Northumberland, Part 2: Harry Potter and the Last Kingdom of Dracula
While Northumberland is a gorgeous and easy-walking (aka mostly flat!) area of the country, we picked this section to walk for more than just these two considerations. Last summer, we read the entire Harry Potter series with the girls and watched each movie after its book was finished. Our children fell in love with the series. Coming to the UK, we wanted to try to incorporate some Harry Potter into their lives for them.
Additionally, Jon and I love the TV series The Last Kingdom. At the end of the movie that recently came out, we saw the modern appearance of Uhtred’s home Bebbanburg, along with its modernized name, Bamburgh. I looked at Jon and said, “I’m pretty sure we went there!”. Looking back on our blog from our honeymoon, we realized that we had been there before. And, we began to reassess the castle from our foggy 2011 memories to integrate it into what we saw on the show.
The route we chose allowed us to incorporate visits to both Bamburgh Castle and Alnwick Castle (aka Harry Potter Castle) into our walking holiday.
On Day 1 of our holiday, we went straight to Alnwick Castle and it was beautiful! Jon and I had been there before, the same day we did Bamburgh Castle on our honeymoon, but we had a lot more time to explore it this time. The girls were in heaven to see where Harry Potter and his classmates learned to fly on broomsticks (i.e. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone), and where Harry chased around Draco to retrieve Neville’s memory ball. We were even able to take a flying lesson ourselves in the same area, which was a lot of fun! We also went on a dragon quest, made our own homemade soap, played some medieval games, and toured the beautiful grounds and interior rooms, learning so much about the history of the castle and the family who has owned it for hundreds of years. Our personal favourite interior room is the two-storey library! Simply stunning! Of course, that evening, we needed to go back and re-watch the broomstick lesson from the first movie while the site was so fresh in their memories!
While in Alnwick on our first day, we also stopped into the used bookstore in the evening. It was formerly a train station and has kept a lot of its quaint charm and features from its train station days, including a huge model train set that ran above head level throughout a large section of the building. The girls loved watching the trains circling on the track!
Day 3 of our holiday we spent the morning at Bamburgh Castle, before starting on the walking portion of the day. We were similarly able to spend a lot more time exploring this gorgeous castle. In the great hall, they had even set up a Last Kingdom exhibition, with various props and costumes that were used in the series. We got to see Uhtred’s sword, sit on King Alfred’s throne, and so much more. Before leaving to complete our five-hour walk, we indulged in an “Uhtred Feast” for lunch at the castle tea rooms, which was a combination of afternoon tea and charcuterie board. We spent a lot of time down on the beach area outside of the castle, walking to Seahouses along the beach rather than taking the official walking trail route to start our walk that afternoon.
In addition to these two castles and the 60 km of walking we did, we also fit in a few other fun excursions. We met some new friends in Spain who live in this area and were celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary on Day 2 of our holiday. They invited us to the ceilidh they were holding to celebrate. Never having been to one before, we had no idea what to expect. It was so much fun! It’s essentially a large social gathering with a lot of festive folk dancing. We managed to learn several while the girls ran around playing and catching up with their friends before they came and joined us for the last dance.
We managed to see some beautiful castle ruins along our hikes, including Dunstanburgh Castle ruins and Warkworth Castle ruins. We explored the towns of Alnmouth and Warkworth and their beaches. On Day 4 after we finished our hiking and Warkworth explorations, we began driving back down south. We stopped in Whitby. I went there on my solo trip to England in 2014 and told Jon how cute the town was. We explored this cute little seaside town and saw the impressive Whitby Abbey ruins. These ruins were Bram Stoker’s inspiration to create his novel Dracula. So as you can imagine, much of the cute and quaint old town has also adapted to incorporate Dracula into its tourism. While we were walking around the pier area, Jon was also graced with what I assured him was good luck from some seagulls flying by overhead!
After leaving Whitby, we stopped in Goathland to check out the train station that was used as Hogsmeade Station in the Harry Potter films. It was another spot I’d stopped on my Whitby day trip in 2014 that I correctly assumed the girls would love to see! The drives in the Whitby and Goathland area were stunning, being in the North York Moors National Park. We saw so much gorgeous scenery and tons of sheep on the roads. I’m not sure who wanted to stop and stare at all the sheep more, me or the girls! LOL
We got back to York late that evening. After exploring castles, beaches, ruins, dancing at a ceilidh, and hiking 60 km, all in four very packed and full days, we were all very happy but more than ready for a nice, long sleep and a relaxation day! This first of what I hope will be many walking holidays with our kids was definitely a huge success!