Seahouses, Northumberland, UK

Time to show the kids the Great British Seaside. Seahouses is a small, out-of-the-way fishing village and seaside escape just north of Newcastle, that you get to from the A1 through miles of fields, and that has endless windswept beaches with fine sand, low rock formations, grassy dunes, and - away from the campsite, car parks and independent shops - few people.

We got there via a quick lunch stopover at the Scotts Arms near to Wetherby Bridge, where we met up with fellow campers Roy and Lynda who were also joining us on the trip in their motorhome. From there it was past the Angel of the North (singularly unimpressive from our bit of the motorway, I have to say, mainly hidden behind trees), and cross-country to reach Seahouses and the breezy, spacious Seafield Park campsite right on the beach and just a minute's walk from the little town centre.

Meeting up with Lindsay, Joanna, John and Sue, friends old and new, we planned our next day's adventure, a trip to Bamburgh Castle just a mile or two up the road. It is a huge, sprawling castle with multiple lawns, outhouses, towers and levels inside its walls and a dominating clock tower, nowadays housing various attractions including cafes and a museum. Once we'd had our fill (which happily included pasties and sausage rolls) we wandered down to the beach through the dunes, getting back to the van with shoes full of sand. That evening we had a pub meal at The Old Ship Inn, where the overworked yet extremely friendly waitress did a great job of making us feel at home, kids and dog included.

Dylan had found some lads with a ball at the campsite so was disappearing at regular intervals throughout our stay, praising the quality of UK banter compared to that of Gibraltar. Maya for her part headed off with Lindsay and Joanna one morning to go swimming in the cold North Sea, fearless young lady that she is. We, on the other hand, made use of the comfortably heated indoor pool, steam room and sauna at the campsite, where Dylan and I broke the family record for 'volley ball' in a swimming pool (87, for the record), and where we also witnessed a 'quick, close the pool, somebody's pooed!' event.

It was our first visit to Northumberland and I was struck by two things: The genuine friendliness of everyone we spoke to, including the staff at the small (and practically empty) fairground set up in a field that we took the kids too one windswept afternoon, and secondly, how often the name and work of local boy Mark Knopfler cropped up, from Dire Straits on the radio, to fellow campers discussing him in relation to board game questions one evening, to Joanna offering to arrange a meet-and-greet with him for me as 'I have a friend who knows him' (I politely refused, remembering the blubbering idiot I turned into when I met another personal hero, Alex Ferguson).

Seahouses is a good place for running, flat, open and with lots of quiet lanes. I did an easy 11km loop through the fields on quiet country lanes, followed by a very hard 1k-into-broken-k's interval session on slightly hilly lanes where I couldn't actually hit the fastest targets. Faye headed out for an ad hoc coastal easy 10k, a mainly easy 8k just before we left, and a 30k long run that took her into hillier, more inland countryside and which she totally loved.

Then it was time to pack up, plot a route, and head away from the north east to our next destination, the Lake District...