St Cuthberts Cave

The walk to St Cuthberts Cave, a short trek inland from the Northumberland coast near Berwick-upon-Tweed, rewards you with something genuinely atmospheric - a small sandstone cave carved into a hillside where the saint supposedly sought refuge in the 7th century. It's not a vast cavern or a show cave with lighting and handrails. What you get is a modest hollow, perhaps twelve feet deep, with enough space to stand upright and feel the weight of over 1,300 years of pilgrimage and legend pressing down on the damp stone. The approach path winds through woodland and farmland - allow an hour for the round trip from the nearest car park, more if you're dawdling. It's genuinely free, though you're reliant on OS maps or a decent sat-nav to find the unmarked trailhead. Historians and anyone with a taste for early Christian Britain will find it compelling; casual visitors expecting a dramatic cave system will feel short-changed. The real draw is the isolation and the sense of place rather than geological spectacle. If you're based at one of the caravan parks dotted around here - Haven Haggerston Castle is your nearest at 5.3 miles - this makes a cracking morning outing before heading to the beaches at Bamburgh or Holy Island. Go in drier weather; the ground gets boggy and the cave itself is perpetually damp. It's a proper pilgrimage walk rather than a tourist attraction, which is precisely why it's worth doing.