Route
| Walk leader | Michelle |
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| Route | Alnmouth – riverside path to Lesbury – footpath to Longhoughton – Howdiemont Sands – Boulmer – beach to Foxton Hall – cliff path to Alnmouth. |
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| Weather | Weather better than forecast. Only a few spots of rain at lunch. Started sunny and quite warm but clouded over. |
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| Walkers | Michelle, Michael, George, Ron, Sandy, Bernie, Diane, Richard |
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| Excuses | Ashley - bad back but came to the meal Evelyn - flu |
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Comments |
It was a tricky start through gorse and brambles. We had to negotiate some slippy downhill stretches. Both Michael and Richard fell. Generally the going was good to soft. The overall opinion was that this was a good choice of walk for an indifferent weather forecast. There were plenty of loos on route and lots of friendly dogs, although not that many people. We had our lunch stop beside the “Celtic” sculpture at Longhoughton – it was quite noisy there. The seat only had space for three,so the rest of us had to sit on the plinth of the sculpture. We saw a little girl on a white pony and two hand-reared lambs blissfully asleep in a barn. We passed a metal crow and a metal owl on a field wall. Our second stop was at the Fishing Boat Inn at Boulmer, where there was a roaring fire and a humourless, if efficient, barmaid. We joined the beach again and did a bit of bird watching – Richard called the concrete blocks on the beach, dinosaurs teeth. There was a difficult last section along a narrow stretch of pebble beach with the tide nearly fully in. Diane and Sandy tresspassed across the golf course while the rest of us eventually found a path which led up to the golf club house at Foxton Hall. We joined the cliff path through part of the course towards Alnmouth, passing three derelict caravans, a bell, a stone defensive placement erected by the Duke of Northumberland during the Napoleonic War, and two nuns out for a walk. The last part of the walk skirted the oldest nine-hole golf course in England. Wildlife / Flora / Fauna Birds: Several herons, some on the sea shore, lots of ducks: eider, mallard, shellduck. Sandlings on the beach. Wagtails, a wren coming out of a birdbox, a woodpecker (heard), redshanks, oystercatchers, skylarks, geese at the riverside. Animals: Hare in a field. Sheep grazing on the beach and having a gymkhana, jumping over a narrow stream on the beach. Lots of lambs and friendly cows in a barn. |
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| Meal | ||||
Falcon’s Nest, North Gosforth – nice meal, friendly, attentive service.
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| Photo Gallery |
Alnmouth walkers |
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Lesbury |
The Aln Estuary |
Spot the Hare
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Lonhoughton Beach
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Metal Crow
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Metal Owl
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Sanderling Photo of the year 2016
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Beach Walkers
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Alnmouth Beacon
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