THEY call this “travel”, but is travel the right word? I’m on the beach. The tide’s coming in – sea teasing sand, sand teasing sea. Between here and the castle, a field of marram grass is moving to the orders of the wind. Some children conquer a dune. A gull glides over. A dog runs past – mission: pursuit of stick. For a moment, I am the only one who isn’t moving. Travel isn’t the right word. I’ve stopped travelling. And I love it.

I knew I would. I’ve been to Bamburgh beach several times before and it always works. It always make you stop and look – at the castle, which is the finest on this coastline of castles, and at the long stretch of sand, spread flat and gold, butter on toast, and back along the coast towards the village of Seahouses where we’re staying, at the Bamburgh Castle Inn. Scots may be brought up to think their coastline is the most beautiful in the British Isles, but I’m not so sure. I’ve defected.

The Bamburgh Castle Inn is also the perfect place to see and enjoy this part of the coast. The hotel sits at the top of the harbour and the dog-friendly room we’re staying in has its own little private garden that starts with a comfy terrace and ends with a view of the fishing boats and the pier and the North Sea. Winter’s on the way so the sea is in a bit of a bad mood when we arrive, but it doesn’t matter. We retreat to the hotel’s restaurant and order pints of Doom Bar and plates piled high with chips.

The next day is more castles and our choice this time is Dunstanburgh, a ridiculously dramatic ruin a few miles south of Bamburgh. One of the best ways to get there is to park at the village of Craster and walk along the coast and there it is: charcoaled across the horizon, dark, ruinous. It was built in 1313 not as a fortress against the Scots, as you might expect in this part of England in the 14th century, but as a fortress against the wrong kind of English (the king was at war with his barons). We circle the battlements. The sheep pay us no mind.

Then, having let the distant past crowd in, we travel inland to a different, more personal kind of history. Our destination is the village of Allendale. We park near the King’s Head pub and head down the hill and there it is, parked incongruously, mockingly even, at the bottom of a flight of steps. It’s a Dalek and it’s the doorman of the Museum of Classic Sci-Fi.

Inside, we meet Neil Cole, the creator and curator of the museum. It’s an extraordinary and exciting place for someone like me – whose hero was, is, and always will be Tom Baker – but for Neil it’s even more personal.

He remembers playing in the fields and moors of Northumberland when he was growing up in the 70s and his childish mind could turn rocky outcrops into landing sites for Sontaran spacecraft and the moorland into the Death Zone on Gallifrey. This is where his imagination, sparked by a TV programme, came to play.

And now, aged 51, his vivid imagination has turned the basement of his home in Allendale into a fascinating museum full of the original props and paintings and monsters that he’s collected over the years. There is the head of a killer mummy and the face of an alien gastropod and a complete example of a Zygon, the race of aliens who hid in an underground base in Scotland and controlled the Loch Ness Monster. Neil says the magic is in getting close to the things that matter to you and I see what he means. It’s a wonderful place that delights in the possibilities of imagination and the craftsmanship of the people who turn imagination into objects.

There’s something similar going on in the shop we visit on the way back to the coast: Re, in Corbridge. This town was once the place where the Romans controlled the north of England (or tried to) but it’s now an attractive market town full of quirky shops and Re is the best of them. It sells a mixture of new and antique home accessories and we wander through little corridors of plates and cups and jugs, and past shelves of primary-colour cushions and end up in a corner piled high with yellow and red and blue slabs of soap. My urge is to buy it all.

And the shopping is not done for the day. We head for Alnwick and the beloved Barters book shop, said to be the biggest second-hand book store in Britain. Who knows if it is or not but I do know how wonderful it is. It’s housed in a former railway station and there’s a model train that runs round the room to remind you of its origins. I spend two hours browsing, stop for a baked potato in the café, then do another two hours. In the land of castles, this is a castle of books.

Bags full of goodies, we head back to the Bamburgh Castle Inn. Some pub restaurants rise above the phrase “pub grub” and this is one of them. The homemade steak and stout pie is a rich, handsome thing but so is the Tex-Mex veggie burger; and if seafood’s your thing, some Scottish mussels have also made their way down here. It is all topped off, naturally, with a few more sips of Doom Bar. We take our pints out to the terrace. Down at the harbour, some fishermen are working on their boat. A man is walking his dog up from the beach. The gulls glide. But we are still. We’ve stopping moving again. And we’re happy.

TRAVEL FACTS

Mark Smith was a guest stayed at The Bamburgh Castle Inn as a guest of The Inn Collection Group www.inncollectiongroup.com. Advance booking of bed and breakfast is available at The Bamburgh Castle Inn from £89 a night in January and February, £108 in March, £117 in April, £125 in May and £153 in June, July and August. For more information on The Museum of Classic Sci-Fi, visit museumofclassicsci-fi.com