Last weekend I was up in Northumberland, and on the last day – Sunday – visited Embleton Bay. The last time I was here I was walking the Northumberland coastal path, heading north towards Lindisfarne. This time it was just a short walk along the beach, and for some of the family, a splash in the sea.

Embleton Bay is one of the many scallop shaped dips in the northeast coastline. It is low, with dunes on the landward side rather than cliffs, and the view to the south ends with the splendid ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle, dark against the vivid blue sky.

Embleton Bay happens also to be the location of one of the flashback scenes in Far from the Spaceports. Here, we meet Mitnash and Shayna camping (in what is admittedly a very high-tech tent), before Mit gets sent offworld to the asteroids called The Scilly Isles. Looking at the view last Sunday, it was not too difficult to imagine the two of them pitched here on the border between dunes and beach. It was a last opportunity to enjoy each other’s company – and in Mit’s case, the delights of open air and water – before being parted. I’ve added an extract below…

Shayna has probably had the thin end of the story so far, but as and when I write the third book in the series, provisionally called The Authentication Key, she should get more narrative attention!

And just to keep the Northumberland theme going, here’s Mark Knofler from YouTube, with a rather different mood than his better known riffs…

And here’s the extract…

I was away in the Northumbrian national park, walking the Bernician Way with nothing but one of the recent model v-tents and Shayna. Neither of us were at all interested in walking long-distance footpaths, but we both liked the absence of neighbours. A couple can make a lot of noise out in a national park, without thinking someone else might be disturbed.

But there it was, that morning, the message alert blinking silently on my shirt lapel where I’d discarded it for swimming in the North Sea last night, almost hidden by Shayna’s NuFleece. She might not like long distance walking, but she loved the prospect of skinny-dipping in sea water not far above freezing, and then thinking of inventive ways to warm up. That was so much easier when you could come out of the water and straight into a v-tent micro environment set at whatever climate you wanted. Right now we were in a Middle Egyptian May – temperature, humidity, everything.

Shayna liked to say that the chosen location was part of her genetic heritage, and she was in search of her roots. I was never sure about that, but I had no great preference myself. She had configured it just as soon as I had set the tent up, and it had taken under a minute to climatise itself.

So all through the night, with a North Sea winter gale blowing up and down outside, there we were in the Valley of the Kings. You didn’t mind so much going into cold water with all that warmth waiting. We’d polarised the fabric, silver from the outside and clear from the inside, and we lay together watching the half moon slide in and out of the curving clouds.

We’d arrived at low water, but I’d pitched the tent well up the beach, on a strip of pale sand between some levels of flat rock. High tide was in the early hours of the morning, and the waves had washed close up against us in the cosy dark.

I scowled at the lapel badge, wondering if there was any way to pretend I had not seen it. There wasn’t, not really. Slate would have acknowledged receipt of the incoming at the same time as redirecting it, and would have tagged its reception with all kinds of logging. It was far too late for me to try hacking anything. The real question was whether I could get away with avoiding it for more hours than I had already, but I already knew the answer to that one as well.

I tapped the lapel, and listened to the message sullenly. Recalled to London… first opportunity… Twelve hour SLA. I sighed, and entered the release commit. Slate would do the rest for me. Then I turned to look at Shayna. There she was in the morning light: brown skin enjoying the warm air, dark hair spilling over the pillow, and dark eyes opening with an air of frustration as she saw me working the lapel.

“I suppose you’re going to say there’s no more holiday now.”

I nodded.

“Recall at first available. Back to London for me.” I paused. “You could stay here?”

“Oh, Mit. Where’s the fun in that?”

She closed her eyes again briefly, but I could see the little muscle movements in her face as she interrogated her Stele. Rocky, she called him, and he was male in persona as well as voice. It was fair enough: Slate was undeniably female.

“We have three hours before the east coast express stops at Alnmouth. A quarter hour to pack up, half an hour to Craster, quarter hour transfer. That gives us another swim and time to warm up again afterwards.”

I loosened a vent a notch or two, listened to a sudden gust of wind, imagined what the air and water would be like.

“We could miss out the swim and just stay warm?”

She reached past me and tapped the door release, inviting the gust inside the tent where it contended unsuccessfully with the thermal regulation.

“Wherever it is they are going to send you now, you won’t have water like this. Out you go and enjoy it one more time.”

I shook my head, but got out and stood up anyway, naked in all that volume of cold rushing air. The tide had fallen again, and the sea froth was a little way down the beach. Shayna pushed past me and ran, arms waving above her head, shrieking with excitement as the wildness of the wind encircled her soul. I followed on, but she reached the water well before me, and threw herself in to the tumble of the waves.

Twenty years ago I would never have done this, but things had changed. Anyway, she was right: wherever I was going, it wouldn’t have wind and waves like this. I followed her.

…

It had been a long day. An icy bathe first thing in Embleton Bay, followed by Egyptian warmth. Then down to London for the first briefing, and some intense training sessions on commodities. Slate had uplinked a whole library of reading material on the subject, from finding the stuff right through to trading it. But I stopped at the point of trading, and even today I have very little idea how rare earths are actually used. But by the end of the journey I would sound totally convincing on the important parts of the subject. Finally, a second briefing with Elias, and a scramble to Euston to catch the overnight to Findhorn.

I had intended to gaze forlornly out of the window as I hurtled past Alnmouth again, this time heading north. However, fatigue had got the better of me and I was dozing at the time, propped up in a corner. I surfaced again somewhere well north of Dundee, just as it was getting light. On the east coast line, most of the trains stopped in Edinburgh, but this was the Spaceport Special, non-stop right the way through.