Bay stretches as a wide, sandy arc backed by dunes within the Northumberland Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, offering the kind of uncrowded, clean beach experience that has made this section of the Northumberland coast one of the UK's most celebrated coastal destinations. The water quality here is consistently excellent and the beach provides good conditions for swimming, watersports and family beach activities throughout the summer season. To the north, the coast continues toward Seahouses and the Farne Islands, one of the most important seabird and grey seal habitats in Europe. The National Trust boat trips from Seahouses harbour allow visitors to land on Inner Farne, where puffins, Arctic terns and grey seals provide wildlife encounters of extraordinary quality during the breeding season. The medieval chapel of St Cuthbert on Inner Farne marks the place where the Northumbrian saint lived as a hermit in the seventh century, a connection that links this wildlife sanctuary to the earliest and most important period of the Northumbrian church. Beadnell is an excellent base for exploring the central Northumberland coast, with Bamburgh Castle and its beach, the Farne Islands and the Holy Island of Lindisfarne all within easy reach.

Embleton Bay on the Northumberland coast near Alnwick is one of the finest and most dramatically set beaches on the northeast coast of England, a broad arc of sand between the village of Embleton and the low headland of Newton Point that provides the finest view of Dunstanburgh Castle of any point on the coast, the great fourteenth-century ruins rising on their basalt outcrop above the southern end of the bay in a profile of considerable drama against the Northumberland sky. The combination of the beach quality, the castle view and the coastal walking connecting Embleton Bay to the wider Northumberland coastal landscape makes it one of the most rewarding beach and heritage visits in the northeast. The beach extends for approximately two miles between the golf course dunes at the Embleton end and the rocky foreshore at Newton Point, the sand backed by dunes of considerable height that shelter the beach from the prevailing winds and create the enclosed character that gives the bay its particular appeal. The dune grassland behind the beach provides habitat for characteristic coastal flora and the rock pools at the Newton end provide marine life interest at low tide. The walk south from Embleton Bay along the coast to Craster via the Dunstanburgh Castle headland is one of the finest short coastal walks in Northumberland, the castle approached from the north providing the most dramatic initial view of the ruins and the coastal scenery of the Low Newton-by-the-Sea coast providing excellent walking before and after the castle.