First of all, happy New Year! After a wet and windy end to 2024, I think we’re all hoping for some clear and crisp winter days to start off 2025. We’ve got lots of exciting things planned for this year including quite a few new destinations for us, so if you’re not already subscribed and don’t want to miss out, you can subscribe at the end of this post.
During Twixmas we managed to squeeze in a day trip to one of our favourite places – a jaunt up to the Northumberland Coast to give the dogs a good sprint on the beach. Budle Bay has to be one of my all time favourite beaches: vast swathes of perfect sand, views across the sea to Lindisfarne and lovely and quiet. Only Camusdarach Beach in the West Highlands and Waulkmill Bay in Orkney come close. We first discovered this beautiful beach on a trip to Northumberland a few years ago, when we walked across it as part of a route in our Pocket Mountains guide, and since then we haven’t found another beach in Northumberland to top it.
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There’s a few small car parks on the outskirts of Bamburgh above the beach where you can park for free, as long as you get there early enough. We started our walk off by dropping onto Bamburgh beach, which at 9.30am already had quite a few early birds out walking their dogs. Turning left, we walked to the very end of the beach and then across the rocks separating Bamburgh from the next bay. There’s a narrow trail which intermittently runs across the rocks and grassy banks, or you can divert onto the quiet road leading to the golf club.
From the golf club we picked up the trail running along the shore, which leads to a slightly rocky step which should be descended with care to reach a small sandy cove. We spent a while playing with the dogs here before crossing the small headland between this beach and the next, which leads you to the wide sandy sweep of Budle Bay.
As it takes a bit of a walk to get to, Budle Bay doesn’t see the same crowds as the beaches at Bamburgh and Embleton Bay. At least, I can only assume that’s why, as this huge sandy beach has been almost totally deserted on both occasions we’ve visited it. It was even better than I remembered, with so much space for the dogs to enjoy running around, and with the castle on Lindisfarne just about visible across the water. We didn’t have it completely to ourselves this time, with another family also enjoying the beach, but Budle Bay is so large that really we might as well have had it to ourselves.
We walked along the shore to just below the Waren Mill campsite, where we left the beach to follow the England Coast Path back to Bamburgh. It took us a few attempts to find the path off the beach – Sam had us wandering around in the dunes for a good 5 minutes – but if you follow the beach as far as the wooden divider just below the first static caravans, you can find a path up off to the left.
There’s a couple of different ways you can get back to the start. You can pick up public footpaths to head inland across fields for the return, or follow the England Coast Path back along the coast as we did on this occasion. Originally we were going to retrace our steps back along the beach, but generally beach walking is quite slow for us as we meander at a snail’s pace to let the dogs have a good run, and this time we’d booked lunch at the Apple Inn in Lucker which we needed to get back for.
The English Coast path option cuts through Bamburgh golf club on your way back. There is a public right of way across the course, just make sure to stick to the path indicated by the small blue posts and watch out for flying golf balls!
Dog friendly rating: 4/5. This is a lovely quiet beach which you can enjoy without having to worry about crowds. However, you will need to keep dogs on leads on some parts of the beach in the summer months, as the beach is part of a nature reserve and home to rare ground nesting birds. There is also the potential for some walking along quiet roads depending on the route that you choose.
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