It was one of those glorious early autumn mornings that hadn’t quite received the memo about autumn.
Blue sky, warm sunshine and — perhaps most importantly — still shorts weather.
So, for a change, we decided to head south.
Not properly south, obviously. Just about as far south as Tom seems willing to venture these days.
Our destination was Druridge Bay Country Park, just down the coast from Amble, for a good walk with Meg and, hopefully, coffee afterwards.
From Coal to Country Park
It’s quite difficult to imagine now, but this peaceful stretch of lake, woodland and grass was once part of Northumberland’s opencast coal-mining landscape.
Opencast mining is exactly as dramatic as it sounds. Rather than tunnelling underground to reach coal seams, enormous areas of soil and rock are removed from above, allowing the coal beneath to be extracted.
Effective, certainly.
Pretty? Not especially.
As mining declined, work began in the 1970s to transform the landscape, and today Druridge Bay Country Park feels remarkably natural considering its industrial past.
The lake is now surrounded by an easy walk of roughly two miles, with woodland, open grass and plenty of wildlife along the way. Swans cruised past us, geese made considerably more noise than seemed necessary, and there were ducks and waterfowl everywhere.
On warmer weekends the lake attracts paddleboarders and swimmers too, while around it there are big grassy spaces for picnics and games and a really good children’s play area.
In other words, exactly the sort of place where you could arrive in the morning with children, dog and picnic and suddenly realise it was nearly teatime.
Which is precisely why we liked it.
The Case of the Missing Dog Lead
After our lap of the lake, the café was beginning to look extremely inviting.
We were almost there when Tom said:
“Better put Meg on her lead.”
Ah.
The lead.
I knew immediately where it wasn’t.
Somewhere about a mile behind us I had stopped to upload a photograph to BBC Weather Watchers. Phone out, photograph uploaded, lead apparently abandoned somewhere in the process.
So instead of coffee and cake, we turned around and retraced our steps.
Nothing.
We checked the obvious places. Then the less obvious places. Then the places where neither of us really believed it could possibly be but checked anyway because that’s what you do when you’ve already walked this far.
No lead.
Thankfully we keep a spare in the car, which is either excellent forward planning or an admission that this sort of thing has happened before.
I’ll let you decide.
Over the Dunes
One of the best things about Druridge is that the country park is only half the story.
On the other side of the dunes is Druridge Bay itself: a huge sweep of Northumberland beach stretching away in both directions.
So, equipped with Meg Lead Number Two, we headed over.
And suddenly the lake, playground and people disappeared behind us and there was just sand, sea and sky.
That’s what makes the place work so well.
You can walk around the lake, watch the birds, let the children loose in the play park, have a picnic on the grass, get onto the water and then wander through the dunes for a proper Northumberland beach walk.
Bring friends, a picnic and a couple of little ones with a ball and I think you could happily spend most of a summer day here.
Just bring two dog leads.
Apparently.
An Afternoon in Amble
With Amble only a short drive away, it seemed silly not to have a look.
Tom remembered it from childhood as perhaps the slightly poorer relation to some of Northumberland’s better-known coastal towns. I suspect this was his polite way of saying he hadn’t been in a great hurry to return.
Things have certainly changed around the harbour.
The little independent retail pods are a lovely addition, there’s plenty going on around the fishing harbour and no shortage of places promising fish and chips.
We wandered around for a while and then followed the pleasant walkway towards where the estuary meets the sea.
And yet…
We both came away feeling that Amble still needs something.
Not a huge development. In fact, hopefully anything but.
We stood looking along the waterfront imagining it on a warm summer evening: strings of fairy lights, a little live music, tables outside, people eating, drinking and watching the light disappear over the water.
Fairy lights improve practically everything, obviously.
There’s already enough character there that it feels tantalisingly close.
Then, rather unfairly, we caught sight of Warkworth in the distance.
We love Warkworth.
Sorry, Amble.
We’ll come back.
One Last Stop
We’d discovered The Tempus at Charlton Hall only the week before when we’d tried, unsuccessfully, to get Sunday lunch.
Late on a Friday afternoon was a completely different experience.
Quiet.
Gloriously quiet, according to Tom.
There were only a few other couples in the Orangery, Meg was welcomed and settled happily in the corner, and soft afternoon light filled the room with views out towards the patio and gardens.
It was a lovely place to sit after a day outside.
The staff were friendly and the food was perfectly…
Nice.
Which doesn’t sound terribly enthusiastic, does it?
The problem was that it wasn’t inexpensive, and when you’re paying a little more you naturally start expecting a little more too.
Then, somewhere on the drive home, we realised we might share some responsibility.
We’d ordered burgers and fries.
You can’t complain that a chef hasn’t dazzled you when you’ve effectively asked them to make you a very nice burger.
Tom had spent several minutes eyeing a beef and bone marrow pie before retreating to the safety of the burger. Afterwards, naturally, he decided the pie would probably have been magnificent.
We also wondered how much timing changes a restaurant. A quiet late Friday afternoon isn’t necessarily the same experience as Saturday evening or Sunday lunch, when the kitchen is in full stride.
So rather than judge The Tempus on one pleasant-but-not-quite-special lunch, we’ve decided another visit is required.
Sunday lunch.
Proper food.
And Tom is absolutely not allowed to order the burger.
South Again?
By the time we headed home we’d walked around a lake, lost a dog lead, found a huge beach, reconsidered Amble, eaten an expensive burger and accidentally planned another lunch.
Not bad for venturing south.
Druridge Bay was the discovery of the day though.
It isn’t dramatic Northumberland in the Bamburgh-and-castles sense. It’s simply an exceptionally useful, lovely place to spend time: water, woodland, grass, dunes and beach all bundled together.
We’ll definitely return with friends, a picnic and little ones who need several hours of energy burning off.
Although next time I’m putting the dog lead around my wrist before posting anything to BBC Weather Watchers.
Probably.