For this bank holiday last year, we had booked to go on a long weekend to Monaco. Well, really a long weekend in a place called Menton in France, because Monaco is way out of our budget, but the objective was to visit Monaco and add another small European country to our visited list. The pandemic meant that trip ultimately didn't happen, but this time last year EasyJet gave me the option to rebook the cancelled flights for May 2021. Back in May 2020, this seemed like an excellent idea; I didn't think for one minute that we wouldn't be back to normal life by May 2021! Little did I know  Obviously life is not yet back to normal and my flights got cancelled for a second time. For a while I assumed we would just spend this weekend at home, but when restrictions started to ease a bit in the UK it became clear that it should at least be possible to book a self-catering stay within England. We enjoyed our trip to Northumberland so much last year, that we decided to take the opportunity to head up to the same part of the world again

We didn't make a terribly early start this morning - and Northumberland is quite a long way away from Nuneaton - so today has predominantly been a day of travelling. When researching the route a few days ago I did, however, track down a place for us to make a stop around halfway through our journey.

This rather unusual landscape is Brimham Rocks, a short diversion from the A1(M) in the general vicinity of Harrogate.

I'd never heard of Brimham Rocks before, but the land is owned by the National Trust and we were able to use our membership cards to park for free in the carpark.

We followed a path, signposted as a scenic route, through the rocks.

Some of them were enormous, and there were some very unusual shapes.

I wished I could better remember my geography lessons to understand how/why they'd eroded in this way  

The walk through the rocks wasn't a very long one, but that was fine because the weather was constantly on the verge of threatening rain.

We did find a small picnic area, where we just about managed to eat our sandwiches before a shower hit.

Luckily the shower wasn't too heavy, so we just got slightly damp as we took a different route back to the car.

From the edge of the rocks there were some nice views out across the surrounding countryside.

From Brimham Rocks we had another two hours or so of driving before we reached the cottage we are staying in, near a small place called Bardon Mill.

It's really cosy inside  

There's a nice bedroom...

...and a well-equipped kitchen, where the owners have even left us some food (including local bacon) for breakfast

By the time we'd checked in the weather had improved a bit, so we went out for a stroll to explore the neighbourhood.

There are a few other houses around, but otherwise we're pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

There were some beautiful views as we walked around the surrounding lanes.

Even if the weather isn't forecast to be great this weekend, it looks like this is going to be a lovely place to stay  

When we came to Northumberland for the first time last summer, one of the things we wanted to do was see some of Hadrian's Wall. We initially assumed this would be relatively easy to do, but it turned out to be surprisingly difficult and on our first trip we failed to track down any of it at all. On the way back from our Scottish islands trip in September, we were more successful and visited a section of the wall by Cawfields quarry. When I was researching things to do this weekend, I realised that the cottage we are staying in is really close to some of the sites along the wall and in particular to Housesteads Fort, so that was where we planned to visit today.

Slightly confusingly, Housesteads Fort seems to be owned by the National Trust, managed by English Heritage and have a carpark owned by the Northumberland National Park. In practice, this means that you can get in for free with a National Trust card, but you need to pre-book your slot on the English Heritage website and pay £3 for parking before you leave. It doesn't seem to be the most popular of National Trust destinations; it only occurred to me to book a few days ago and there was still plenty of availability for mid-morning slots.

We were booked to arrive at 11am, so we had a leisurely start to the morning, enjoying the local bacon, eggs and bread which the owner of the cottage had left for us. Then we jumped in the car for a short 4-mile drive towards the fort. We arrived, parked and found that it's actually a 0.5 mile walk from the carpark to the fort itself.

A 0.5 mile walk up this hill

We made it to the top, slightly out of breath, and found a small museum. It was open, but didn't look wildly exciting, so we decided to give it a miss.

Instead we climbed slightly higher to the fort itself, which we entered through the south gate.

Housesteads Fort was built in 124 AD.

There are quite a lot of visible remains here, including houses, barracks and latrines.

We also had a good view of Hadrian's Wall itself, leading up to the fort.

Although it was a bank holiday weekend, it wasn't terribly busy here.

And although I'd been expecting it to rain, the weather just about managed to stay dry.

The National Trust website had suggested a walking route from the edge of the fort, but initially we struggled to find our way on to the path.

In the end we had to climb down from the fort, go around this farm and back up again.

We found the path eventually

There were some beautiful views out across the countryside. We were right at the bottom edge of the Northumberland national park, so the views in this direction were towards the Pennines.

On the opposite side, the path was just below Hadrian's wall.

The path was a bit up and down at times.

The sun had come out now and it actually felt quite warm walking in the sunshine.

There were still some dark clouds on the horizon, though.

After a while the path led downhill, alongside the wall.

We passed a farm...

...and had a view down towards a small lake.

It's hard to see in the photos, but on the left hand side of the lake are Hotbank Crags, topped by trees.

Our route took us up to the top of the crags.

It should have been a really scenic path.

Unfortunately, there were lots of annoying black flies everywhere (all the black dots on the photo below are flies in front of my camera, not birds in the sky!)

From the crags the path led steeply downhill, back alongside the wall.

As we descended, we got a glimpse of what is apparently one of the most photographed trees in the UK.

This is Sycamore Gap, although from this angle it wasn't completely clear how the location gets its name.

Once we climbed further down and walked past the tree, it became clearer.

The sycamore tree is situated in quite a dramatic dip - or gap - in the landscape  

We enjoyed the view for a while, before turning around to retrace our steps in the direction of Housesteads Fort.

The weather got progressively colder and windier as we did so, and we only just made it back to the carpark before the first rain drops started to fall.

It rained quite heavily for a while, so after a brief stop in the village of Haltwhistle to pick up some supplies, we headed back to the cottage for the rest of the afternoon.  We were lucky that we managed to get such a scenic walk in before the weather turned  

We didn't have fixed plans for today, so once we'd had dinner last night we started to do a bit more research on the local area. In the course of doing so, I came across the Northumberland National Park website, which has a useful facility to search for walking routes based on distance and level of difficulty. I came up with a few possible options and we narrowed it down to the Drake Stone and Harbottle walk, which was described as being a moderate circular walk

Northumberland is a huge county and so the starting point for the walk, a Forestry Commission car park just outside the village of Harbottle, was a 44 mile drive away. It was a very scenic drive though and the weather seemed to be holding up okay, with only a few spots of rain as we got closer to our destination.

We parked the car and began following an uphill track, which was signposted as "Drake Stone".

I was slightly unnerved when we passed a sign which seemed to imply that we were near a Ministry of Defence shooting range.

The landscape was very scenic though, as we continued to climb higher.

I maybe hadn't read the walk instructions attentively enough to appreciate quite how much uphill there was at the start of the walk, and so when we reached this cairn I thought perhaps we were at the top.

I certainly felt out of breath enough for this to be the top

It turned out there was still quite a way for us to go. Our destination, the Drake Stone, was the large rock on the top of this hill.

The path upwards was quite narrow and a bit challenging in places...

...with lots of rocks to clamber over.

But eventually we made it to the Drake Stone!

Legend says that this large stone has supernatural healing powers.

Our path led us around the stone and down towards a small lake.

There were several other large rocks in the landscape. I had a great view from this one  

The route led us down towards the shore of the lake.

The instructions for the walk warned us to stay on the path, because the shore of the lake was very boggy.

As we walked we had great views back towards the Drake Stone on the horizon.

I was slightly disconcerted by another warning sign as we began to leave the lake behind and climb uphill again, towards a forest.

The path carried on straight through the forest for quite some time.

At times it was a bit muddy underfoot, though there were often logs placed to help you find your way across. Some were easier to balance on than others!

After a while the path began to lead quite steeply downhill.

Sometimes a bit too steeply for my liking

If this was a moderate walk then I was glad we hadn't chosen a difficult one!

Once we left the forest behind us, the path widened out to a much easier trail.

The views across the Northumberland national park were really beautiful.

The path was leading us downhill, towards a village and the main road.

A sign had warned that there was a bull in the field, but luckily we only met these rather placid cows.

We crossed the main road and followed another path alongside the river Coquet.

This part of the walk seemed far more relaxing  

As we strolled through the fields we realised we could see up to the Drake Stone, on top of a hill on the opposite side of the river.

The final bit of the walk took us back across the river, to the small village of Harbottle. The weather was getting a bit cloudier by this point, but we just managed to sit outside in the beer garden of the local pub for a quick drink and then walk back up the road to the forest car park before any drops of rain fell  

Unfortunately, the weather forecast doesn't look too good for tomorrow, so this might be the end of our adventures in Northumberland for now. But we've really enjoyed visiting this part of the world again and I feel like we'll be back again at some point in the future