Today is the first day of autumn and you wouldn’t know it by the piles of warm sunshine and blue skies. The whole weekend has been “quite lovely” so we took advantage and “made hay while the sun shone”. We picked up a family day pass for the bus and began our day by all traveling to Joshua’s fencing class together. (because we had a day pass we can all ride as many buses as we like all day). Normally just Rob will go with Joshua. Is was great to see the fencing salle and meet the coaching staff.

After fencing we popped back home for a quick lunch and repacking and headed off to the coast.

Durham is quite close to the North Sea and we wanted a chance to go have a look before the weather turned more wintery. We hear that the north sea can turn quite angry at times. Yesterday there was a on shore breeze so the sea was flat and beautiful.

Seaham is only about 13 miles east of Durham. On the bus it is about a 50 minute trip because of the many stops along the way. Seaham was, at the height of the coal mining days, a coal port. Much of the area around County Durham and beyond has a rich coal mining history. Nearby in Sunderland there was a glass bottle works company. Some say that is why you can find so many varieties of sea glass along the coast today.

Above is the Seaham Harbor. Today it is home to fishing and recreational boats.

We spent several hours exploring the beach and collecting sea glass. It is nice to live close to the water where we can still enjoy the cries of sea gulls.

There is a light house at Seaham harbour. There have been several in that location over the years. The current one was built in 1905. It has a green light and a fog horn. It marks the town’s north breakwater. We look forward to another trip there to explore it close up.

It is a beautiful place to visit. After spending most of our family beach time along the Alabama\Florida Gulf Coast the most amazing part of the North Sea were the dramatic tides. Orange Beach tides change about 1 and a half feet. The tide changes along the north sea can change 5 or 6 meters twice a day. We had to keep running back to our belongings and shoes to move them higher up the beach. We would turn around and the sea was nearly wetting them again.

There is still so much to see and do in the Sunderland and Seaham area. We will be looking forward to another weekend to be local tourist again.