Discover a collection of holiday cottages, farmhouses, barn conversions, and glamping pods, set on working farms within 10 miles of the coast in Northumberland. A farm stay by the coast gives you the best of both worlds – laid-back rural charm and beautiful countryside with easy access to coastal walks, beach days, watersports, and stunning sea views.
The Northumberland coast is one of the best-kept secrets in British travel miles of golden sand, historic castles, remote islands teeming with wildlife, and a wildness that the more celebrated coasts of the south and west cannot match. Designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the coastline runs from Berwick-upon-Tweed in the north to Druridge Bay in the south, taking in some of the quietest and most unspoilt beaches in England. Farm stays along the Northumbrian coast put you in exactly the right position to appreciate it, with the farms here having faced the North Sea for centuries, and the landscape of dunes, field margins, and coastal grassland that surrounds them as rich with wildlife as anywhere in Britain.
Northumberland offers an impressive range of dog-friendly beaches, including Bamburgh, stretching beneath the imposing silhouette of Bamburgh Castle, and arguably Northumberland’s flagship beach with a sweeping stretch of sand, dramatic views to the Farne Islands, and the perfect backdrop for a coastal walk. Druridge Bay, a seven-mile arc of sand backed by grassy dunes and a country park, is one of the longest uninterrupted beaches in England and rarely busy even in summer. Ross Back Sands, accessible only via a mile-long walk through Ross Farm, rewards the effort with views of Holy Island, the Farne Islands, and Bamburgh Castle, as well as regular sightings of seals, gulls, grebes, and terns. Beadnell, with its horseshoe bay, is the only west-facing harbour on the east coast of England, a geographical quirk that gives it a different character and light from every other beach on this coastline.
For watersports enthusiasts, Bamburgh Beach offers surfing and stand-up paddleboarding, while Beadnell is popular for windsurfing, kitesurfing, dinghy sailing, and kayaking. Scuba diving is also popular off the Northumberland coast due to the myriad of wrecks and treasures underwater. Sea fishing, for cod, bass, and flatfish from the shore, and for mackerel and pollack from boats, is available from several of the coastal villages, with several running angling boat trips throughout the season.
The Farne Islands, lying a couple of miles offshore between Bamburgh and Seahouses, are one of the great wildlife spectacles of the British Isles. They form one of Britain’s most important seabird sanctuaries, home to tens of thousands of puffins, guillemots, and kittiwakes, as well as a large colony of Atlantic grey seals. Boat trips from Seahouses run from spring to autumn and land on Inner Farne for close up encounters with nesting seabirds that are unlike anything else in England. The Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve protects an extensive area of mudflats, dunes, and saltmarsh that supports internationally important populations of wintering wildfowl and wading birds, including pale-bellied brent geese, whooper swans, grey plovers, and bar-tailed godwits.
The Northumberland Coastal Path runs from Cresswell in the south to Berwick-upon-Tweed in the north covering 64 miles of largely flat walking with castles, islands, and empty beaches at every turn. Sections from farm stay bases offer some of the finest coastal walking in England. The walk from Bamburgh to Seahouses via the dunes, the route along Druridge Bay’s seven-mile arc, and the approach to Holy Island across the causeway at low tide are all outstanding. The coast connects easily with Hadrian’s Wall for guests who want to combine sea and history in a single trip.
Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island, can only be reached when the sea allows, along a causeway that is cut off twice daily by the North Sea tides. The island is the cradle of English Christianity where the Lindisfarne Gospels, one of the greatest works of medieval art in existence, were created in the early eighth century. The ruins of the priory and the sixteenth-century castle sit in a landscape of dunes, saltmarsh, and beach that has changed very little since the monks arrived. Lindisfarne mead, made on the island, is the traditional thing to bring home.
