Alnwick and Bamburgh
Date: June 22nd 2024.
Alnwick Castle is in Northumberland, about 1 mile off the A1. I was interested in attending because the Castle looked magnificent and secondly it was a location for the broomstick flying session in the very first Harry Potter film.
The castle is owned by the Percy family, dating back to early mediaeval period, featuring heavily in the Wars Of The Roses.
It was a partly sunny and cloudy day with mild temperatures and the gentle breeze, which made it pleasant to walk around the castle and the grounds.
I hadn’t been here before, and I hadn’t to be honest done much research. I arrived late morning, and although it turns out there were a number of parking spaces close to the castle entrance, everybody was shown to the other side of the car park, which made it easier for traffic control I guess. The walk across the carpark and then into the entrance area of the castle was longer than anticipated. The ticketing organisation was poor, I hadn’t been able to purchase my ticket online, for reasons I did not understand. On enquiring on arrival I was directed to ticket office, who only sold tickets for The Castle Gardens, which was a separate attraction and you could not buy a combined ticket. I was then referred to another entrance into the Castle area of the grounds about 150m away. From the parking assistant to the staff of the ticket office and the people I spoke to in checking tickets, I did not hear a please or thank you or see a smile. Clearly they thought they were part of the Percy household and viewed us tourists as commoners. Very disappointing.
The castle was impressive the outer walls and the Keep were in good condition and were of considerable size. The garden surrounding the castle were designed by Capability Brown and everything looked very well maintained. Had lunch in the courtyard coffee shop which although expensive was pleasant. In the area of the Inner Courtyard, staff were helping visitors with broomsticks. This is the area that was used to film the broomstick flying in the initial Harry Potter film. Staff dressed as wizards were offering to take photographs of the visitors using their own phones. The staff lay on the floor and instructed the visitors to tuck the broom between the legs, on the count of 3 to jump in the air and tuck their legs back. The resulting photograph then made it look as if they were flying. I thought this was the best part of the visit, I’m very well organised, and everybody loved the results they were getting. I have a picture of this below.
I had been looking forward to visiting the State Rooms in the Keep of the Castle, a number of these were open to the public, but on arrival was told no photography, which I found disappointing. The state rooms were impressive but very limited in what was available to view as a member of the public.
It was nice to have visited the Castle, but I would not return, and I cannot give it much of a recommendation. I thought it expensive and other than the broomstick flying, a poor experience.
Bamburgh
I stopped at Bamburgh on the way back to photograph the Castle. The tide was out, so no possibility of getting good reflections from the water or wet sand. Instead I went into the sand dunes, initially from the south of the castle, but this was against the light and the results looked harsh. From the north of the castle I focused on getting pictures including the long grasses in the foreground, and using a 60 second exposure the blur the grasses and the clouds.
