Bamburgh Castle

On a few days of healing

A few days after my mum’s funeral, I met up with Dave Tolcher for three days staying at the Victoria Hotel at Bamburgh in Northumberland. This is a place I had stayed several times with my dad on photography trips – going back to 2006 – and the moment I pulled into Bamburgh village I knew this would be just what the doctor ordered after the stresses of the previous few weeks.

Dave had messaged ahead that he was already there and I drove around to the car park next to the beach and parked up. The tide was almost in and there was about an hour before sundown. I got out of the car to join Dave on the thin strip of beach available. The intention had been to just chill. As I did so I remembered several sessions from this exact spot with my dad – a scene he had painted and I had made photographs of the castle using the dunes as a foreground.

I spotted the line of seaweed and the line of rock leading up to the castle and headed back to the car to fetch my gear. It was a straightforward setup – the key to the image was to wait for the water from the wave to start receding and capture it with a shutter speed of a couple of seconds or so knowing that it would make a lovely pattern. More healing through photography and it was the start of a relaxing three-day trip.