Beyond the Itinerary are stories from the places we’re going — and the things that stay with us. Sole Sister travel adventures take care of the itinerary. The things that happen beyond it are up to all of us.
When I first heard the name King Charles III England Coast Path, I made an assumption. I thought it must be an old walking route with some historic connection to the Royal Family. Perhaps kings had travelled it, or it had been given the name centuries ago.
Not even close.
The King Charles III England Coast Path is actually England's newest National Trail, and the name itself dates only to 2023. But the stretch our Sole Sisters will be walking through Northumberland follows a coastline where people have been travelling on foot for centuries.
That sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole.
So, Where Did the Path Come From?
The idea behind the England Coast Path was surprisingly ambitious: create one continuous walking route around the entire English coastline. Not just the particularly beautiful bits. The whole thing.
The project grew out of the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, which gave Natural England the job of establishing a walking route around England's coast. Work began in 2010, and the first section opened at Weymouth in time for the sailing events at the 2012 London Olympics.
Over the following years, existing paths were joined together, new access was created and sections were moved closer to the sea. One feature I particularly like is that parts of the trail can "roll back" when cliffs erode or the coastline changes. That seems like a fairly sensible arrangement when you're building a walking trail beside the sea.
Then, in 2023, the England Coast Path got a new name. To mark the Coronation of King Charles III, it became the King Charles III England Coast Path.
In March 2026, King Charles officially inaugurated the trail at Seven Sisters in Sussex. At approximately 2,700 miles, it is now described by the British government as the longest managed coastal walking route in the world.
That's quite a Ramble. Fortunately, our Sole Sisters aren't walking all 2,700 miles.
Why Northumberland?
If you're going to choose one section, Northumberland makes a pretty compelling case for itself.
The final 38-mile Northumberland stretch, from Bamburgh toward the Scottish border, opened in 2023, completing a continuous 245-mile section between Bridlington in Yorkshire and the Scottish border.
But it's the history of this particular stretch that caught my attention.
This was border country, and it has the castles to prove it. Kingdoms collided here, Vikings raided here, saints lived here, and generations of fishing families made their living from the North Sea.
On the Sole Sister Ramble, the women will visit both Alnwick and Bamburgh Castles. Bamburgh, in particular, looks like my idea of exactly where a castle ought to be: looming above the sea on a great rocky outcrop with miles of coastline visible in either direction.
But the part of this walk that sent me furthest down the historical rabbit hole wasn't a castle.
It was a path across the sand.
Walking to Holy Island
At Lindisfarne—better known as Holy Island—the Sole Sisters will follow the old Pilgrims' Way across the tidal flats.
Holy Island is connected to the mainland by a modern paved causeway, but the old walking route still exists, marked by a line of poles stretching across the sand. The island is cut off from the mainland at high tide, so getting there has always required paying attention to the sea.
I love the idea that our Sole Sisters will approach it on foot.
In 635, King Oswald of Northumbria gave Lindisfarne to the Irish monk Aidan, who established a monastery there. A few decades later, Cuthbert became prior and eventually bishop. After he died in 687, his grave became associated with miracles, and Lindisfarne grew into one of the great pilgrimage destinations of early medieval England.
The extraordinary Lindisfarne Gospels were produced there in the early eighth century, and then, in 793, Viking raiders attacked the island. The raid became infamous partly because Lindisfarne wasn't simply another settlement on the coast. It was one of the sacred centres of the Northumbrian world.
The monastery eventually disappeared, although a Christian community remained. The island was re-established as a priory in the 12th century, and an empty tomb marking the site of Cuthbert's original shrine once again became a destination for medieval pilgrims.
So when the Sole Sisters walk toward Holy Island, they'll be following a route into a place that has been drawing people for well over a thousand years.
And What About the Women?
This is where my curiosity took me next.
We know a great deal about the men associated with early Lindisfarne. Aidan. Cuthbert. Oswald. Monks, bishops and kings.
But surely there were women here too? It turns out there were.
Among the Anglo-Saxon carved stones discovered at Lindisfarne are grave markers carrying women's names. One, dating from around the year 700, bears the name Osgyth. Who was she? Why was she buried at Lindisfarne? What connection did she have to this important religious community?
We don't really know.
In fact, English Heritage lists the role of women in the religious life of the monastery as one of the questions that still deserves further research.
I find that fascinating.
A woman's name has survived on a piece of stone for more than 1,300 years, but most of her story hasn't.
There must have been many women who came to Lindisfarne over the centuries: women travelling for religious reasons, women connected to the surrounding communities, women mourning their dead, women seeking healing, women whose lives intersected with the monastery in ways that have simply disappeared from the written record.
We can't invent their stories. But I like knowing that there are traces of them.
And when a group of Sole Sisters walks across those sands more than a thousand years later, I think Osgyth is worth remembering.
Castles, Fishing Villages and a Lot of Coastline
Not all the history along this route involves saints, Vikings, and mysterious Anglo-Saxon women.
The trail passes through places such as Craster, Alnmouth, Seahouses and Warkworth, communities whose lives have long been tied to the sea. There are fishing harbours, old stone houses, beaches and dunes, and long stretches where the North Sea will simply be there beside the women as they walk.
There is also a boat trip to the Farne Islands, just offshore from Northumberland. The islands are home to large seabird colonies and grey seals, and depending on the season, there may be puffins.
Frankly, the puffins would be enough for me.
There's another connection here too. Cuthbert eventually left Lindisfarne seeking a more solitary life and lived as a hermit on Inner Farne, one of the islands the Sole Sisters will see from the boat.
That's what appeals to me about this particular walk. The history isn't something you visit for an hour and then leave behind. It keeps popping up along the way.
A New Trail on Very Old Ground
The more I read about the King Charles III England Coast Path, the more I liked the contradiction at the heart of it.
The trail is new. The walking isn't.
People have been moving through this landscape for centuries: pilgrims heading to Holy Island, fishermen travelling between coastal communities, soldiers living in a contested border region, and countless ordinary people whose names we'll never know.
Walking it today gives us a very different reason to move through the same landscape.
And I think walking changes the way you experience history. In a car, a castle appears, you visit it, and then you drive to the next place. On foot, you watch it slowly appear in the distance. You see the landscape around it. You begin to understand why somebody chose that particular rocky outcrop for a fortress.
You also feel the distance between one place and another.
There's something about that I really like.
Beyond the Itinerary
When the Sole Sisters head to Northumberland, they'll already know that Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Holy Island and the Farne Islands are on the itinerary.
I'm more curious about what happens between those places.
Maybe it will be the first glimpse of Bamburgh Castle in the distance, or the weather rolling in from the North Sea. Maybe it will be a conversation that begins somewhere along the trail and is still going five kilometres later. Perhaps it will be a tiny fishing village, a pub that appears at exactly the right moment, or a puffin who turns out to be surprisingly photogenic.
And when they walk across the tidal sands toward Holy Island, I hope someone thinks about Osgyth.
We know almost nothing about her. But more than 1,300 years after her name was carved into a stone on Lindisfarne, another group of women will be making their way across that landscape on foot.
I rather like that connection.
Come Ramble With Us
Sole Sister Ramblers will be heading to Northumberland to walk a carefully chosen section of the King Charles III England Coast Path, accompanied by a knowledgeable local guide and a Sole Sister Ramblers host.
There will be castles, beaches, fishing villages, wildlife and plenty of history, along with the rather unusual experience of walking across the tidal sands to Holy Island.
And presumably a pub or two.
We are talking about England, after all.
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