Many years ago I fell in love with a TV series called Robin of Sherwood. Created by the late, great Richard Carpenter, it was a beautifully shot, mystical, pagan, and haunting interpretation of the Robin Hood tales. The first episode takes Robin out of the greenwood to the castle of the Satanic sorcerer Baron Simon de Belleme – gloomy and bleak, a cavernous stronghold along a remote stretch of coast. ‘Castle de Belleme’ seems too perfect in design and location to be real. But it is real, in all but name. Bamburgh Castle. I went there on Saturday.
Our visit was happenstance rather than a fan pilgrimage. Our wanderings have brought us to the Northumberland coast, near Seahouses, where dunes and pale wind-swept beaches curve for miles. We walked for miles and then there it was, built by the Normans in the 11th Century on the site of a 5th Century fortress. And for a long moment I only stood and stared, caught in that strange disconnect where story meets reality and both seem equally present, where it somehow would not surprise me to glance seawards and see the Hooded Man striding up the beach, his gaze fixed on the tower where Marion was imprisoned by the fiendish Baron de Belleme.
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