Allonby Bay, Solway Coast

The Solway coast is about as far from controlled airspace as you can get in England, and Allonby is its most flyable village: a long crescent of sand and shingle inside the Solway Coast National Landscape, with parking literally on the foreshore and views across the firth to Criffel and the Galloway hills in Scotland. The light here is the draw. Sunsets over the Solway are routinely spectacular, and because the bay faces north-west you get the sun going down over water for most of the year — rare on the Cumbrian coast. From altitude the low tide reveals scars and channels, and just south at Crosscanonby you can frame the Roman milefortlet earthworks and the medieval salt pans from above, subjects that only really read from the air. Wind farms out in the firth give you industrial-scale context shots too. It is exposed and often breezy, but the dunes offer enough of a lee to launch comfortably on most days. Crowds are never an issue outside a handful of summer weekends; this is one of the quietest coastlines in the north-west. Do note the bay is a Marine Conservation Zone and the mudflats feed huge winter bird populations — fly from the village frontage and leave the big roosts alone. Ice cream from Twentymans afterwards is mandatory.