Old Hartley site - base for walking challenge

We have visited Northumberland on a few occasions and love this part of the country. On this occasion, we chose to stay at the Old Hartley Caravan Club site, a small site situated on the coast overlooking the North sea and St Mary's lighthouse - the views are beautiful. The site has a mixture of grass and hard-standing pitches. After a wet period, the grass standing pitches are understandably not advised for motorhomes so we opted for a hard standing pitch. Although there is a slight gradient down to the sea below, pitches are relatively flat and since the land juts out the sea can be seen from most angles and pitches.

 

The site is located not far from the popular holiday resort of Whitely Bay and overlooks St Mary's lighthouse. The lighthouse, built in the late 19th century operated until 1984 but now only serves as a visitor attraction. A particular fascination with visitors is the lighthouse's location: it sits on a small, rocky tidal island linked to the mainland by a short concrete causeway. This means that at high tide the causeway is not accessible. We arrived to see the causeway being covered by the incoming tide and the girls enjoyed dodging the waves as they crashed over the concrete. The surrounding area is a nature reserve and seals can often be seen lying on the rocks or swimming in the sea. We were lucky enough to see one dipping in and out of the waves.

 

Further on and short walk away is Whitely Bay, its sandy beach and beach-front properties and shops. At this time of year it felt relatively quiet but in the summer months, this area must be full of visiting crowds.

 

Our reason for visiting Old Hartley was because we were walking the coast to coast walk via Hadrian's Wall trail. The Old Hartley site was an ideal location for us because of its proximity to Tynemouth, the beginning of our walk. The official start is Wallsend in Newcastle but we added a further 6 miles onto the 84 in order to make it from the coast. To access Tynemouth we simply caught a couple of local buses. The stop is a very short walk out of the site. We changed at Whitely Bay and carried on to Tynemouth. Our first day ended in central Newcastle by the river. We then returned by bus to the site, a short journey of about 45 minutes in comparison to the hours that we had been walking. The following morning, we got up and caught the bus into Newcastle once again to Newcastle to begin from the where we had left the previous day. This time we walked out of the city and into the countryside. In order to complete the trail with our motorhome, Tim would drop us off and then drive to our designated finishing point each day. He would then walk back to meet us, usually around half way and we would then all walk together. 

 

Old Hartley site was a great base for the first couple of days of our coast to coast challenge.

 

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