Alnwick - the lionheart of Northumbria

Alnwick Garden cascade.

Alnwick Garden treehouse.

View of Alnwick Castle from the Lion Bridge.

Alnwick is a small market town in North-Northumberland. It has narrow cobbled streets, friendly locals and is seeped in history. The town also boasts a fine castle surrounded by beautifully landscaped pastures, woodland and moorland. A fairly recent addition to the town is the popular Alnwick Garden. The Alnwick Garden boasts a magnificent tiered cascade and fountains and the largest treehouse in Britain. There is also a well-stocked rose garden and a poison garden comprising some of the most deadly and illegal plants in the country. The garden is a family oriented venue where children can splash around in the fountains, ride around on toy tractors and play games while the adults snooze in the shade or explore the wide array of flora and fauna. The Alnwick Garden is well worth a visit, but I would time it so that you had a good few hours there on a bright sunny day. Admission prices are £8 adult, £7.50 concession and free for up to 4 children accompanying an adult. You get better value for money if you buy a joint castle and garden ticket.

Alnwick Castle itself, the second largest inhabited castle in Britain, has been the seat of the Earls and Dukes of Northumberland since 1309. The present Duke and Duchess are Ralph and Jane Percy. The Duchess was the main driving force behind the Alnwick Garden and still has a very much hands on role. The castle overlooks beautiful grass pastures which many Alnwick locals use for recreation. The castle acted as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the recent movies Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. It was also the venue of the first Blackadder series with Rowan Atkinson. Every Shrove Tuesday there is a big football match on the pastures between the town's two parishes of St. Michael's and St. Paul's. Traditionally the Duke throws the ball from the castle barbican before it is marched down the Peth to the sound of pipe music. Most people who have lived in Alnwick all their life are uncertain of the rules of the match, if there even is any! At the end of the match the ball is thrown into the River Aln and the person who retrieves it gets to keep it as a momento.

Hulne Park is another part of the Northumberland Estate. The enclosed park, mainly conifer woodland and rolling moorland, is the ideal venue for walking and offers many scenic views of the coast to the east and snow topped Cheviot Hills to the north. Hulne Priory and Brizlee Tower are also located in the park.

In the town centre you'll find Barter Books, the largest second hand bookshop in the country. The shop is an Aladdin's cave housed in the old station buildings opposite the Tenantry Column (referred to as the Lion Column by locals). As you enter the shop you are greeted by friendly staff and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and muffins. If you are an avid reader you could easily spend an entire day leafing through the collection, listening to music and relaxing in front of the crackling log fire in the old station waiting room.

Every summer the town hosts the Alnwick International Music Festival and Alnwick Fair. These events are free of charge and are in the Market Place. The music festival tries to offer fresh entertainment each year and, as the name would indicate, has acts from across the globe. The fair is getting a bit stale - it still seems popular with visitors to the town, but is the ideal excuse for local people to book a holiday and get away for the week!

Article adapted from the Wikipedia online encyclopedia.

How to get to Alnwick:
By road from the south: take the main A1 trunk road from Newcastle upon Tyne. Alnwick is about 35 miles on the left and is clearly sign posted.
By road from the north: Take the main A1 trunck road from Edinburgh and Berwick upon Tweed. Alnwick is about 30 miles south of Berwick on the right and is clearly sign posted.
By rail: The nearest station is Alnmouth for Alnwick. Take Arriva Northumbria bus service 518 into Alnwick. Additionally, the Dreadnought Coaches operate a Coastal Clipper service during the summer months.
By bus: Arriva Northumbria services 501/505 (weekdays and Saturdays) and Travelsure service 525 (Sundays and public holidays only) run between Newcastle upon Tyne and Berwick upon Tweed and call at Alnwick.

Map of area: CLICK HERE

The Farne Islands

Grey Seals bask in the sunshine.

Longstone lighthouse - location of Grace Darling's famous rescue.

If you head towards the North-Northumberland coastal villages of Seahouses and Bamburgh, you can't help but notice the imposing cliffs of Inner Farne jutting from the sea in the distance. Inner Farne is the most prominant of about 20 islands depending on the state of the tide.

Perhaps the most famous island is Longstone, because of the distinctive red and white striped lighthouse - a favourite on local postcards. The lighthouse was also the home of Grace Darling, a young girl who heroically helped her father, the lighthouse keeper, row across perillously high seas to rescue stranded sailors.

In the early hours of September 7, 1838, Grace, looking from an upstairs window of her family's current lighthouse on the Farne Islands, spotted the ship, Forfarshire, which had run aground on the Harcar Rocks only a few hundreds of yards away. Knowing that the weather was too rough for the lifeboat to put out from the shore, Grace and her father took a rowing boat across to the other island and rescued nine frightened survivors, bringing them safely back to the lighthouse.

Even in her lifetime, Grace's achievement was celebrated, and she received a large financial reward in addition to the plaudits of the nation. She died of tuberculosis, unmarried, in 1842, and her memorial may be seen in the parish church at Bamburgh, close to a museum dedicated to her achievements and the seafaring life of the region. Her deed was committed to verse by Wordsworth and a lifeboat with her name was presented to Holy Island.

The Farnes today are well known for their wide variety of sea life and birds. Frequent pleasure boats take tourists around the islands to admire the Grey Seals, Puffins, Cormorants, Kittiwakes and Terns. The sheltered coves and numerous wrecks around the islands also make them a popular venue for divers.

They are definitely worth a trip. Start in Seahouses in the early morning and catch one of the many boat trips out there. A trip lasts about 2 hours. Try and get a landing on Inner Farne, Longstone or Staple Island and you can admire the spectacular scenery and varied plant, bird and aquatic life for yourself. Once you arrive back on dry land take the pleasant five minute drive to Bamburgh and visit the castle, Grace Darling museum and memorial.

Article adapted from the Wikipedia online encyclopedia.

How to get to the Farne Islands:
By road from the south: take the main A1 trunk road from Newcastle upon Tyne. About 40 miles north of Newcastle you will pass the small hamelet of Brownieside on the left. Take the next right after Brownieside and follow signs for Beadnell and Seahouses.
By road from the north: Take the main A1 trunck road from Edinburgh and Berwick upon Tweed. About 15 miles south of Berwick you will come to Belford, with it's distinctive grain silos on the left. Turn left at the junction next to the silos and follow signs for Bamburgh and Seahouses.
By rail: The nearest station is Chathill, but the services there are very infrequent. Your best bet is to get a train to Alnmouth for Alnwick station and take the local 518 bus service to Alnwick, before catching the connecting 501 bus service to Seahouses.
By bus: Arriva Northumbria service 501 runs between Newcastle upon Tyne and Berwick upon Tweed and passes through Seahouses.

Map of area: CLICK HERE

The Northumberland National Park

The Coquet Valley in the Cheviot foothills.

One of Northumberland's best attractions is the beautiful rolling hills and moorland of the National Park. The park, covering some 1030 square kilometers, lies to the west of the county and is edged by the remote Cheviot Hills to the north and Hadrians Wall to the south. Kielder Forest, one of the largest conifer plantations in Europe, provides one of the final few homes to Britain's native red squirrel. The squirrel, which lives in both broadleaf and conifer woodlands, is practically extinct in other parts of Britain due to competition with the larger North American grey squirrel. Kielder Water, a vast man-made reservoir at the start of the River North Tyne, provides the ideal venue for water skiing, sailing and angling. The forest around the reservoir is cris-crossed with trails and picnic sites for leisurely afternoon strolls.

Article based on Wikipedia and Northumberland National Park websites.

Welcome to My Northumberland

Tourist map of Northumberland.

The county of Northumberland, in the North East of England, is one of the last great wildernesses of the United Kingdom.

Once part of the Roman Empire and the scene of many wars between England and Scotland, Northumberland has a long and complicated history. This explains the many castles in Northumberland, including among the better-known those at Bamburgh, Dunstanburgh, Warkworth and Alnwick.

The region of present-day Northumberland once formed the core of the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria. Northumberland is called the "cradle of Christianity" in England, because it was on Lindisfarne, a tidal island north of Bamburgh, also called Holy Island, that Christianity flourished when monks from Iona were sent to convert the English. Lindisfarne was the home of the Lindisfarne Gospels and Saint Cuthbert, who is buried at Durham Cathedral.

Bamburgh is the historic capital of Northumberland, the "royal" castle from before the unification of England under one monarch. The capital of Northumberland now, however, may be thought to be the market town of Alnwick, mainly because the Duke of Northumberland has his home there; or may be thought of as Morpeth, since Northumberland County Council's offices are in that town.

The physical geography of Northumberland is diverse. It is low and flat near the North Sea coast and increasingly mountainous toward the northwest. The Cheviot Hills, in the northwest of the county, consist mainly of resistant Devonian granite and andesite lava. A second area of igneous rock underlies Whin Sill (on which Hadrian's Wall runs), an intrusion of carboniferous Dolerite. Both ridges support a rather bare moorland landscape. Either side of Whin Sill the county lies on carboniferous limestone, giving some areas of karst landscape. Lying off the coast of Northumberland are the Farne Islands, another Dolerite outcrop, famous for their bird life.

There are coal fields in the southeast corner of the county, extending along the coastal region north of the river Tyne. The term sea coal likely originated from chunks of coal, found washed up on beaches, that wave action had broken from coastal outcroppings.

Being in the far north of England, above 55° latitude, and having many areas of high land, Northumberland is one of the coldest areas of the country. It has an average annual temperature of 7.1 to 9.3 °C, with the coldest temperatures inland. However, the county lies on the east coast, and has relatively low rainfall, between 466 and 1060 mm annually, mostly falling in the west on the high land. Between 1971 and 2000 the county averaged 1321 to 1390 hours of sunshine per year.

Approximately a quarter of the county is protected as the Northumberland National Park, an area of outstanding landscape that has largely been protected from development and agriculture. The park stretches south from the Scottish border and includes Hadrian's Wall. Most of the park is over 800 feet (240 metres) above sea level.

Each week I will describe where to go, what to do and beautiful places to see in My Northumberland.

Article adapted from the Wikipedia online encyclopedia.