The regions best selling
countryside magazine
The regions best selling
countryside magazine
STEWART BONNEY enjoys a five-mile circular walk which starts in Ilderton village, south of Wooler.
As a prelude to the late summer spectacle of Seahouses lifeboat fete, GEOFF GREEN recalls last year's event.
IT'S August Bank Holiday weekend. This Saturday afternoon it's cold and windy, and the weather man is forecasting a force six gale out to sea.
ANTHONY TOOLE is inspired by one of the county's most dramatic natural landscapes, the Henhole.
THE geology of Northumberland is a rich and varied mix. In the south are the mineral-bearing limestones of the carboniferous era, while farther north is the ragged line of the Great Whin Sill, exposed most notably along the course of Hadrian's Wall and on Holy Island.
ALLAN POTTS meets a family farming in the high country of Upper Coquetdale.
ONE look at the ruddy, weatherbeaten face of Jim Singer makes it clear that sheep farming on Northumberland's high hills is clearly an occupation where you are exposed to all the elements. It's a land where all four seasons can show their face in a single day.
ON October 21 this year, the nation will be commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, and Lord Nelson will deservedly be acclaimed for his role in the conflict. But what of Vice-Admiral Lord Cuthbert Collingwood? ANDREW GRIFFIN maintains that it was the Newcastle-born Collingwood who led the Royal Navy to victory at Trafalgar, and prevented the French invasion.
IN Boulogne during 1805, Napoleon Bonaparte had gathered together 115,000 troops - the largest land army ever assembled. The terrified population along the English coastline feared that their defensive system would be unable to repel the brutal, battle-hardened soldiers from across the Channel. The recently-crowned Emperor of France claimed that, with "eight hours of clear water", England could be taken. All that stood in the way of the combined Spanish and French fleets was the Royal Navy.
JOHN GRUNDY takes an old-fashioned walk through Morpeth.
MORPETH presumably grew up because there was a crossing point over the river Wansbeck on the line of the Great North Road and the town expanded by stretching out along the road instead of squashing up into one concentrated heap of town in the middle.
SUSAN BURKE is taken on a guided tour of Kielder's wetlands.
THE Upper North Tyne valley probably isn't the best place for sun-lovers to call "home". Let me put it this way: a friend maintains that however good the weather elsewhere in the county, whenever she drives over the Wanney Hills towards Kielder there's usually a bank of grey cloud hanging over the distant vale.
STEVE NEWMAN explores Glendale's violent history and the monuments it has left behind.
GLENDALE as we know it today can be said to start just over the Scottish border, where Cheviot headwaters combine above Kirk Yetholm to form the Bowmont Water. In the time of the Reivers and Moss Troopers the 'Ten Towns of Glendale' were among the richest of villages to be found in the Borders and thus suffered enormously from deprivation and attack.
FRANCES DICKINSON pays tribute to Josephine Butler, the 19th-century social reformer.
"THE most distinguished woman of the 19th century" , and "the world is different because she lived" are just two of the personal tributes paid to the great social reformer, Josephine Butler, when she died in her lodgings in Wooler in 1906.
IAN KERR finds that when it comes to farm-fresh food, many birds prefer to go organic.
THE increasing popularity of organic food may at last be holding out hope of a change in fortune for many of our beleaguered farmland birds.
JOHN WORRALL investigates the world of gypsy waggons, and finds one of the few painters who still works on them.
JOHN Greenwood has always been interested in carts and waggons: he and his brother made a cart while they were still at school in the late 1960s.
SUSIE WHITE meets Northumbrian plants-woman Libby Scott in her Tyne Valley garden.
LIBBY Scott is a well-respected figure in the South Tyne Valley and has spent much of her life working in horticulture. She is known to many through her work for community groups, churches and charities and I was fascinated to find out more about her lifelong work in gardening.
PHIL HUNTLEY heads away from the shops and into the country for a variety of ingredients.
FOLLOWING an afternoon's picking in the autumn sunshine, a haversack full of berries weighed heavy. Thin twin straps cut into shirt-covered shoulders, and the hard forms of rose-hips pressed sweatily but satisfyingly into an aching back.
VERONICA HEATH visits the Maxwell's and their internationally successful business run from their family farm.
THERE is something inspiring about the wonderful Cheviot landscape which flanks our northern farms, because here I am again, visiting a family north of Wooler who have launched an internationally successful business from their family farm. For over 50 years, the Maxwell family have been farmers and today, with 200 Ayreshire and Holstein milking cows they are one of the very few dairy farms in Northumberland.
STEWART BONNEY enters the impressive portals of Newcastle's Literary and Philosophical Society, and finds a treasury of knowledge within.
FINDING a quiet refuge in the centre of Newcastle where you can read a book or newspaper in peace while enjoying a cup of real coffee can be difficult but, as members of the Lit & Phil library well know, it's not impossible.
KEVIN McDERMOTT recalls a fateful occasion in 1901 when 15 ships were wrecked on the Northumberland coast and 44 lives lost.
IN November 1901, the fishing lugger Amethyst was making her way home to Scotland after fishing in the southern North Sea. She left Grimsby on about November 10 and headed for Aberdeen, though she was registered in Lossiemouth.
Looking for some devil's bit scabious or black knapweed? GRAHAME ANDERSON knows a woman who can get you some ...
WHETHER it be with the smallest of window boxes or the largest of meadows, Judith Baker believes every individual can play a role in local wildlife conservation.