beaches | A balanced diet . . .

Have you ever visited the northeast of England? The ancient Kingdom of Northumbria. If not, why not? We think the northeast is one of the most awe-inspiring regions of the country.

My wife and I moved here, just east of Newcastle upon Tyne, in October 2020 at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Newcastle is the largest city in the northeast, on the north bank of the River Tyne (seen in this video from the Gateshead south bank) with its many iconic bridges, and the Glasshouse International Centre for Music on the left (formerly Sage Gateshead, known locally as The Slug).

We visited Northumberland for the first in the summer of 1998 when home on leave from the Philippines, never once contemplating that we’d actually be living here 22 years later. We have been regular visitors to the northeast since 2000 when our younger daughter Philippa began her undergraduate studies at Durham University, and she has remained in the northeast ever since.

Northumbria has it all: hills, moorlands, river valleys, beaches and, to cap it all, a rich history and lively culture. There are so many glorious landscapes to enjoy: the Northumberland National Park stretching to the border with Scotland; the dales and uplands of the North Pennines National Landscape in Durham and North Yorkshire, as well as the North York Moors a little further south. And all easily accessible from home. Here’s just a small sample.

Sycamore Gap on Hadrian’s Wall, in February 2022 just before vandals felled this iconic tree.

Hadrian’s Wall, near Housesteads fort

Whitby Abbey

Upper Coquetdale

The beach at Druridge Bay

Hauxley Wildlife Discovery Centre

Byland Abbey

Warkworth Castle

Duddo Five Stones

Lordenshaws Iron Age Hill Fort

Coquetdale, Northumberland

Blast Beach, Co Durham

Marsden Rock

National Trust Souter Lighthouse

Plessey Woods Country Park along the River Blyth

Penshaw Monument

Exhibition at the National Glass Centre, Sunderland

National Trust Cragside

Wall paper at Belsay Hall (English Heritage)

Prudhoe castle from the pele yard, English Heritage

High Force waterfall on the River Tees

St Jon’s Anglo-Saxon church, Edlingham

Angel of the North

On this map I have pinpointed all places we have visited since October 2020 (and a couple from earlier years), several places multiple times. Do explore by clicking on the expansion box (illustrated right) in the map’s top right-hand corner. I have grouped all the sites into different color-coded categories such as landscapes, coast, Roman sites, religious sites, and castles, etc.

For each location there is a link to one of my blog posts, an external website, or one of my photo albums.

This map and all the links illustrate just how varied and beautiful this northeast region of England truly is.

Northumberland is one of the least populated counties in England. Most of the population is concentrated in the southeast of the county, in areas where there were, until the 1980s, thriving coal-mining communities, and a rich legacy of heavy industry along the Tyne, such as ship-building. The landscape has been reclaimed, spoil heaps have been removed, and nature restored over areas that were once industrial wastelands.

So why did we choose to make this move, almost 230 miles north from our home (of almost 40 years) in Worcestershire? After all, Worcestershire (and surrounding counties in the Midlands) is a beautiful county, and we raised our two daughters there, at least in their early years.

When we moved back to the UK in 1981 after more than eight years in South and Central America, we bought a house in Bromsgrove, a small market town in the north of the county, and very convenient for my daily 13-mile commute into The University of Birmingham, where I taught in the Department of Plant Biology. And there we happily stayed until mid-1991 when I accepted a position at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, while keeping our house empty but furnished for the next 18 years.

Retiring in April 2010, we moved back to Bromsgrove, getting to know the town and surrounding counties again. Joining the National Trust in 2011 (and English Heritage a couple of years or so later) gave us an added incentive to explore just how much the Midlands had to offer: beautiful landscapes, historic houses and castles, and the like. You can view all the places we visited on this map.

But we had no family ties to Bromsgrove. And to cap it all, our elder daughter Hannah had studied, married, and settled in the United States and, as I mentioned before, Philippa was already in the northeast.

For several years, we resisted Philippa’s ‘encouragement’ to sell up and move north. After all we felt it would be a big and somewhat uncertain move, and (apart from Philippa and her family) we had no connections with the region. But in early January 2020, we took the plunge and put our house on the market, with the hope (expectation?) of a quick sale. Covid-19 put paid to that, but we finally left Bromsgrove on 30 September.

Last moments at No. 4.

We are now happily settled in North Tyneside and, weather permitting, we get out and about for day excursions as often as we can. There’s so much to discover.

I first visited the northeast of England in the summer of 1967. I was 18. And then, a couple of years later, I joined a group of Northumbrian pipers and dancers from Newcastle upon Tyne to perform at a bagpipe festival in the Czech town of Strakonice. Before heading for Czechoslovakia (as it was in those days) we met up in Newcastle to get to know one another, and form Morris and rapper sword dance teams. And get some practice!

In 1998, Steph and I spent a week touring Northumberland, the county immediately south of the border with Scotland, and one of England’s largest counties. Until 1974, Newcastle was part of Northumberland, but then the metropolitan county of Tyne & Wear was created.

Northumberland is a magnificent county. There are awe-inspiring landscapes, beaches that stretch to the horizon, and millennia of history, including remarkable Roman remains dotted across the county, the world famous Hadrian’s Wall in particular.

Most of the county is rural. Settlements grew up on the coast, exploiting the once-abundant fishing in the North Sea, or mining ‘black gold’—coal seams that stretch for miles under the sea. Fishing stocks declined, coal pits closed. The once prosperous coastal towns and mining villages are now looking beyond tourism for a brighter future.

In 2000, our younger daughter Philippa enrolled at the University of Durham (16 miles south of Newcastle) so we would visit her there over the next three years when back in the UK on home leave from the Philippines where I had been working since 1991 in rice research.

In 2005, Philippa returned to the northeast and took a research post in the Department of Psychology at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne. Between then and when we retired back to the UK in 2010, we visited her in Newcastle on several occasions, and have traveled there a couple of times a year once we had resettled in Bromsgrove.

Steph and Philippa on the banks of the River Tyne in the center of Newcastle in July 2007. That’s the Gateshead Millennium Bridge in the distance, the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art to the right, and the shiny building (top right) is the culture hall, Sage Gateshead.

In 2010, Philippa married Andi and they settled in the Heaton district of Newcastle. Elvis and Felix were born in September 2011 and September 2013. She completed her PhD in 2010 and joined the faculty of Northumbria University.

Family get-together in Bromsgrove in mid-August 2019.

Our elder daughter Hannah and her family—husband Michael, and Callum (10) and Zoë (8)—live in St Paul, Minnesota, and since 2010, we have traveled to visit them each year (as well as having a video call every week). But not this year, unfortunately.

For several years, both Philippa and Hannah have been encouraging us to sell our home of 39 years in Bromsgrove and move north to Newcastle. Well, as you might imagine, we were comfortably settled, it was hard to even think about such a move. But the more we did, weighing up all the advantages of being closer to family since we’re not getting any younger, and while we are still in good health, moving to Newcastle didn’t seem such a crazy idea after all.

In November 2019 we decided to take a look at the housing market in Newcastle, and again when we visited over Christmas. We made the decision. We would move in 2020, so put our house on the market in January this year. The Covid-19 pandemic almost scuppered our plans, and although we didn’t make our original deadline of mid-year to be in Newcastle, we have now arrived. Just two weeks ago, and have taken a small rental property for the next six months.

What’s even more remarkable is that we have already found a house to buy, made an offer that was accepted, and have begun the conveyancing to purchase. It’s actually not too far from where we are currently living in the northeast of the city, towards the coast.

Last week (the day before Steph’s birthday), and it being a bright sunny day, we headed to Seaton Sluice just five miles away on the coast to enjoy the sea air. I’ve never lived by the sea (if you discount the time I was a student in Southampton, which is a major seaport, and not close to any beaches). Steph hails from Southend on Sea in Essex, and grew up just stone’s throw from stretches of beach where the Thames estuary meets the North Sea.

Now we have the opportunity of walking along the beach any time the fancy takes us. And that’s just what we did on the 7th, and yesterday. We have walked the beach at Seaton Sluice in the past with Philippa and the family. But these were our first walks as residents, so to speak.

I still have to pinch myself that we can hop in the car, and in just over ten minutes can be walking on the beach. On the 7th we couldn’t park at the usual carpark; it was occupied by maintenance workers who were doing some engineering work on the beach. So we parked further south on Rocky Island, and walked along the beach. On our second visit, we headed further north.

What an exhilarating feeling, watching the waves roll in and crash on the beach. The strong breeze blowing the cobwebs away. We even saw an Atlantic grey seal enjoying an early lunch during our first walk.