Bamburgh Castle Sunrise

The sun breaking the horizon at the foot of the castle mound as a clean starburst, laying a path of gold across the rippled wet sand. Contrails and thin cirrus catch the first light overhead while the castle stands backlit against the brightest part of the sky.

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.