North East England June '12 Pt3

Farne Islands

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Attraction | "Puffin Power Part 1"

A full boat Photo - Farne Islands, Northumberland, England

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When we started planning our trip to the North East of England for the end of June this year, the most northerly part of our itinerary was going to be Lindisfarne. Whilst hunting for somewhere to stay, we came across some information about the Farne Islands. I’m sure we should have known about them, but we didn’t. It took just one word to convince us that a visit was compulsory; that word was PUFFIN!I would guess that almost everyone knows what a puffin looks like – especially if they’ve grown up in the UK – but hardly anyone has ever actually seen one. I put it down to Puffin being the brand name of the children’s range of books from Penguin Books. Their logo made the little black and whi...Read More

Member Rating 5 out of 5 on September 18, 2012

Farne Islands

Northumberland, England

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Farne Islands

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Attraction | "Puffin Power Part 2"

Arctic tern Photo - Farne Islands, Northumberland, England

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There are several islands and whilst you only stop on one of them, there are plenty of things to see as you sail past the islands. There’s an old ruined church and several light houses. The captain tells passengers about Grace Darling and her father and their work rescuing people from ship wrecks. He’s full of interesting anecdotes and slightly worn jokes and the spirits on the boat are very high. But most people are there to see the animals and he knows that’s where our focus will be. He sails up as close as is safe and non-disturbing for the animals so you can see seals basking on the rocks. Most look rather a lot like rocks themselves so you’ll probably find you’re looking at your photos afterwards...Read More

There are several islands and whilst you only stop on one of them, there are plenty of things to see as you sail past the islands. There’s an old ruined church and several light houses. The captain tells passengers about Grace Darling and her father and their work rescuing people from ship wrecks. He’s full of interesting anecdotes and slightly worn jokes and the spirits on the boat are very high. But most people are there to see the animals and he knows that’s where our focus will be. He sails up as close as is safe and non-disturbing for the animals so you can see seals basking on the rocks. Most look rather a lot like rocks themselves so you’ll probably find you’re looking at your photos afterwards and wondering what the big grey blobs are. A few seals were playing in the water, coming to have a look at the boat and all the funny animals on it.

We circled around several islands until he came to a set of cliffs which were literally coated in birds and which – not surprisingly – stank of bird poop. The smell is overpowering even from a distance. The birds tend to gather by species – the puffins claiming one area of the cliff, the seagulls taking another and the guillemots claiming their own area too.

The highlight was still to come as we headed into the bay where boats land for Inner Farne island. The captain explained that we would have an hour on the island and that those without National Trust membership cards would need to pay for entry. As we pulled up at the jetty, a young NT volunteer came to tell us what we could expect to see and to warn us that the terns in particular were getting very territorial because their chicks had hatched. He warned us to wear hats if we had them to protect from poop and sharp beaks. The captain chipped in with the advice that if anyone didn’t have a hat they should "stand next to someone taller than you". We should expect a serious aerial assault from protective adult terns.

We showed our cards and headed onto the island. The terns lay their eggs on the ground, sometimes very close to the pathways and don’t appreciate visitors getting too close. They do peck your head and I had totally the wrong type of hat to prevent attack. We saw one woman, who must have been before, walking around with a plastic mixing bowl on her head, kept on with a bungee cord. As we walked along the paths the terns took (pun entirely intended) turns to attack the heads of passers-by.

Inner Farne is a small island of approximately 16 acres which it turns out is plenty of space for tens of thousands of birds to gather and lay their eggs. Keeping in mind that many of these birds spend most of the year on the wing or on the water, they seem somewhat out of their element when strutting around on land. After we’d run the gauntlet of the attacking terns, we soon found the cliffs on the far side of the island where the other birds were gathering. As on the previous cliffs, the zones for each bird tend to be quite clearly separated. The puffin pitch was in a different area to the cormorant community, the guillemot group, the kittiwake club and the shag pad. Spotting the puffins in the distance I worked up to a full on puffin frenzy by checking out all the equally cool but less funny looking birds first, saving the puffins as the icing on the avian cake.

With the help of an ornithologist colleague who had a look at my photos earlier today, we were able to identify Arctic terns, razorbills and guillemots (which look very similar), shags and kittiwakes. The dress code of black and white seemed to be de rigeur for most of the birds on the island although the terns have bright red beaks and the puffins beaks are rather brightly coloured. I wished I’d taken my big lens for my camera as I was quite disappointed with how close I could get to some of the birds.

The puffins are the stars of Inner Farne. Nobody sells boat trips to go and see shags and kittiwakes – they’re nice enough birdies but the big draw is the puffin colony. At the end of June the puffins were a little more relaxed than most of the birds on the island as their eggs hadn’t yet hatched by that point. Puffins lay their eggs in burrows and tragically in the weeks that followed our visit horrendous rain storms caused the death of many of the puffin chicks who drowned in their burrows.

The one thing funnier than watching a puffin fly is watching it land. As they approach their landing spot they move from flying horizontally to raising their heads and coming in feet first. It’s hard not to be struck by the look of total panic as a not very aerodynamic chubby little bird tries to avoid performing a total wipe-out on the rocks. Impressively, many of the birds come back to land with their bills absolutely stuffed full of tiny fish. I asked the birding colleague how they gather so many without dropping them and he had to admit that he didn’t actually know.

We found a quiet bench where we could eat our crab sandwiches and were relieved to find that the birds were totally disinterested in our food. The waters around the islands are so rich in little fish that a crab sandwich was no attraction at all. We wandered all over the island, taking photos, cooing over the birds and generally feeling overwhelmed by the privilege of being able to hang out in birdworld for an hour. Yes, we laughed at some of the less elegant flyers but we couldn’t help thinking they were eyeing us up and concluding that we’d be pretty rubbish if we jumped off a cliff.

We headed back to the jetty to join the boat again and to head back to the harbour. If you recall that I mentioned that only two boats at a time can offload passengers, you’ll not be surprised to hear that we spent more time just outside the harbour walls waiting to get in than we did in the crossing back from Inner Farne. The boats with fewer passengers had clearly decided to try to beat us back to the harbour and we were on the water for at least twenty to thirty minutes longer because of congestion. We far exceeded the two and a half hour target cruise time but nobody minded.

Billy Shiels’ boat tours to Inner Farne sail several times a day between April and October and the times vary according to the month. You can find full details on the website at www.farne-islands.com Adults pay £13 and children £9 and the entrance fee to Inner Farne island is paid on top of this and is £5.20 per adult in April, August, September and October and £6.20 in May, June or July. Kids landing fees are half as much as for adults and family groups can get discounts.

Billy Shiels’ boats also offer cruises to Staple Island and Holy Island as well as arranging all day bird spotting trips, seal cruises, pelagic cruises and SCUBA diving. Prices vary according to what you want to do but there’s good information on the website. The Inner Farne tour is their basic and probably their most popular trip. At less than £20 including National Trust fees, I think it’s an excellent way to see puffins without having to travel to really out of the way and inaccessible places. We got lucky with the weather but I can imagine it would have been a miserable trip if it had been raining.
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Member Rating 5 out of 5 on September 18, 2012

Farne Islands

Northumberland, England

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South Buckton Bed & Breakfast

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Hotel | "South Buckton B&B Part 2"

The small bedroom Photo - South Buckton Bed & Breakfast, Northumberland, England

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My favourite feature was the big red sofa from which we could look at the view and the television. It was very comfortable and gave a welcome relief after four days of hotel rooms where we had to sit on the bed all the time. South Buckton has wi fi which is free to use and which came in very welcome after some tricky hotel connections although we did get a power cut which knocked out the router on the first evening and encouraged us to go to bed early.The shared bathroom was a large one with a shower over the bath and sink and toilet. The second toilet was in the room next door and left me a bit baffled by having no sink unit, meaning I had to go back to the main bathroom to wash my hands....Read More

My favourite feature was the big red sofa from which we could look at the view and the television. It was very comfortable and gave a welcome relief after four days of hotel rooms where we had to sit on the bed all the time. South Buckton has wi fi which is free to use and which came in very welcome after some tricky hotel connections although we did get a power cut which knocked out the router on the first evening and encouraged us to go to bed early.

The shared bathroom was a large one with a shower over the bath and sink and toilet. The second toilet was in the room next door and left me a bit baffled by having no sink unit, meaning I had to go back to the main bathroom to wash my hands. If I were to offer one single point of potential improvement on South Buckton it would be to add a small sink in the smallest room.

After sleeping like dead people, we rolled downstairs the next morning to get our breakfast. Carol’s husband John does breakfast duty and he’s very good at it. We’d left out our sheet to say what we wanted the night before but John had waited to check what type of eggs I wanted before getting started on the cooking. This was fine as we had a chance to make the most of the fabulous thick, Greek yoghurt and fresh berries as well as juice and cereals whilst he cooked up a storm in the kitchen. After four days of big hotel fry ups I asked if there was any chance to just get a couple of soft boiled eggs even though they weren’t on the options list.
John and Carol Gordon are the perfect hosts. They left us to do what we wanted but were happy to chat and advise on local tourist topics. They told us where we could go to get dinner, what times the causeway would be open and even offered that if we wanted a drink, John would run us up to the pub and come back later to get us. We didn’t take advantage but it was a generous offer. We stayed for two nights and left feeling totally relaxed and recharged. Admittedly the weather put paid to the best of our million dollar view at times but you can’t blame your hosts for bad weather.

On our last afternoon the farmer next door released his cows into the field which up to that point had been filled with sheep and their nursing lambs. We stood for a good half hour and watched in delight as the young bullocks galloped across the field, running laps around the perimeter and scattering sheep in their path. Most of them ran like Wayne Rooney on a good day and looked very funny indeed. Then they gathered by the hedge for us to inspect them out of the window. A room with a fabulous comfy bed, a fantastic breakfast, a view of Lindisfarne and the entertainment of a field full of frisky young bullocks. As the American Express adverts would say ‘Priceless’.

And talking of price, which I suppose we must, our wonderful room cost us £65 per night including breakfast. Compared to staying on Lindisfarne or in Seahouses or Bamburgh or even going to the dodgy looking motel where we had dinner one night, it was an absolute bargain. It’s never going to be cheap to stay in an area so popular with tourists and with so little available accommodation but I thought we got a fantastic deal.
The two other rooms at South Buckton were not as nice as ours but were still very good. There’s another room on the front of the building which is much smaller but does have the view and a really nice room on the back of the house that doesn’t have the Lindisfarne view but does have good views in the other direction. If you can get the room with the big view, then I would say you can’t do better in the area at the price. If, like us, you can get the whole place to yourself it’s even better.

John and Carol Gordon get 10 out of 10 for their beautifully presented property, their fantastic location, the free wi-fi and Johns amazing breakfasts. I can’t recommend South Buckton and the Gordons highly enough.

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Member Rating 5 out of 5 on September 23, 2012

South Buckton Bed & Breakfast
4 Miles North of Belford
Northumberland, England

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South Buckton Bed & Breakfast

Best Of IgoUgo

Hotel | "South Buckton B&B Part One"

Our bed Photo - South Buckton Bed & Breakfast, Northumberland, England

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When my husband decided he wanted to go to Lindisfarne during our June holiday we discovered that it’s not a place where you can easily find affordable accommodation. The problem with Lindisfarne is that it’s not exactly an island and not exactly part of the mainland. It’s joined to the mainland by a causeway and for many hours of each day when the tide is in Lindisfarne is effectively cut off from the rest of the world. Since the accessible hours vary with the tides it can be a tricky place to visit and an even trickier place to stay. Get the timing a wee bit wrong and you can find yourself stuck on the island or unable to get to it and I don’t want that kind of stress on my holiday.He fo...Read More

When my husband decided he wanted to go to Lindisfarne during our June holiday we discovered that it’s not a place where you can easily find affordable accommodation. The problem with Lindisfarne is that it’s not exactly an island and not exactly part of the mainland. It’s joined to the mainland by a causeway and for many hours of each day when the tide is in Lindisfarne is effectively cut off from the rest of the world. Since the accessible hours vary with the tides it can be a tricky place to visit and an even trickier place to stay. Get the timing a wee bit wrong and you can find yourself stuck on the island or unable to get to it and I don’t want that kind of stress on my holiday.

He found a couple B&Bs on the island itself but I was not keen about being at the mercy of the tides. He found a place in Seahouses but I thought it looked a bit stuffy and old fashioned and it was quite a way away. And then by complete serendipity (which is a nice way of saying I can’t remember how) we found South Buckton B&B. It took just one look at the photo on their website showing the house with Lindisfarne in the distance to persuade us to that this was where we wanted to go. Just imagine waking up in the morning, opening the curtains and there it is; the mystical and mysterious isle of Lindisfarne.

I emailed the owners, Carol and John Gordon, to ask if they had the double room with the view for the dates we needed and very quickly got a reply to say that the room was available and could be ours in return for paying one day up front to secure the booking. I got their bank details and transferred the money and all was fixed. And then, whilst the email was still ‘warm’ in my inbox, I started to panic. It’s a dangerous thing to do but I googled the postcode and discovered to my horror that the room I’d just booked was in spitting distance of the main north-south road running up the east coast. I would have a view of Lindisfarne but also of the A1. I thought of my friend Sally who lives in a gorgeous little stone farmhouse on a farm that would be absolutely perfect if the M1 was not at the bottom of the garden. South Buckton was ten times closer to the road than Sally’s farmhouse. Had I just made a horrible mistake?

My husband placated me with Google Earth which revealed that the road was far from the 3 lane highway I had feared. By the time the A1 reaches this part of the country it’s a rather quiet road without too much traffic. My heart stopped racing and I decided that the deed was done, the place was booked so we’d better just get on with it. As it turned out, I worked myself into a tizzy completely needlessly.

I sent an email the day before to tell the Gordons our plan – that we’d probably arrive late afternoon and wanted to check that there would be someone around. They confirmed that there would be someone there and we left our hotel just north of Durham and headed up the coast towards the area. After doing our puffin trip it was about five thirty when we eventually rolled up at the B&B. I got slightly lost thanks to the Tom Tom and sailed straight past the entrance which lies straight off the A1. It wasn’t a bit deal to take the next turn and come back but I was glad the traffic wasn’t heavier.

South Buckton is a large red brick house next to a farm and surrounded by fields. Once you’re inside the house it’s easy to forget that the A1 is on the doorstep. We were met by Carol who gave us a friendly welcome and showed us around after introducing us to her insane dog. She showed us the breakfast room and told us that we could use it as a lounge any time we wanted to, then took us upstairs to our room on the front of the house. The room was enormous and sure enough, the window overlooked Lindisfarne in one direction and Bamburgh Castle in the other. I could hardly take in the room itself for staring out of the window. One of the things that had made us hesitate to book South Buckton was that the rooms don’t have an en suite bathroom – instead the three guest rooms share a bathroom and an additional toilet. Carol explained that we would be the only guests during our stay so this turned from potential issue into no issue at all and we felt really pleased at having the place all to ourselves.

Most of the house is decorated in very neutral colours – lots of magnolia walls, light brown carpets and no bright colours. Whilst it wouldn’t be how I’d choose to decorate my house, I could see it was a good choice for a B&B colour scheme since you stand no chance of pleasing all the people all the time. Our room was superb and far and away better equipped than the two four-star hotels where we’d stayed the previous two nights. Not only was the room lovely and spacious and filled with light, but it also had far and away the best bed of our trip. Admittedly it was a four poster and a bit frilly, but that’s no problem as I generally sleep with my eyes closed. The bed and most of the furniture in the room was a good serviceable pine and we had all we needed and a lot more. The bed had bedside units on both sides and these were big enough for my book, a water glass, my specs and everything else I needed. A dressing table was home to a good selection of tea and coffee supplies and a kettle as well as paperwork for us to order our breakfast for the next morning. A full length cheval mirror made for a nice touch and there was a large built in wardrobe as well as a wooden chest with a flat screen television on top offering plenty of channels.
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Member Rating 5 out of 5 on September 23, 2012

South Buckton Bed & Breakfast
4 Miles North of Belford
Northumberland, England

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Indian Brasserie

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Restaurant | "A poor choice"

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The small Northumberland seaside town of Seahouses doesn't offer too much in the way of culinary excitement. It's a place blessed with a superfluity of fish and chip shops and old-style cafes but in the evenings your choices are very limited. A good portion of fish and chips can be a very traditional delight but it's not the sort of thing you can (or should) eat every day. We had checked out the various dining options after going to the Farne Islands to see the puffins and had identified two Indian restaurants as possible places for dinner. We were staying about 10 miles away, closer to Lindisfarne island and drove back to Seahouses on our second night in the area.There are two Indian rest...Read More

The small Northumberland seaside town of Seahouses doesn't offer too much in the way of culinary excitement. It's a place blessed with a superfluity of fish and chip shops and old-style cafes but in the evenings your choices are very limited. A good portion of fish and chips can be a very traditional delight but it's not the sort of thing you can (or should) eat every day. We had checked out the various dining options after going to the Farne Islands to see the puffins and had identified two Indian restaurants as possible places for dinner. We were staying about 10 miles away, closer to Lindisfarne island and drove back to Seahouses on our second night in the area.

There are two Indian restaurants and I think we possibly picked the wrong one. Both are on Main Street which runs perpendicular to the sea front. The Indian Brasserie and the Spice House are just a few doors apart and the Indian Brasserie is directly opposite the Co-op supermarket. We chose the Indian Brasserie, mostly because they had large windows and we could see inside and be reassured that we wouldn't be the only diners. We headed in, confirmed we wanted to eat in rather than order a take away and were led to the main dining area and given a table for two.

From the very beginning I felt pressured by the waiters. Our butts were barely on the chairs when he was asking what we wanted to drink and hustling us about popadoms. We'd not even opened the menus and had already been squeezed for a drink order and nibbles. When we placed our order his disappointment that we'd only ordered one starter to share was visible and he our main course met with pressure to buy extra rice (entirely unnecessary as we'd ordered a biryani which is a rice dish) and to add a nan bread. This determined 'upselling' was really annoying. We know what we want and we don't appreciate being pushed to take more than we want or need.

Popadom rip-offs are becoming a pet hate of mine. What should you pay for a couple of popadoms and a tray of pickles? Based on extensive research (OK, by that I mean eating a lot of curry), some places include the pickle and just charge for the popadoms, others charge separately for both but it's usually a pretty tiny amount. At the Indian Brasserie each popadom was 95 pence. In the restaurants around our home we would usually expect to pay around £2.50 for a popadom each including the chopped onions, raita and pickles. The Indian Brasserie added £2.95 for a very ordinary tray of onion and straight out of the jar pickles. Whilst most of the dishes on the menu were priced quite reasonably, the over-priced popadoms, over-priced drinks (£5 a pint for Cobra and £2.95 for a diet coke) really added to the bill. And should a small nan bread really cost £3?

Our starter had looked great on the menu – Amm aur jingha milan was described as king prawns fried in garlic butter served on a bed of fresh mango and mango pulp. The mango slices were ripe and juicy, the pulp was rather more like juice but the prawns were awful. I've rarely been so relieved to see that my £5.50 was getting me only 3 prawns since they were served at absolutely the wrong temperature – not cold enough to be chilled and not hot enough to be warm. After my first taste my food hygiene alarm bells were ringing since no dish should be served at that temperature, especially a dish of sea food. The prawns tasted a bit 'off' and I should probably have kicked up a fuss and just sent them back but my husband didn't seem to have noticed so I kept quiet.

For our main course we'd ordered vegetable biryani (£7.95), macher jalfrezi (a medium hot salmon dish - £9.95) and a side order of mushroom bhaji (£3.50). With pressure from the waiter we added a garlic nan which we didn't really need or particularly want.

The biryani was okay but nothing special and nothing like as good as one we'd had a couple of days earlier. I can't say there was anything actually wrong with it but it wasn't a stand out rendition of the dish. The rice contained good sized chunks of a wide mix of vegetables but the sauce was unimpressive. The salmon jalfrezi was pretty good, with a fair kick and nice chunks of capsicum to give some variety to the texture. The mushroom bhaji – which is basically just spicy fried mushroom slices – was unmemorable and the garlic nan was so lacking in garlic that we wondered if we'd got the wrong thing.

The pace of service was fine and we didn't wait too long for anything. With the exception of the awful prawn starter, the other dishes were fine but not especially memorable. Sadly though the bill was a little too memorable and came to almost £43 of which rather too much was over-priced drinks and crazily expensive popadoms and chutneys. It's very unlikely we'd be in Seahouses again but I wouldn't return to this place primarily due to the pushy waiters. Normally we tip well – on this occasion we didn't tip at all. In a town where most diners are holiday makers, perhaps a restaurant can get away with poor service, questionable quality and pushy waiters, but this place wouldn't last six months in a bigger town. Read Less

Member Rating 2 out of 5 on July 22, 2012

Indian Brasserie
Main Street
Seahouses, Northumberland

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