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A 1999 Easter cruise by car (Colin Haines - 0113 250 5727 Mobile 0370 714 534 - clanderlaw@talk21.com)
This year, instead of joining the TSA Norfolk Broads cruise, we spent the Easter week in a cottage on the Northumbrian coast at place called Boulmer, which name devotees of Sailing By will recognise. It is in actual fact a small village on the North Sea coast, with all of three dozen houses and a pub. The latter being in business, we were told, simply because the local wealthy family decided that, without a pub, the village would die, and so bought it off the brewery who wanted to close it down.
Outside the village is an RAF base with Sea King helicopters, and that is about the entirety of the place. Of more interest to people who sail, is the original reason why the village was built, as the rocks on the coast thereabouts reach a long way out into the North Sea. There is a 50 metre gap in them, marked on the Northern side by an ex-telephone pole, allowing boats to enter a small lagoon beside a beach that is moderately well sheltered from all bad weather at low tide. At high tide the rocks are covered, and one must use the two very obvious red and white striped day marks on the shore as a guide when entering.
The rocks were covered when we first arrived. The four cobbles moored there looked distinctly strange, as behind them was the open North Sea stretching out to Norway, with nothing to shelter them. It took a while to realise that the Northumberland coast is a very different place for boats, when compared with the South Coast of England.
I don't know if we will ever trail Jemima to Northumberland, or propose a TSA cruise there. However, the objective of this article is to tell you what we found by way of small boat facilities between Blyth and Berwick, having visited the places by car and looked at them from a trail-sail point of view.
Firstly, one needs to think about the weather. The predominant British weather comes from the West. Crudely speaking, the Northumbrian coast is orientated North-South, with the result that any wind with a touch of West in it is an off-shore wind. Whilst we were there, the wind piped up to a good F7 one day, making the sea become white with foam, but close inshore where there was a short fetch, the angry waves were only knee high, and little more than ripples broke on the beach. Had we been sailing Jemima up the coast, and chose to anchor in Boulmer's exposed lagoon that day, life on board would have been little different to being in an expensive marina. Only prudence would have kept us from rowing to the shore, lest we be blown out to sea.
Doubtless it would be very different if there is any East in a strong wind, but when you come to think about the way depressions usually move in from the Atlantic, and pass up over Scotland, such habits don't produce strong onshore winds in Northern England. Hence the local fishermen's confidence with mooring their cobbles. Even the strong South Westerly wind on our last day produced little in the way of waves, and we saw a 28ft yacht comfortably working it's way down the coast without meeting any excessive waves. Watching with the aid of binoculars how the coastal steamers further out to sea were producing great sheets of spume round their bows suggested that they were seeing an entirely different sea state to the yacht.
So what did we find ? Starting at the Southern end of the County, which was not the order we visited them, all of which were seen mainly around Low Water Springs, I can tell you :
Blyth. This is an active industrial port, with a long pier to protect it's entrance from strong North to Easterly winds, and has the usual large port facilities. Tucked inside the entrance on the Western side of the harbour is the Royal Northumberland Yacht Club. They have by far the largest collection of sailing boats that we saw, and have a small marina's worth of pontoons. Speaking with the Commodore, I was told that they have a launching crane of some 1½ tons lifting capacity that could be used to lift boats directly from their trailers. The members pay £2.00 to use it, but we might be charged a bit more if an experienced somebody provided his lifting strops and helped us with the launching and recovery. The club did have a launching slip up until last year, then expansion of the port facilities obliterated it, leaving the nearby boat yard with one that can be used instead. We also saw another semi-abandoned slip further up stream, which was steep and covered with debris, and only has the virtue of a reasonable run-out at the top for those who use long ropes to launch their boats.
Of all the 'yachting facilities' we saw on the coast, the R.N.Y.C definitely has the best, including having their own large compound for cars and trailers whose access is controlled by the local Port Security barrier operator.
If considering exploring the Northumbrian coast, you could do a lot worse than start your planning based on the welcome I got. (See Macmillan's Almanac for details of the R.N.Y.C.)
Newbiggin-by-the-Sea. (Appx 4 miles from Blyth.) There is a groin here that protects the Eastern end of the firm sandy beach. It can be accessed down a purpose made ramp from the car park on the small headland, provided one ignores the notice stating that vehicles must not be driven on the beach. We saw a 4x4 Tonka Toy towing a jet-ski boat drive straight past the sign without being challenged, and there was no suggestion of it sinking into the sand as it drove to the water's edge.
Parking a car and trailer in the beach front car park for any period of time would be inadvisable, as there was every indication of vandalism being the local youth's active hobby. The 1920's toilets were disgusting, and whilst an obvious effort is being made to up-grade the beach front, the whole area looks rather run down.
Talking with a member of the Life Boat crew about sailing hazards, of which he opined in their 'patch' there were few, we could not have found a more friendly person to talk to. If you want to test my opinion about the place, I suggest that you anchor on the Eastern side of the beach, which at almost low Spring tide seemed to be free of any rocks.
Amble. (Appx 16 miles from Blyth.) Easy to find, as the entrance to the harbour is about half a mile North of Coquet Island, which looks a bit like a super-tanker, with the white painted lighthouse on it's Eastern side taking the role of bridge. The three-flash light is sectored white and red, and visible for 15 miles or more up the coast.
Speaking with a man anti-fouling his 30ft yacht at the Amble Yacht Club, I gathered that due to lack of funds to maintain dredging operations, the harbour mouth is silting up, and is best avoided at Low Water, as there is only about a 1 metre of water there then. He also told me how easy it was to access the place by public transport, such as if wanting to go and fetch one's car and trailer in order to recover the boat.
There are two slips. The public slip is by the yacht club, and is made of concrete blocks laid out into the river, reaching I would guess, not quite as far as the half tide mark. Using it to launch or recover the typical trail-sail yacht would be a High Tide only job, and need a long rope between car and trailer, as the slip is at a very shallow angle. The other slip, sheltered between two concrete walls and belonging to the Amble Boat Company LTD, is quite steep, and would be a good test of a car's clutch and brakes.
There was nobody in the boat yard to speak to, but I suspect that there may well be a tractor there that could be employed to avoid the strain on your car's transmission. There is adequate space for parking a car and trailer inside the boat yard, and would be preferable to using the public car parks near the yacht club.
The lady in the office of the tidal cill guarded Amble Marina (VHF 80, £1.50 per metre per night) was quite pleasant, and gave me a leaflet on their facilities.
The nearby town is worth visiting, with an adequate stock of shops, restaurants and pubs, and would make a good place to wait out a strong Easterly wind for a day or so.
Alnmouth. (Appx 3½ miles from Amble.) There is a sailing club at Alnmouth, but a shortage of sailing boats, which is not surprising as the river mouth dries out, leaving a narrow river between sand flats inside the harbour. The boats therefore have to dry out. The Edwardian town is small, and can be explored on foot in about half an hour or so, and is definitely second choice to Amble as a place to stop.
One can get a vehicle onto the river's North shore, provided one can find the gate keeper who has the key to the padlock. However, my wellie shod feet sunk half an inch or so into the mud before reaching something firmer to rest on, suggesting that were one to visit the place, it would not be for the purpose of launching or recovery.
Boulmer. (Appx 6 miles from Amble.) As mentioned above, it is suitable to anchor in the lagoon if one is confident that the wind will not turn East. The cobble moorings suggest that buoying one's anchor is advisable. Remember to take a good torch if dinghying ashore for an evening meal in the friendly Fishing Boat Inn, as the few street lights will not help you find your boat when you return.
Craster. (Appx 4 miles from Boulmer.) The landward approach to the harbour ends with a steep hill that would need a bit of thinking about before driving down it with a trailer and boat. Once there, access to the small harbour is guarded by nothing more than fishing boats, drawn up onto the black shingle beach by a winch housed on the other side of the access road. The harbour itself is not particularly yacht friendly, and it would be an uncomfortable place to lie if the wind was from the East. There was nowhere obviously secure to leave a car and trailer.
Speaking personally, I did not find much appeal in the place, although there is a very good nature reserve nearby if you are interested in that sort of thing.
Low Newton by the Sea. (Appx 7 miles from Boulmer.) Long fingers of rock extend out from the beach at the Northern end, providing more of a navigation hazard than any shelter. The strata is such that their almost level sides slope down on the Southern side, and are sheer edged on the Northern side where they have broken off into a jumbled mass of cubic boulders. Landing by dinghy is apparently very easy on the sloping sides, but the temptation is to be avoided, as the smooth surface of the rock has been eroded into a million small jagged edges that could easily trash an inflatable dinghy. Use the sandy beach when landing to access the beach side pub for lunch and a good assortment of beers.
There is vehicle access to the beach, as I saw an old Land Rover being used to bump start an even older tractor there. Once it was running, they both left the beach via a gap in the sand dunes 50 yards South of the pub, where there were a few sailing dinghy masts projecting above the marram grass. However, the shallow angle of the hard sandy beach means that unless you have a very long rope - say 50 yards long - between car and trailer, discount this place as a launch and recovery site. There is also a very steep hill leading down to the hamlet, but one can get a bit of a run at it before going back up again.
The beach's shallow angle means that it is possible to dry out at half tide, when the hazard of the above mentioned rock fingers are obviously exposed. If anchoring off for the night, the low cliffs at the back of the beach provide protection from any wind with West in it. Winds of more than F3 with East in them would make the place untenable for a small boat.
Beadnell. (Appx 9½ miles from Boulmer.) Beadnell Bay looks on a map as if it is quite exposed, which is true except for the Northern end, where a small Low Tide drying harbour has been built with a protecting groin. The harbour is small, very small, and when I saw it, was occupied by two cobbles whose owners had seen fit to stretch loose ropes from one side of the harbour to the other in order to keep their boats roughly in the middle. As the ropes were partially below the water's surface, they made good propeller catchers.
On the South West side next to the harbour, which isn't particularly yacht friendly anyway, having been built perhaps 150 years ago for loading a ship with lime made in the harbour side kilns, there are the drying mooring of the local yacht club. I saw these at Low Water Springs when visiting the beach with our grand children, and would strongly recommend that you buoy your anchor if using the shelter there. The risk being getting your anchor caught in the ground chains of the yacht club's moorings. Or, if you use one of the club moorings, be aware that they are only attached to 9mm dia ground chains, and the sinkers are subject to the hard sand moving around. There were no rocks visible when I was there that would threaten a boat drying out. Judging from the fact that a member of the local sailing club told me that they leave their boats moored there all summer, it is probably a safe place to fetch up to for the night. That is provided an Easterly wind isn't blowing from anything between 45° and 170°, when the boat may be safe, but sleeping would be difficult until you dried out a few hours before low water.
The beach is guarded by sand dunes, behind which is a car park and caravan site, and has a passage cut through the dunes, guarded by the inevitable locked gate from the car park. The local sailing club member told me that it is possible to hire a tractor to launch one's boat on the beach. Later on, I saw a tractor driving into the sea to do just that with a RIB, and later park it's large roller-coaster trailer by the sand dunes, with the tractor left blocking off the passage from the beach. My informant had no idea of the cost of having the tractor launch a boat, but his grammar suggested that he didn't consider it expensive. On the day in question, whilst there was a moderate SW F5 wind, the bay was as calm as a swimming pool, and recovering a yacht onto a submerged trailer would have been quite easy
Seahouses. (Appx 12 miles from Boulmer.) There are two slips. The one inside the inner harbour is steep, with it's lower end getting steeper , curving down to almost 45°. Unless you have a car with good brakes and a very very low ratio gear box, avoid the temptation to use this slip when the lower steeper end is covered, and you can't see where the risk of being dragged over it's edge starts.
The other slip is outside the inner harbour's short Southern wall. Or at least, there is vehicle access onto a firm sand and flat shingle beach. with a useable slope to it that is too shallow for a break back trailer, but would not call for a very long rope to be used. Unfortunately, because the top of the beach is above normal High Tide level, the access is filled with soft wind blown sand that would bog down any normal car pulling a loaded boat trailer. I did see a large diving RIB being launched with the aid of a tractor, whose driver was quite willing to let it go for a deep paddle in salt water. I also saw about half a dozen expensive RIB carrying roller coaster trailers parked at the top of the beach under the harbour wall, which was a logical place to leave them, as the alternative public car park has no security possibilities.
The town is most memorable for the sheer number of Fish & Chip shops, as almost every other shop near the harbour is frying food for the rather cheap looking customers thronging the streets. (The whole length of the Northumbrian coast has numerous caravan parks, so the visitors need places to get food etc.)
The harbour is guarded by an extensive outer half-tide reef, onto which bits of wall have been built to provide extra protection. Within the harbour there are few facilities for sailing boats, but this shortage may be attended to in the future, as with the decline of fishing, yachts are being increasingly seen as an alternative source of Harbour Dues.
The Farne Islands. (Appx 4 to 8 miles from Seahouses.) A distinctly rocky outcrop of islands, some of which have sides so sheer that the tripper boat I took a ride on was prepared to get so close that we could just about pat the heads of the nesting sea birds there. In other places the rocky edges slope in a more conventional manner, providing hauling out places for some of the 4,000 or so seals that live there.
Landing is possible at certain times of the year on both of the islands with light houses, with the breeding habits of the sea birds deciding when you are welcome. (The inner light house still exists, but was abandoned in favour of the newer outer one, a few years after Grace Darling did her remarkably courageous rescue of some of the wrecked Forfarshire steamer's passengers. Calm enough on the day of our visit to sail over from Seahouses in a good small sea boat such as a GP14 dinghy, it is easy to imagine what sort of violent place it would become if the SW F4 wind we experienced turned into a NE F8.)
Talking with one of the tripper boat's crew, he said that a recommended anchorage is in the 'Kettle', so named for the way the sea boils through both of it's entrances. However, there is a sheltered inner pool, complete with a large yellow mooring buoy. It's occasionally used by tripper boats when waiting away from the landing stage whilst their bird watching customers go ashore for a bit of serious twitching. The very friendly crew man said that yachts would be more than welcome to use the buoy, 'It's the code of the sea', and then added that the shallower Southern entrance was best avoided below half tide.
Holy Island. (Appx 9½ miles from Seahouses via inner Farne Islands.) There is a small drying harbour here just inside the entrance, rather exposed to winds South of due East. The slope of the harbour bed is such that one would be more comfortable pointing one's bows towards the shore when drying out. I did not get close enough to see if there are any rocks to threaten a boat drying out, but suspect that it's safe enough with care. Nor did I see if one could get a boat and trailer into the harbour, but would guess that it's not possible.
Care also needs to be taken in the entrance channel to the main area of drying sands between Holy Island and the mainland, as when the ebb runs, a substantial current generates it's own breaking standing waves. These extended for about 150 metres when I saw them a little after half tide. Once inside, there are extensive areas of flat sand, with few winding channels draining them that an unwary boat that is drying out might to fall into. I suspect that being sand, whose surface is soon dried off on a warm breezy day, the ease with which the wind blows it around would soon fill any shallow trench.
The island may be reached by car via a half mile long flat tarmac causeway. It is flanked by reflector posts, and is only flooded HW -2 to HW +3½. There is a very obvious hump backed bridge over the main drainage channel, complete with a refuge tower to locate the hazard when the tide is in. There is also a line of withys marking a foot path on the Southern side of the causeway, again with a refuge tower for people cut off by the tide. Being easily to drive to, there is a small village on the island, with a castle, a church by the ruins of a monastery, two pubs, two cafes and of course 'Lindisfarne Ltd.', where one may sample and purchase mead and honey wine.
Bamburgh Castle. (Appx 3 miles from Seahouses.) Located at the Northern end of a long hard sand beach, it was the only place where I saw dumping waves around the time of low water that would make a dinghy landing inadvisable. Wait for the tide to rise by a metre or so, and thus start to cover the broad flattish beach. There are no launching possibilities. The castle is well worth visiting.
Berwick on Tweed. (Appx 14 coast hugging miles from Holy Island.) There is a long pier on the Northern side of the entrance to the river, which can be entered at any state of the tide. This is not a yacht friendly place, as the quay-sides are high, and one would need large fenders to protect one's boat against the steel piled edges of the dock beside Berwick town. At a guess, the best place to find shelter is down towards the sea, just East of the Lifeboat House with it's obvious launching slipway. There is a yacht club there according to the town guide, but we didn't get to explore the Southern side of the river. Instead, we viewed the river mouth at Low Tide from the vantage point of the town's high battlements, and noted how, once in past the pier, one should turn hard South to avoid the 200+ yard wide drying area of flat, but effectively jagged rocks.
Berwick is an important town, well worth a visit to look at it. But, as to finding any suitable slip ways for trailer born yachts, I have to report that I saw none on the Northern side of the river below the Old Bridge, whose arches effectively prevent yachts from going up-stream.
We did discover a large supermarket on the North side of the town, easy enough to reach by car, but impossibly far for the crew of a small yacht. We also discovered a 'Chandlery' on the upstream end of the new quays, which turned out to be a fancy name for an old building housing a hair dressers. Not the sort of place to find shackles etc., though.
In fact, the only real Chandler we noticed was at Amble, where the Amble Boat Company has a small shop. Looking back, this is not surprising, as the whole coast lacks the huge yacht populations found further South.
Would we sail Jemima up this coast ? I honestly don't know. If one could be certain that the wind never turned to the East, it would be a delightful voyage along a coast littered with castles, and visiting harbours filled with friendly and helpful people. But then again, even with such a guarantee, it would be colder than other places we could take Jemima to, and it will probably remain on our list of 'Places to go one day, but not this year. Perhaps when we retire'.
Having seen the different places where one could stop, all of which are only a few sailing hours away from each other, it's obvious that being able to dry out for at least the bottom hour or so of the tide is a desirable, but far from necessary, ability. It's a pity we didn't see any place to launch or recover a boat at Berwick, as choosing the tides to get a daily 'lift' along the coast would allow for a very pleasant week's voyage.
Kielder Water. On our way back to Yorkshire, we diverted through the Kielder Forest, and called in at a place called Leaplish, which according to notices we saw at other places where a boat could be launched, is the only place where launching is allowed by Northumbrian Water.
The views of the forested hills are well worth traveling there, but Northumbrian Water have an inflated valuation of the pleasure to be had from sailing there. They claim to welcome visiting 'Sail or cabin cruisers' who are charged £25.oo per day, or £50.oo per three days, and are expected to pay £12.oo per night to use a mooring. I also picked up a suggestion that they charge £15.oo for the use of an adequate slipway, which lacks either a pier or pontoon to guide the boat from, all of which all adds up to over a hundred pounds for a long week-end.
I consider this expensive for a place that has no shore-side facilities other than attractive views and three small cafes, one of which is beside a little exhibition where one is expected to pay £1.00) to view Northumbrian Water's good works. If I ever feel the urge to see the place from the deck of a boat, it will be from the deck of the £4.oo a trip lake ferry.
If this article has caught your curiosity about visiting the Northumberland Coast, please let me know, as Linda and I might be persuadable to make a Whitsun Voyage with you.
Colin Haines - clanderlaw@talk21.com