Beadnell Northumberland
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.