Northumberland coastal walks - Scremerston and Cheswick

Welcome to Patrick Norris from Footsteps in Northumberland.Patrick is a qualified walking guide

and he leads walks across all of Northumberland. He has kindly contributed his notes on a recent

walk along the coast at Scremerston and Cheswick.

Footsteps - walking the beauty of Northumberland

It doesn’t really matter where you go walking in Northumberland and I will write about walking,

because that’s what we do at Footsteps, you will always find yourself in a landscape full of natural

interest, drama and history.

Recently for example in early July, we walked on the coast at Scremerston near Berwick, the

natural interest came from perhaps the best display of wildflowers I have ever seen, to say the

dunes were covered is an understatement, they were positively glowing with colour; it was a

wildflower extravaganza, which we were so pleased to walk through, sit amongst and enjoy. The

history was illustrated up on top of the highest dune, where a World War 2 gun emplacement,

unusual in that we are used to seeing pillboxes, hunched menacingly along the coast, but I had

seen nothing quite like this in my travels. A bit further south at Cheswick, a sign warned us not to

pick up anything made of metal that we didn’t recognise, it might just be a bit of old explosive

ordnance; we stuck to the path. The coast is just dramatic, full stop, but on that day the wind was

blowing strongly from the north east, whipping up the waves adding to the drama and I thought

about coming back later with the surf board and making the most of the opportunity. North east

winds are never with us for long and later on of course and when I got back, the sea had flattened

out and I put the surf board away for another day.

I didn’t really have time to identify all the wildflowers, but I could recognise many of them; the

vipers bugloss, bright, blue and tall stood out, the wild thyme released its scent when we crushed

a few leaves between our fingers and I must learn more about the North Sea defences, they have

been with us for a few generations now; they must have used good concrete in those days. The

sea of course is the constant feature in the landscape, it’s seen it all come and go and the sand

dunes shift over time and eventually even the concrete will disintegrate and become sand to be

moved about by the waves up and down the Northumbrian coast.

Patrick Norris

Footsteps - walking the beauty of Northumberland

http://www.footsteps-in-northumberland.co.uk/ http://www.northumbria-byways.com

Breaking waves

Looking south from Cocklawburn

Vipers bugloss

Beach at Cocklawburn