Things to do in Tyne and Wear

Alnmouth is a small estuary village on the Northumberland coast at the mouth of the River Aln, a settlement of considerable charm whose elevated position above the river estuary, the excellent sandy beach extending north along the coast and the character of a traditional Northumberland coastal community make it one of the most attractive small villages on this exceptionally beautiful stretch of coast. The village developed as a grain exporting port in the eighteenth century, its position at the river mouth providing the sheltered anchorage needed for the coastal trade. The beach north of the estuary, accessible by the footbridge from the village, is a broad and largely deserted stretch of Northumberland sand backed by dunes that extends northward toward the Boulmer coast in a walking destination of considerable quality. The sands here are some of the finest on the Northumberland coast and the combination of the beach, the estuary wildlife and the views across to the dunes on the far bank create a coastal experience of great beauty that is less visited than the more celebrated destinations of this county. The village itself, with its colourful painted cottages on the ridge above the estuary, the old granary buildings converted to new uses and the estuary views from the village green, provides an excellent complement to the beach visit. The golf course on the dunes north of the village is one of the finest links courses in the northeast, and the Northumberland coastal path connecting Alnmouth with Alnwick and the wider Northumberland heritage landscape provides excellent onward walking.

The Alnwick Garden is one of the most ambitious and most innovative garden projects of the early twenty-first century, a new garden created from scratch adjacent to Alnwick Castle in Northumberland from 1997 onward by the Duchess of Northumberland whose combination of the Grand Cascade, the Poison Garden, the Treehouse restaurant, the Labyrinth and the Rose Garden has created a destination attracting several hundred thousand visitors annually and widely credited with transforming the economic fortunes of this section of the Northumberland coast. The Grand Cascade, the central architectural feature of the garden, consists of twenty-one weirs descending a formal axis of considerable scale in a display of moving water that is one of the most impressive formal water features in any garden in Britain. The cascade is activated several times daily and the combination of the sound, movement and visual drama of the water feature creates an immediate and impressive introduction to the garden's ambitions. The Poison Garden is the most unusual and most talked-about section, a walled garden planted exclusively with toxic, narcotic and dangerous plants, from giant hogweed and deadly nightshade through cannabis and coca to the belladonna and henbane of the medieval herbalist tradition. The guided tours of the Poison Garden are among the most popular activities at Alnwick and the combination of horticultural knowledge, danger and dark history creates an experience quite unlike anything available in any other garden in Britain.

Bamburgh is one of the most spectacular and well-known beaches in the whole of Britain, a long sweep of pale sand on the Northumberland coast that is dominated by the enormous silhouette of Bamburgh Castle rising from its basalt outcrop at the northern end of the bay. The castle, one of the most imposing coastal fortifications in England, and the beach below it together create a scene of extraordinary visual drama that has made Bamburgh one of the most photographed locations in northern England. The beach extends for several kilometres to the south of the castle and provides wide, uncrowded sands even in the height of summer, when the relative remoteness of the Northumberland coast keeps visitor numbers well below those of the more accessible resorts further south. The beach is backed by dunes and coastal grassland within the Northumberland Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and the views offshore to the Farne Islands provide constant interest. The Farnes, a cluster of low rocky islands lying just offshore, support one of the most important seabird colonies in Britain, with tens of thousands of puffins, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and Arctic terns breeding on the islands each summer. The National Trust operates boat trips from the nearby harbour at Seahouses that allow visitors to land on Inner Farne and observe the seabirds at very close quarters, and the grey seal colony that hauls out on several of the islands is among the largest in Europe. The village of Bamburgh is one of the most attractive on the Northumberland coast, its quiet streets of stone cottages clustering around the castle mound with a church that contains the tomb of Grace Darling, the lighthouse keeper's daughter who became a Victorian national heroine for her role in rescuing survivors from the wrecked Forfarshire steamer in 1838. The Grace Darling Museum in the village tells her story in full. The wider Northumberland coast provides miles of additional walking and beach exploration, with Holy Island (Lindisfarne) accessible by causeway to the north and the dunes and nature reserves of Druridge Bay extending to the south.

Beadnell is a small village on the Northumberland coast whose harbour is the only west-facing harbour on the east coast of England, a geographical curiosity that gives the settlement an unusually sheltered anchorage and a distinctive character among the fishing villages of this beautiful coastline. The eighteenth-century lime kilns on the harbourside, among the finest examples of coastal industrial archaeology on the Northumberland coast, are maintained by the National Trust and provide a powerful visual reminder of the lime-burning industry that once made Beadnell harbour commercially significant. The beaches either side of Beadnell are among the finest on the Northumberland coast. To the south, Beadnell Bay stretches as a wide, sandy arc backed by dunes within the Northumberland Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, offering the kind of uncrowded, clean beach experience that has made this section of the Northumberland coast one of the UK's most celebrated coastal destinations. The water quality here is consistently excellent and the beach provides good conditions for swimming, watersports and family beach activities throughout the summer season. To the north, the coast continues toward Seahouses and the Farne Islands, one of the most important seabird and grey seal habitats in Europe. The National Trust boat trips from Seahouses harbour allow visitors to land on Inner Farne, where puffins, Arctic terns and grey seals provide wildlife encounters of extraordinary quality during the breeding season. The medieval chapel of St Cuthbert on Inner Farne marks the place where the Northumbrian saint lived as a hermit in the seventh century, a connection that links this wildlife sanctuary to the earliest and most important period of the Northumbrian church. Beadnell is an excellent base for exploring the central Northumberland coast, with Bamburgh Castle and its beach, the Farne Islands and the Holy Island of Lindisfarne all within easy reach.

Cragside House in Northumberland is one of the most remarkable country houses in Britain, a Victorian Gothic mansion built between 1864 and 1895 by the industrialist and inventor William Armstrong on a rocky hillside above the Debdon Burn that was the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectric power. Armstrong, who made his fortune from hydraulic machinery and armaments manufacture and became one of the wealthiest industrialists of Victorian England, brought the same inventive and systematic intelligence to his country house that he applied to engineering, creating a building of extraordinary technological ambition set within one of the most ambitious Victorian woodland gardens in the country. The house was designed primarily by Richard Norman Shaw in the Old English style, developed in stages across thirty years of building that added wings, towers and gables in a picturesque accumulation suggesting organic growth over centuries rather than a single patron's sustained building programme. The result is a building of considerable visual complexity that grows convincingly from its rocky hillside setting, its various rooflines and projections catching the light in ways that make it look different from every angle and in every season. The interior is among the finest surviving Victorian domestic settings in Britain. The library, the Owl Drawing Room with its extraordinary inglenook fireplace of marble and tile, and the dining room represent the Arts and Crafts aesthetic at its most complete and considered, every surface and fitting contributing to a total domestic environment of great richness. The hydroelectric system installed by Armstrong from 1878 onward, using the streams on the estate to power arc lamps and later incandescent bulbs, was a pioneering achievement in electrical engineering that anticipated the domestic electricity supply by decades. The estate includes one of the largest rock gardens in Europe, extensive Victorian plantings of rhododendrons and conifers and five purpose-built lakes feeding the hydroelectric system.

Cragside near Rothbury in Northumberland was the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectric power, a remarkable Victorian country house built by the engineer and arms manufacturer William Armstrong from 1863 onward in which the application of the most advanced technology of the age to every aspect of domestic comfort created a house of extraordinary innovation. The National Trust manages Cragside, whose combination of the pioneering technology, the extraordinary Victorian garden landscape of rock garden and exotic planting and the Armstrong collections makes it one of the most interesting and most distinctively characterful National Trust properties in the north of England. Armstrong built Cragside in the wooded gorge of the Debdon Burn, exploiting the natural water resources of the stream system to power the hydraulic and electrical systems that made the house famous. By 1880 the house had electric arc lighting powered by a hydroelectric system on the adjacent lakes, predating any other domestic electrical installation in the world. The range of hydraulic machinery installed at Cragside, from the kitchen spit to the hydraulic passenger lift, created a domestic environment of technological sophistication that astonished visitors in its day. The rock garden, one of the largest Victorian rock gardens in the world covering several hectares of the gorge slope, was planted by Armstrong with rhododendrons, azaleas and other acid-loving plants in a display that at its June peak is one of the most spectacular garden experiences in Northumberland.

Craster is a small fishing village on the Northumberland coast famous throughout Britain for its traditionally oak-smoked kippers, produced by the Robson family in the smokehouse that has operated in the village since 1906 and which continues to supply what many consider the finest kippers available anywhere in the country. The village also provides the starting point for the two-mile coastal walk to Dunstanburgh Castle, one of the finest short coastal walks in northeast England combining the character of the Northumberland coast with the dramatic ruins of one of the most remote of England's medieval castles. The Robson kipper smokehouse is the principal industry and the dominant identity of Craster, its traditional method of cold-smoking whole herring over oak sawdust producing kippers of an intensity and quality that have developed a national reputation. The kippers can be purchased directly from the smokehouse and from the village shop, and the combination of the quality of the product and the directness of the purchase from the producer in the working village provides one of the most authentic food heritage experiences on the northeast coast. The walk from Craster to Dunstanburgh Castle passes along the rocky foreshore and through the coastal grassland of the Northumberland coast path, the profile of the castle appearing progressively more dramatic as the walk develops. The castle ruins, managed by English Heritage, provide the destination for a round walk that returns across the fields behind the coast in an excellent circuit of about four miles.

Dunstanburgh Castle on the Northumberland coast is the most dramatically positioned and most romantically evocative ruined castle in northeast England, a massive fourteenth-century fortification standing on a great basalt outcrop above the sea whose substantial remaining towers and walls can be reached only on foot along the beach from Craster to the south or Embleton Bay to the north, the absence of road access preserving the sense of remoteness and dramatic coastal situation that has made it one of the most painted and most photographed castles in England. Turner painted the castle on several occasions and the view across Embleton Bay to the silhouetted towers remains one of the finest in Northumberland. The castle was built in 1313 by Thomas Earl of Lancaster, a rival of Edward II, as a statement of power and as a refuge against royal displeasure. The subsequent turbulent history of the castle through the Wars of the Roses, when it changed hands several times, and the progressive decay of the buildings following the Tudor period have reduced it to ruins that are nonetheless still substantial enough to convey the enormous scale of the original fortification. The gatehouse-keep, the largest and most impressive surviving structure, rises to considerable height above the basalt cliff. The beach walk from Craster to the castle of approximately two miles along the rocky foreshore and the coastal grassland provides one of the finest short coastal walks in Northumberland, the growing drama of the castle profile as the walk progresses being one of the great approach experiences available at any English castle.

Embleton Bay on the Northumberland coast near Alnwick is one of the finest and most dramatically set beaches on the northeast coast of England, a broad arc of sand between the village of Embleton and the low headland of Newton Point that provides the finest view of Dunstanburgh Castle of any point on the coast, the great fourteenth-century ruins rising on their basalt outcrop above the southern end of the bay in a profile of considerable drama against the Northumberland sky. The combination of the beach quality, the castle view and the coastal walking connecting Embleton Bay to the wider Northumberland coastal landscape makes it one of the most rewarding beach and heritage visits in the northeast. The beach extends for approximately two miles between the golf course dunes at the Embleton end and the rocky foreshore at Newton Point, the sand backed by dunes of considerable height that shelter the beach from the prevailing winds and create the enclosed character that gives the bay its particular appeal. The dune grassland behind the beach provides habitat for characteristic coastal flora and the rock pools at the Newton end provide marine life interest at low tide. The walk south from Embleton Bay along the coast to Craster via the Dunstanburgh Castle headland is one of the finest short coastal walks in Northumberland, the castle approached from the north providing the most dramatic initial view of the ruins and the coastal scenery of the Low Newton-by-the-Sea coast providing excellent walking before and after the castle.

Sycamore Gap on Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland is the most photographed section of the Wall, a dramatic dip in the wall's course on the Whin Sill escarpment where a single sycamore tree stood for over a century in the hollow between two high sections of the Roman curtain wall in a composition of tree, wall and Northumberland sky that became one of the most recognised natural heritage images in the British Isles. The tree achieved international fame through its appearance in the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and its felling by vandals in September 2023 created an outpouring of national grief quite remarkable for the loss of a single tree. The Sycamore Gap tree was the most beloved single tree in England, a position recognised by its victory in the Woodland Trust's Tree of the Year competition on multiple occasions and confirmed by the enormous public reaction to its destruction. The young sycamore now growing from the root stock of the original tree, protected in place while the remaining trunk was removed for preservation, provides the basis for the next chapter in the story of this extraordinary location. The section of Hadrian's Wall through which Sycamore Gap runs, between Housesteads and Steel Rigg, is among the most dramatic on the entire Wall route, the Whin Sill escarpment providing the natural defensive advantage that the Wall's builders exploited in placing their barrier here. The walking on the Wall path in both directions from Sycamore Gap provides the finest experiences of Hadrian's Wall in a landscape of considerable power and beauty.

Housesteads Roman Fort on Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland is the finest and most completely preserved Roman fort in Britain, a cavalry fort of the second century AD that has been comprehensively excavated to reveal the complete layout of a Roman garrison including the headquarters building, the granaries, the barracks, the hospital and the remarkably complete latrine block in a state of preservation unequalled at any other fort on the Wall. English Heritage manages the fort and the combination of the site quality and the dramatic Wall scenery on the Whin Sill escarpment creates the most complete Roman military heritage experience available in Britain. The fort's layout, clearly legible from the surviving foundations and partial wall remains, provides one of the most instructive plans of a Roman military installation available anywhere in the Empire. The granaries with their underfloor ventilation systems, the headquarters building with its strongroom beneath the floor, the hospital with its wards and operating facilities and the latrine block with its continuous bench seating over a constant water flush create a picture of organised, hygienic and efficiently managed military life that challenges assumptions about Roman civilisation in the British provinces. The Wall section immediately adjacent to Housesteads, including the well-preserved section toward Cuddy's Crags to the east and the dramatic approach from Steel Rigg to the west, provides some of the finest walking on the entire Wall route and the combination of the fort visit with the Wall walking creates one of the most completely satisfying half-day heritage experiences in northern England.

Northumberland National Park is the emptiest and most remote of England's national parks, a vast landscape of moorland, ancient woodland and river valleys covering over 1,000 square kilometres of the Cheviot Hills and the moorland between them and Hadrian's Wall that is home to the smallest permanent population of any English national park and contains some of the most completely rural and least disturbed countryside in England. The park has been designated an International Dark Sky Park, reflecting the almost complete absence of light pollution in this thinly populated region and making it one of the finest places in England for observing the night sky. The Cheviots form the principal topographic feature of the park, a broad massif of rounded, peat-topped hills rising to 815 metres at The Cheviot itself and extending across the Anglo-Scottish border into the Scottish Borders. The hills provide excellent upland walking of the open, trackless variety that rewards navigation skills and the ability to manage moorland conditions, and the combination of complete solitude, wide views and the historical resonance of this borderland gives Cheviot walking a character quite different from the more frequented national parks to the south. Hadrian's Wall forms the southern boundary of the park, and the central sector of the Wall traversing the Whin Sill escarpment at Housesteads, Vindolanda and Steel Rigg represents the finest and most complete section of the Roman frontier. The combination of the Roman military landscape, the medieval castles and peel towers scattered through the valleys and the prehistoric hillforts visible on every ridge creates an archaeological layering of exceptional depth. Kielder Water, the largest man-made lake in England by capacity, occupies the western section of the park and is surrounded by the largest planted forest in England.

The Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast near Seahouses are one of the most important seabird and grey seal sanctuaries in Britain and one of the most visited wildlife destinations in the country, an archipelago of approximately fifteen to twenty islands depending on the state of the tide that supports enormous numbers of breeding seabirds and one of the largest grey seal colonies in England. The National Trust manages the principal islands and access is by boat from Seahouses harbour, with landings permitted on Inner Farne and Staple Island during the breeding season. The seabird colonies of the Farnes are exceptional by any standard. Puffins are the most iconic species, approximately 100,000 pairs breeding in burrows across the islands, and the birds' complete indifference to human presence allows visitors on the landing islands to observe them at distances of a few feet, a wildlife experience of remarkable intimacy. Arctic terns breeding on the inner islands defend their nests with extraordinary ferocity, diving at visitors' heads with their sharp bills, and the visitor experience of running the tern gauntlet while wearing a hat to ward off the attacks is one of the most memorable and most repeated stories of a Farne Islands visit. The grey seal colony, which pups in autumn and can be observed from the boats throughout the year, numbers approximately six thousand individuals and is one of the most accessible large marine mammal groups in Britain. The seals haul out on the low-lying Brownsman and other islands in large numbers and the boat trips pass close enough for detailed observation. St Cuthbert, the most venerated saint of Northumbria, lived as a hermit on Inner Farne in the seventh century and the remains of a medieval chapel mark the site of his cell.

St Mary's Lighthouse stands on a small tidal island at Whitley Bay on the Northumberland coast, connected to the mainland by a concrete causeway that is submerged at high tide and accessible for only a few hours around low water. The lighthouse, built in 1898 and decommissioned in 1984, is one of the most photogenic and accessible lighthouses in northeastern England, its white-painted tower and keeper's cottages reflected in the tidal pools around the island's base and backed by the grey North Sea. The lighthouse replaced an older coal-burning beacon that had warned ships of the rocky coastline here since the seventeenth century. The current structure is a conventional British lighthouse design of the late Victorian period, built in Northumberland limestone with a tower rising 36 metres from the rock to the light. Trinity House operated the lighthouse until its decommissioning, when North Tyneside Council took over the site and converted it into a visitor attraction while preserving the lighthouse buildings and their interpretation value. The island and its surrounding area function as a Local Nature Reserve, the tidal pools around the causeway supporting interesting marine life including anemones, crabs and various seaweed species exposed at low tide. The grassland on the island is managed for wildflowers and provides nesting habitat for a variety of coastal birds. From the island's outer rocks, views extend north along the Northumberland coast toward Coquet Island and south toward Tynemouth and the Tyne estuary. Visitors can climb the lighthouse tower, which provides panoramic views along this flat coastal section that are otherwise difficult to obtain, and explore the interpretive displays in the keeper's cottages about the history of lighthouse operation and the specific history of St Mary's. The causeway crossing, which gives the visit a pleasantly adventurous character, must be timed carefully according to the tide tables posted at the mainland end. The surrounding coast north of Whitley Bay provides pleasant walking along Northumberland's sandy beaches, and the area is also home to a strong population of grey seals that haul out on rocky islets and can frequently be seen from the shore.

The Angel of the North is the most visible and the most discussed public artwork in Britain, a steel sculpture standing beside the A1 road at Gateshead in Tyne and Wear that has become one of the defining images of the northeast of England and a landmark of international reputation since its installation in February 1998. Created by sculptor Antony Gormley, the Angel rises 20 metres from its hillside position and spreads its wings 54 metres wide, making it one of the largest sculptures in Britain and ensuring its visibility to the millions of motorists who pass on the busy road below each year. Gormley conceived the work as a meditation on the transition from an age of coal and industry to an uncertain post-industrial future, placing the figure on a hilltop above the former Team Colliery whose pit baths still lie beneath the ground on which the Angel stands. The industrial heritage of the site was a deliberate choice: the connection between the figure and the mining community whose lives played out on this hillside gives the work a historical grounding that purely aesthetic public art often lacks. The wings, Gormley noted, are not the soft wings of religious iconography but the hard structural wings of aircraft, referencing both flight and the engineering tradition of the northeast. The technical achievement of the installation is considerable. The sculpture weighs 200 tonnes, the wings alone containing 110 tonnes of steel, and the structure is anchored by 600 tonne concrete foundations that extend twenty metres into the ground to counteract the wind loads on the wing surfaces. The steel was manufactured by Hartlepool Steel Fabrications, a surviving example of the heavy industrial tradition the Angel commemorates, and the structure is designed to withstand wind speeds of over 100 miles per hour. Public reaction to the sculpture before its installation was polarised, with considerable scepticism among local residents who doubted whether the cost was justified and questioned the aesthetic merits of the work. Twenty-five years on, the Angel has been adopted with unmistakable affection by the northeastern communities it was meant to serve and has become a source of regional pride that was initially difficult to predict.