The beauty of the two miles walk along the banks of the Wansbeck from here to Morpeth is not easy to surpass in all the county, though several parts of the Coquet valley may justly compete with it.  William Howitt has left on record his admiration for this lovely region, and said Morpeth was “more like a town in a dream” than a reality.  Especially is this so when looking at the town from the neighbourhood of the river.  Before actually reaching Morpeth the Wansbeck waters the fair fields that once held Newminster Abbey in its pride; now, nothing remains but an arch or so and a few stones, to remind us of the noble abbey which Ralph de Merley built so long ago.  When only half built it was demolished by the Scots under King David; but willing hands set to work again, and the abbey and monastery were completed.

In the town of Morpeth, though newer buildings are stretching out towards the outskirts, many of the ancient buildings and streets remain, and the general aspect of this part of it is much the same as when the Jacobites of Northumberland gathered together here, and the clergyman, Mr. Buxton, proclaimed James III. in its Market Place.  Of Morpeth Castle, built by a De Merley soon after the Conquest, only the gateway tower remains, but the outlines of the original boundary walls can be clearly traced.  A company of five hundred Scots, whom Leslie had left as a garrison in 1644, held out here for three weeks against two thousand Royalists under Montrose.  After the cannonading received during that siege, the walls were not repaired again, and the castle fell into decay.  The inhabitants of Morpeth have a daily reminder of times yet more remote, for the Curfew Bell still rings out over the little town every evening at eight o’clock.

Another walk of three miles along the still beautiful banks of the Wansbeck brings us to Bothal, another little village of great beauty, embowered and almost hidden amongst luxuriant woods.  Its curious name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon bottell, a place of abode (as in Walbottle).  The name conjures up memories of the knights of old, their loves and their fortunes, fair or disastrous; for the best-known version of “The Hermit of Warkworth” tells us that it was a Bertram of Bothal who was the luckless hero of that tale, though another version avers that he belonged to the house of Percy.

Wansbeck’s fellow stream, the Coquet, has its birth amongst some of the wildest scenery of the Cheviot Hills, where the heights of Deel’s Hill and Woodbist Law look down on the now silent Watling Street and the deserted Ad Fines Camp.  In its windings along the bases of the hills it is joined by the Usway Burn, said to be named after King Oswy, between which and the little river Alwine lies the famous Lordship of Kidland, once desolate on account of the thieving and raiding of its neighbours of Bedesdale and Scotland.