Bamburgh Castle, Twilight Sands

Twilight on the empty beach north of the castle, with heavy slate cloud breaking to pink and lilac at the horizon. The tide is right out, leaving a film of water across the sand that carries the last of the colour, while winter marram grass bleaches pale along the dunes below the walls.

Bamburgh Castle is one of the great sights of the Northumberland coast, a Norman fortress standing on a basalt crag above miles of open sand and the North Sea. A stronghold since Anglo-Saxon times and rebuilt over nine centuries, it was restored by the industrialist Lord Armstrong and remains lived in today. Few buildings in England sit in a more photogenic landscape.