The sea is still raging after yesterday’s storm, waves the highest that I’ve seen here, more ocean than North Sea. The water grey-green, full of churned up sand, is frothing and erupting against dark rocks, bursting with the force of geysers as it collides with the land.

Here at Cullernose Point, the dolerite cliffs of the Whin Sill thrust a giant wedge as they taper into the sea. It’s dramatic at all times, but today is especially thrilling, the sound all enveloping, the wind cutting, the air damp with spume.

We take the coastal path south between high banks of bent scrub, sheltered for a moment by stumpy sycamores and leaning hawthorns, their wind-woven branches vivid with lime-green lichens. There are scattered flowers on the gorse, sprawling dead grasses and bracken, and the barbed wire arcs of brambles. Frazzled seedheads top the stalks of last year’s knapweed mixed with fragmented skeletons of hogweed.

Then it’s out into the fullness of the weather for the best view of the geology of the bay. Below us are the whaleback folds of the lower foreshore, their limestones and sandstones curving gently like collapsed arches. And rising beyond are the massive hexagonal columns of the Whin Sill projecting out into the sea. Some 295 million years ago, tectonic movement allowed molten magma to intrude vertically between older landmass. The result is the spectacular landscape of the north: castles riding the hard rock, Hadrian’s Wall cresting its cliffs, the plummeting falls of High Force.

At Cullernose Point, the columns and fractured planes – so characteristic of dolerite – have made ledges perfect for nesting seabirds. A few pairs of white dots stand out against the grey-brown of the crags, fulmars that will soon be joined by kittiwakes returning after their winter at sea. Then the air will resound to their strident yet sweet calls, an uplifting soundscape to the Northumberland coast and even to the centre of Newcastle.

For now, it’s the fulmars that circle above my head and hang in the air, steadied by the force of the gale. My hands are numb with cold, but it’s exhilarating up here on the cliff, and a part of me feels it is riding the wind alongside the birds.