Nose's Point & Blast Beach, Seaham

The Durham Heritage Coast's redemption story, and it photographs brilliantly from the air. Blast Beach spent a century buried under colliery spoil from Dawdon pit; the sea has been scouring it clean ever since, leaving a strange, beautiful shoreline of dark mineral-stained sand, rust-orange patches, magnesian limestone cliffs and sea stacks running south towards Chourdon Point — otherworldly enough that the opening of Alien 3 was shot down there. You park literally on the clifftop at Nose's Point, TOAL from the grass a few steps from the car, and you're immediately over the good stuff. Top-downs of the mottled beach colours are the signature shot; cliff-parallel tracking runs at mid-height are a close second. Gotchas: a westerly here is an offshore wind that will happily escort a Mini out to sea, so watch your drift and keep upwind margin; the cliff edge also generates rotor in any onshore blow. Fulmars and kittiwakes use ledges along this coast in spring and early summer, so fly your cliff passes with lateral offset rather than hugging the face. It's remarkably quiet for somewhere ten minutes off the A19 — a few dog walkers, the odd fossil hunter, and that's it most mornings.