On the first morning you couldn't see the sea from the cottage garden. A sea fret had rolled in overnight, so the end of the lawn simply stopped in a white wall, and Alfie stood at the gate and announced that the beach had been cancelled. By eleven it had burned off, and we had the whole of Alnmouth beach in thin sun, a mile of flat sand with almost nobody on it.
It was the first time we've taken a cottage for a whole week. Hawes at Easter was three nights for £345, Filey is free, and the camping was a £56 pitch. This was £780, Saturday 8 August to Saturday 15 August, the cheapest two-bedroom place I could find within walking distance of the sea in the school holidays, and I booked it in February on a night I couldn't sleep.
Getting there and getting settled
Two and a half hours up the A1, with Alfie sick near Scotch Corner into the bag I keep for the purpose. The cottage was a stone terrace ten minutes from the beach, with a small back garden, a kettle that took four minutes to boil and a shelf of paperbacks with the last chapters missing. There was no tumble dryer, which I didn't mind, and a washing line, which I did use. The sheets were crisp and slightly scratchy. Isla took the bedroom with the sea view, Alfie wanted the top bunk, and by Sunday morning he had found out that the top bunk is a long way from the toilet.
The food was already planned, because the shop for a week away has to be right before you leave. I did a full Aldi shop on the Friday, packed it into two cool bags and a box, and bought the rest from the village shop and a farm shop up the road.
Castles, seals and a wet Wednesday
Monday was Dunstanburgh Castle, a mile and a bit along the cliff from Craster. Alfie managed it on the way out, and Rob carried him most of the way back, with a Leeds shirt on his back that attracted two nods and one comment. I bought a pair of kippers in Craster for £7.50 and was the only person in the family who ate them. Tuesday was Bamburgh Castle, which sits on the dunes like something Isla would draw, and she read a chapter of her book on the sand while the rest of us found a rock pool with a crab in it.
Wednesday rained from breakfast to bedtime. We did a jigsaw with eleven pieces missing, played cards and walked to the village in waterproofs for the sake of it. It was the day Rob said, quietly, that he could get used to it.
Thursday we went on a boat from Seahouses to the seals. Isla counted thirty-one grey seals on the rocks, and Alfie said they looked like sausages with faces. The skipper told us the puffins had already left, which I was sorry about for roughly nine seconds, until a seal rolled over and looked straight at us. On Friday we went back to the beach, ate fish and chips on the harbour wall, and while we were eating them the home insurance payment came out. It's the sort of thing I like to have sorted before I leave.
What it cost
- Cottage for the week: £780
- Fuel, there and back and around: £68
- Food: £214 (£132.40 Aldi shop before we left, £51.60 in the village shop, the farm shop and Craster, £30 on two fish and chip teas)
- Bamburgh Castle £46, Dunstanburgh Castle £22 and the seal boat £52: £120
The total is £1,182, which is £169 a day for four people, and it's the most we've spent on a holiday. I'm still not sure what I think about that. I had budgeted £175 for food and spent £214, and the extra was nearly all ice cream and one very good kipper. If I did it again I'd book a cottage with a dishwasher, because the washing-up for four after a beach day is the part nobody mentions in the brochure.
On the last night Alfie asked if we could live there. Rob said it was £780 a week. Alfie thought about this for a bit and then asked if we could live there for one more day. We couldn't, and we left at ten on Saturday with sand in every shoe. I found a pebble in the car door pocket this morning, and it's now on the kitchen windowsill next to the smart meter display, which seems the right place for it.
