The castle is the first thing you see and it does not let you forget it. Bamburgh Castle sits on a basalt outcrop of the Great Whin Sill, dolerite that was shoved up through the ground about 295 million years ago, and it looms over the beach, the cricket green and most of Front Street. It is one of the largest inhabited castles in the country, still owned by the Armstrong family, who bought it in 1894. You arrive, you look up, and the village arranges itself in its shadow.
Front Street is where the eating happens. The Lord Crewe is the smart end — Lindisfarne oysters, lobster Thermidor and a fish pie, an AA Rosette, seven boutique bedrooms. Living North called it "a deserved reputation for its food" in "a cracking location both close to Bamburgh Castle and the beach." A few doors down is its sister pub, the Middle Inn, which is the more traditional of the two: sandwiches, light lunches, House Favourites, and a beer garden it is famous for. Dogs are welcome there.
The Castle Inn claims possibly the best value menu in the village, which is the sort of thing pubs say, though the reviews back it up. The Victoria overlooks the green with the castle behind it and serves all day. If it is fish you're after, the Mizen Head out on Lucker Road leans almost entirely on the North Sea.
For provisions there's R Carter & Son, the village butcher for over a hundred years, who makes his own pies, haggis, white and black pudding, and bakes his own bread. The Pantry, a deli that opened in 2001, does fresh crab rolls, dressed crab, Seahouses kippers and local cheeses to eat in or take away. There is also a grocer and a newsagent, which for a village of about 450 people is a decent showing.
The beach is wide, sandy and Blue Flag, backed by dunes that are a Site of Special Scientific Interest. A two-mile circular loops around the castle through the dunes and along the sand. Go four miles north through the golf course to Budle Point and you get a viewpoint over Budle Bay and Holy Island — the bay is a bird sanctuary, best in winter when thousands of wildfowl and waders turn up. The St Oswald's Way and Northumberland Coast Path both run past the castle.
St Aidan's is worth going into. Grade I listed, late twelfth century, with a chancel said to be the second-longest in the country at sixty feet. St Aidan built the first wooden church here in 635 and died in 652, and a beam inside is traditionally the one he was resting against when he did. Grace Darling, who rowed out from the Longstone Lighthouse in 1838 to pull nine survivors off the wrecked Forfarshire, is buried in the churchyard; her effigy was brought indoors to save it from the weather. The museum opposite holds her actual coble boat.
Chathill station is 4.4 miles off but has almost no trains worth catching, so use Alnmouth or Berwick; the X18 bus runs through from Newcastle to Berwick. On summer Sunday afternoons the cricket club, going since 1860, plays friendlies on the Castle Green at one o'clock, the castle standing over them.