Kippers and Sea Walks at Craster

Whoever would have thought that something other than cake would make a frequent appearance on New Girl in Toon but, here I am again, parading about in my yellow Joules mac.  I hope you're not all sick of seeing it, we can just blame the rubbish weather we've been having the last few weeks.

A week or so ago Simon and I took a day off, hired ourselves a car and headed off to Northumberland for an explore.

With a list as long as my arm of places I'm dying to visit we only had the time to stop at one so I chose Craster, a small fishing harbour on the Northumbrian coast.

Yes, call me embarrassing, but I walked round this gorgeous little village, famous for its kippers, dressed as a fisherman!   

To embarrass myself further, I then walked into The Jolly Fisherman dressed a fisherman.  I really didn't think this through at all did I?

Despite being in fancy dress, we really couldn't visit Craster without swinging by the Jolly Fisherman for lunch.  I'd heard tales of amazing fish served at the pub, and going by my visit last year to sister pub The Plough in Alnwick I knew the food would be amazing.

It was early afternoon by the time we'd done battle with the traffic and for a Wednesday afternoon at gone 2:00 pm, the Jolly Fisherman was busy with people still ordering and eating lunch.  You know you're in for a good meal when somewhere is still buzzing so late in the afternoon.  

Walking through the snug pub area we headed up to the lighter restaurant and managed to bag ourselves a table overlooking the sea.

We knew what we wanted for lunch as the pub's position across the road from the famous smokehouse would have made it wrong to order anything other than fish.

There were lots of delicious fish dishes to choose from on the menu - I was quite tempted to order Shetland mussels or crab sandwich and spent a long time with my nose buried in the menu.

Simon knew exactly what he wanted - homemade smoked haddock fishcakes.   Luckily he very kindly offered me a bite so I can report back that they were outstanding.  I also really must praise the beef dripping chips which were the nicest chips I have ever tasted!

Once I'd managed to convince myself that ordering what sounded like a sharing platter all to myself wasn't wrong, there was only one option for me - The Jolly Fishboard.  With the promise of salmon, fresh bread and butter as well as getting to try some kipper, it ticked every box.

The board consisted of crab pot, fillet of fresh salmon, kipper pate, smoke salmon, prawns and herring role mop, not to mention the four chunks of sour dough bread.  As you can imagine I was so happy that I'd made the choice.  I managed to wolf the whole lot down and used the bread to mop up every single last bit of juice left on my board.  It was just what this hungry fisherman needed!

Despite having a rather large lunch I managed to also squeeze in a dessert as soon as I saw that ginger pudding with custard was on the menu - one of my favourites.

After all of that delicious food, a walk in the fresh sea air was definitely required so we strolled back along the harbour to take a look at the boats and cute little houses that line the streets of Craster.

The best walk in Craster is the 1.5 mile route to Dunstanbaurgh Castle, the path follows the sea and is decorated with bright yellow flowers overlooking the water.   Absolutely beautiful!

Unfortunately we'd spent so long sitting about eating too much food we didn't have time to make it all the way to the castle but I'm not complaining too much as it gives us an excuse to return.  That is if I'm not distracted by other adventures in Northumberland.  The car park in Craster is conveniently right next door to the Tourist Information and as we made our way back to the car I found myself with a rather large handful of leaflets and my mind full of ideas of where to go on our next Northumberland adventure.

Let me know where your favourite place on the Northumberland coast is!