Bamburgh Castle, Fire Sky

A sky on fire over the Northumberland coast, scarlet and coral mackerel cloud stretching the full width of the frame, with the castle a small dark silhouette beneath it. Acres of mirror-wet sand throw the whole display back at itself, and two distant figures on the waterline show just how much beach there is.

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.