Tag Archives: Northumberland

english, Ordinary, Scones, self-service

Hauxley Wildlife Centre

While Megan tries to convince Harry that she hadn’t really wanted a big wedding, we are still a safe distance away in the north east of England.  The Hauxley Wildlife Discovery Centre near Druridge Bay  is internationally renowned for its birds. It’s amazing because it was once a very industrial open-cast mining site. In 1983, however, it was taken over by Northumberland Wildlife Trust and transformed into this fabulous haven for wildlife. They’ve done a magnificent job with an extensive shallow pond surrounded by great paths and multiple hides. Definitely one of the best reserves we have come across.

A speckled brown wood butterfly at Hauxley Nature Reserve
Speckled wood butterfly

We spent a couple of hours visiting the hides, spying on the host of birds and butterflies that have made this their home. Pat was happy to add a few new species, like blackcap and whitethroat to her list. Once we had done a fairly lengthy circuit of all the hides it was scone o’clock and time to return to the reception centre.

Last minute scones

Even this large straw-bale built reception centre was put together by a small army of Northumberland Wildlife Trust volunteers. The café not only had scones but huge viewing windows where you could eat your scone while continuing to watch birds. What more could you ask for?Internal view of Hauxley Wildlife CentreThe self-service service was very warm and friendly as you would expect in this part of the world. There wasn’t any cream and not much jam but the scones themselves were very good and very welcome. Our group actually bought all the scones they had. If we had been a few minutes later there would have been none and that would have been a disaster. A scone at Hauxley Wildlife CentreNo topscone here unfortunately but a very good effort in a quite magical place … keep up the good work!

Talking of disasters … let’s return to the wedding. Seriously, you have probably gathered by now that we are not great fans of Royalty but we do like Suits, so we really do wish the new Countess of Dumbarton (yes, that’s one of Megan’s many titles now) and her hubby every good fortune with their marriage.

Who cares when there is a Royal wedding?

It was great to see that all the homeless people had been either removed from Windsor or covered up with Union flags. All the towns potholes had also been repaired. Can all UK towns have a Royal wedding, please? Elsewhere there were plane crashes in Cuba, another mass school shooting in the Texas, the start of Ramadan and the opening of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland where they will be discussing whether the C of S has 10 or 20 years left to live. But who cares when there is a Royal wedding? Not to worry the bird-list continues to grow.

NE65 0JR      tel:01665 568 324       Hauxley Wildlife

english, Ordinary, Scones

Sunnyhills of Belford

Every year we set off with some colleagues from the Scottish Wildlife Trust to do a bit of bird watching. It’s always fun and somewhere in Scotland is our usual destination. This year is different however because we are heading south to Englandshire, or, to be more precise, Northumberland. Pat always starts a bird list for the outing. The idea being to list each species of bird as we see them and then total them up at the end to see how many we’ve seen. Can you think of anything  more exciting?? Okay, you can but we love it! It takes us into nooks and crannies of the country we would never ever otherwise think of visiting. Just to see if we can  add another species. So it was that, before we had even crossed the border, we found ourselves at Skateraw.

Skateraw near Dunbar
Skateraw near Dunbar
Snowy owl

Intelligence had it that this was almost the only place in the  country to see yellow wagtails. Most people know the common black and white pied wagtails, well this the same but yellow. The intelligence was sound. After a bit of  searching, there it was, like a tail wagging canary. Brilliant, and a fantastic start to the list. To make things even better when we were leaving Skateraw we spied a snowy owl. Okay it was in an aviary in someone’s garden, so not strictly allowable, but hey, what a phenomenal duo to kick things off.

Eventually we crossed the border about scone o’clock so we were keeping an eye open for coffee shops as well as birds. Sunnyhills of Belford was to be our eventual stopping off place. Internal view of Sunnyhills of BelfordIt is a cafe/restaurant come farm shop with a big adventure playground area for kids … you know the sort of thing!. It was self service so it wasn’t long before we were kitted out with scones and teas. A scone at Sunnyhills of BelfordThere was  no cream and not a lot of jam but the scone itself was pleasant enough though nowhere near worthy of any kind of accolade, never mind a topscone.

On leaving Sunnyhills we headed to Alnmouth, one of Northumberland’s many beautiful villages, where we were to be based for the next few days,  It’s a piece of the country which is coastal and has many nature reserves so we were hopeful of seeing many more birds. Having said that, at the end of day one, Pat’s list had reached thirty one. Pretty amazing in itself. We will keep you posted on the final count.

Just being away for a day or so kind of throws you out of the loop in terms of news and current affairs but then there probably won’t be any for the next few days anyway with THE wedding. Oh no, don’t tell us we are going to miss it! Oh dear, what a shame, never mind. We wish the happy couple well but the fawning press and media is almost too much to bear. We’ll content ourselves looking for birds … and scones.Logo for Sunnyhills of BelfordNE70 7DP         tel: 01668 219662           Sunnyhills Farm Shop