What's new?
Northumberland national park is the most lightly populated 400 square miles in England, with clean salmon rivers, empty roads, heart-stopping vistas, dark night skies and loads of history including Hadrian's Wall. In the Cheviot Hills on the border, a new walk takes you to the heart of the hidden and magical College valley (college-valley.co.uk/walking). A series of cycle challenges (50-100km), the Wooler Wheel, run by Wooler Cycle Hub, has been a sellout in its first two years because of the great views. And at our visitor centre in Once Brewed, we're working on a new discovery centre, The Sill with a grass roof merging into the landscape.The heather is ablaze right now and smells like honey.
Park highlights
Several lovely valleys run out of the Cheviot Hills with pretty market towns such as Wooler, in Glendale. Rothbury in the Coquet valley sits below a great sandstone ridge called Simonside that has fabulous walks, and Bellingham, with its heritage centre and waterfall, is the gateway to the North Tyne valley and Kielder Water park. In the south of the park is the most scenic section of Hadrian's Wall.
My favourite spots
I love the Cheviot Hills for walking. As a ranger, I'm up on the border ridge at all times of the year. We were flagging over boggy bits of the footpath in the snow last spring and the icicles on the stiles were frozen horizontal! You can see for miles into gorgeous countryside on both sides of the border. Sometimes people are afraid of remote walks but there are lots of brilliant guides up here to accompany you and keep you safe.
Where to eat/drink/sleep
Stay in cottages or the hostel in the College valley and you feel like the whole estate is yours, with its wildlife and starry skies. The Red Lion at Milfield near Wooler offers excellent dining with locally sourced food – not your usual pub grub – and has two B&B rooms upstairs at £60 a night. Tomlinson's Cafe and Bunkhouse in Rothbury is in a grand old bank building, has great coffee, and dorm beds from £15pp. Carriages Tea Room at Bellingham, in an old railway carriage at the former station, is famed for its pastries.
My best wildlife encounter
For the past five years I've been helping to increase the number of barn owls. We put nesting boxes in sheltered farmland with plenty of forage space away from roads, which are this low-flying owl's greatest downfall, and monitor them. Each year it is thrilling to check for eggs and then ring the new birds (you need a licence for this). It's awesome and a privilege to be close to wild creatures and know you've helped an endangered species to prosper.
