Sunday morning, and for once we had a very sensible plan.
We’d head over to Alnwick, walk along the river, pick up a little shopping and be home before the rain arrived. Then an afternoon on the sofa, catching up on some admin and generally feeling pleased with ourselves for having achieved something without turning it into an expedition.
Have you ever had one of those days that turns out absolutely nothing like you planned?
This was one of those.
The Left Turn We Usually Ignore
On the way to Alnwick we passed the sign for Charlton Hall.
We’ve driven past it countless times and almost always said the same thing.
“We should have a look down there one day.”
Apparently, Sunday was the day.
So Tom turned off the A1 and almost immediately we wondered why we hadn’t done it before.
The road winds pleasantly through woodland before opening onto the Charlton Hall estate, and I’m not entirely sure what we’d expected to find. A restaurant perhaps. A tipi? We’d heard various things over the years without ever really joining the dots.
What we actually discovered was somewhere we immediately wanted to come back to.
There’s Charlton Hall itself, The Tempus nearby, gardens and an assortment of rather lovely-looking places to stay, including cabins and yurts tucked around the estate.
There were enough cars around to suggest other people had discovered the secret before us.
We bookmarked it mentally for another day and carried on towards Alnwick.
Although, as it turned out, Charlton Hall hadn’t quite finished with us yet.
Alnwick from the River
We parked up and headed down towards the River Aln.
This is one of those walks where you don’t really need a destination. The castle does most of the work.
Every now and then it appears above you, sitting magnificently on the hill, and Tom reminded me that the road approaching Alnwick from the north was once part of the great route between Edinburgh and London.
We tried to imagine arriving here centuries ago after miles on the road and suddenly seeing that above you.
Not a bad welcome to town.
It was a lovely early-autumn morning. Still mild, still green, but with that little change in the air that tells you summer is quietly packing its bags.
Unfortunately, the clouds were doing something similar behind us.
The walk through the fields was gorgeous.
Meg thought so too, although her appreciation of the countryside differs slightly from ours.
Every few minutes she found another piece of cow pie, grabbed it triumphantly and sprinted away while two supposedly responsible adults followed shouting:
“MEG! NO! DIRTY DOG!”
Peaceful Sunday morning in rural Northumberland.
Very Heather & Sand.
Shall We Just Go In?
Eventually the rain caught us, so we abandoned the longer walk and headed into town.
One of the things I rather like about Alnwick on a Sunday morning is that it doesn’t seem terribly concerned about whether you’ve arrived.
Some independent shops were still closed. Others appeared to be considering opening.
And actually, there’s something rather lovely about that.
We wandered towards the castle and then one of us said:
“Shall we just go in?”
Which is how our quiet Sunday walk became a castle day.
Tom had visited Alnwick Castle years ago, long before most people outside Northumberland associated it with a certain boy wizard.
That association is difficult to escape now. Alnwick appeared as Hogwarts in the first two Harry Potter films, with the Outer Bailey used for Harry’s first broomstick lesson and other parts of the castle appearing throughout the films.
There’s plenty of Potter magic for families, including broomstick training, but Flynn is still a little young for all that, so we decided to concentrate on the castle itself.
And goodness, were we glad we did.
The Heather & Sand Financial Department
We actually stood outside the castle and bought our tickets online.
Yes. Outside.
On our phones.
Because booking online saved us 10%.
Don’t judge us. We run a tight ship at Heather & Sand.
Better still, online tickets automatically become annual passes, valid for twelve months, which instantly had Tom doing the sort of mental arithmetic normally reserved for supermarket loyalty schemes.
“We only need to come back once…”
I could see where this was going.
We were already planning visit number two before we’d completed visit number one.
Hotspur and a Map-Reading Incident
Entering the castle properly gives you the first sense that this place is considerably bigger than it looks from the town.
Harry Hotspur appears on horseback, which pleased Tom enormously.
Hotspur is fast becoming one of our Northumbrian heroes. Born at Alnwick in the 14th century, Henry Percy became one of the most celebrated warriors of his age and belongs to a Percy story that has been intertwined with Alnwick Castle for more than seven centuries.
Tom was admiring him.
I was having my toe trodden on by an elderly lady whose nose was buried so deeply in the site map that I don’t think she ever knew I existed.
History comes at you from all directions here.
Sometimes on horseback.
Sometimes in sensible shoes.
Seven Hundred Years of Percys
What surprised us was how quickly Alnwick stops feeling like somewhere you’ve simply paid to visit and starts feeling like a place with a living history.
The Percy family acquired Alnwick Castle in 1309 and it remains their ancestral home more than 700 years later. The Duke and Duchess of Northumberland still live at the castle for part of the year.
That changes how you experience it.
This isn’t simply a medieval shell preserved for visitors. Generations have fought for it, altered it, decorated it, lived in it and occasionally rebelled against kings from it.
Which, knowing the Percys, seems entirely on brand.
We’ll come back to all of that properly because Alnwick deserves a Heather & Sand history post of its own.
For now, we wandered.
And wandered.
Only once you’re inside the walls do you really appreciate the scale of the place.
There’s plenty aimed at children, but we naturally gravitated towards the history. Tom particularly enjoyed the Fusiliers of Northumberland Museum, disappearing into displays of uniforms, medals and military history.
I watched him studying them and could almost see what was happening in his head.
He wasn’t standing in a museum any more.
He was brothers-in-arms with young Northumbrian men gathered from farms, villages, hills and valleys.
I left him to it.
Because I had found the State Rooms.
Oh. Those State Rooms.
Now this I hadn’t expected.
You can visit a lot of castles where the outside is the star.
At Alnwick, the outside is almost the warm-up act.
The State Rooms are ridiculous.
Ridiculously, gloriously beautiful.
They were extensively remodelled in the 19th century, with architect Anthony Salvin working on the exterior while Luigi Canina created interiors inspired by the great palaces of Renaissance Italy.
And suddenly the price of our ticket made complete sense.
Room after room opens into paintings, furniture, porcelain, marble, gilding and enormous windows. There’s a spectacular library containing nearly 15,000 books — apparently a favourite room of the family when they’re in residence.
Then there’s the staircase.
Oh, the staircase.
For perhaps thirty seconds I ceased being Lucy from Heather & Sand and became Lady Lucy of Alnwick, descending gracefully to greet my guests.
In my imagination Tom was waiting below in evening dress.
In reality he was probably still looking at a military uniform somewhere.
The ceilings fascinated me most.
Carved, painted, gilded and so elaborate that you find yourself looking upwards more than forwards. I started wondering whether all that beauty above your head was deliberately supposed to suggest the heavens.
Or perhaps that’s just what happens when you’ve spent too long in a castle.
Either way, I was already plotting our return.
Late afternoon.
Midweek.
Perhaps a Wednesday.
Just Tom and me wandering through empty State Rooms pretending the place belonged to us.
Wishful thinking, perhaps.
But we do have annual passes now…
Sorry, Bamburgh
We came out far later than intended.
We pass Alnwick Castle regularly. We see it from the road, from the river and from the town. Perhaps because it is so familiar, we’d convinced ourselves we already knew it.
We didn’t.
And this is where I need to apologise.
Sorry, Bamburgh.
Alnwick Castle might now be our favourite castle in Northumberland.
This week.
The Curse of the Dirty Bottles
By now there was another pressing matter.
Lunch.
We’d planned to try The Dirty Bottles, one of Alnwick’s most wonderfully named pubs.
And yes, there really are dirty bottles.
The building is Grade II listed and its famous bow window contains a collection of old bottles which local superstition says should absolutely not be disturbed. The legend tells of an innkeeper who died while interfering with them, after which his widow supposedly declared that anyone else touching them would meet a similar fate. The bottles were left alone and the story became part of Alnwick folklore.
Naturally, this makes me want to see them.
It does not make me want to clean them.
Unfortunately there was another curse operating that Sunday.
The curse of trying to find a nice table for lunch at two o’clock without having booked one.
The Dirty Bottles was busy.
Our review would have to wait.
Surely We Can Find Lunch Somewhere?
We headed for the car and began what became our increasingly desperate Tour of Places We Might Eat.
“Charlton Hall?”
Great idea.
Back towards The Tempus.
Busy.
“Seahouses?”
Why not?
Off we went to the Bamburgh Castle Inn, where a tantalising collection of lovely tables appeared to be booked while sitting completely empty.
There were tables available in the bar.
Sticky tables.
Not for Lady Lucy.
Not after those State Rooms.
“What about next door?”
“The Ship?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Maybe.”
“Where else?”
At this point our processors were overheating.
We had made the classic Sunday error.
We should have booked.
And Finally… The Black Swan
Eventually we found ourselves at The Black Swan and, more importantly, found a lovely little corner table in the Orangery.
Meg curled up beside us.
We sat down.
And I think all three of us exhaled simultaneously.
It was busy — properly Sunday-afternoon busy — and nobody seemed in any particular hurry to go anywhere.
Perfect.
The Sunday lunches passing our table looked fantastic, which made our decision to order burgers slightly questionable, but they were very good.
Then came a sticky-toffee-banoffee dessert.
Sticky toffee pudding meets banoffee.
Which sounds as though someone in the kitchen couldn’t decide either and simply said:
“Both.”
Excellent decision.
Coffee followed.
The food was good, the service was excellent and by then the rain outside could do whatever it liked.
Would we go back?
Definitely.
The Day We Didn’t Plan
And that was our quiet Sunday.
We didn’t do the shopping.
We didn’t get home early.
We didn’t catch up on the admin.
We discovered Charlton Hall.
Got chased back into Alnwick by the rain.
Accidentally spent hours in one of the finest castles we’ve visited.
Nearly became Lady and Lord of Northumberland.
Failed to eat in three different places.
Drove halfway around the county looking for lunch.
And finally ended up tucked into a warm corner with Meg asleep beside us, eating burgers and sticky-toffee-banoffee.
The day started slowly, became unexpectedly brilliant, threatened briefly to become very annoying…
…and somehow ended exactly where a Sunday should.
Maybe the best days out are the ones that refuse to follow the plan.
