The Ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle

          My feet are hurting as I near the south gate. It’s little wonder, considering I’ve covered a mile and a half in sensible brown leather shoes, first over a firm and unforgiving grassy expanse, then on an uneven dirt path interspersed with pointy rocks. Almost everyone else – hikers following the Northumberland Coast Path, dog walkers, retired couples – has a pair of trekking or hiking shoes. Not for the first time, I rue having sacrificed comfort for style. 

My walk to the ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle began in the tiny and attractive fishing village of Craster, where the smell of seaweed blew in from the hundred year old harbour and seagulls sat like sentries on the rooftops of cottages. 

Beyond the village I entered a long area of sloping grassland where yellow gorse bushes grow. The only sounds were the tweeting of invisible birds, the soft breaking of the waves on the stony shore and the occasional horn of a train from over the ridge. Then, in the distance, I saw it: a broad and low ruin on a plateau with crumbling towers astride the arched entrance.

Now, I’m not usually an admirer of ruins. They are quite literally hollow shells, decaying with time. Dunstanburgh Castle, though, has rare appeal. You must walk a considerable way to reach it, and it has a dramatic aspect. The cylindrical towers have disintegrated to the point where the remaining parts, which jut out vertically like deformed chimney stacks, seem to be daring the elements to blow them over. You wonder how safe it is, and I felt no desire to walk within the grounds. 

          This once formidable stronghold was built in the fourteenth century. It later suffered centuries of neglect, but was resurrected by the military in World War Two, when it served as a ‘top-secret radar station’ before metamorphosing into a P.O.W. camp for ‘homesick’ Italians. Hopefully they took some comfort from the bucolic beauty of Northumberland. 

I have a brief chat with a youthful and sweaty northerner, who feels the castle should be restored, then continue along the dirt path that skirts the side of the castle. A lovely sandy bay opens up ahead, while to the west the vista is one of brown farmland and distant wind turbines, which are barely turning on this placid April afternoon. The sky is a glorious blue, broken only by the contrails of a minute aeroplane, so tiny that it looks like a toy. 

I approach the shore and a mad squawking suddenly fills the air, shattering the virtual silence. I look to my right, where dozens of seagulls are circling above the water of the rocky bay as if struck by a communal delirium. They rise and sink against a striking backdrop: a natural ampitheatre of sheer rock walls, coloured khaki and white, upon whose ledges sit rows and rows of seagulls, hundreds strong and motionless. One thing’s for sure: no homesick Italian ever considered busting out in this direction.