Morpeth is a very attractive market town and is also the county town of Northumberland (although Alnwick dispute this!). It is surrounded by three sides of the River Wansbeck. The town also has a bagpipe museum! The Waterstones is found in the Sanderson Arcade, an attractive and modern open-air shopping centre. The development, which was opened by the actress Joanna Lumley in 2009, was built on the site of an older, rundown centre. The developers kept the 1939 façade of an earlier building at one of the entrances on Bridge Street as part of the new arcade. After leaving Morpeth we headed up to Alnwick and then on to Lindisfarne.
Emily Wilding Davison
Emily Wilding Davison, whose parents were both from Morpeth, joined the Suffrage movement Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in November 1906 and was arrested on several occasions for her activism. She frequently went on hunger strike and she was force-fed nearly 50 times. She threw herself in front of King George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913 and died a few days later from her injuries. She was buried in Morpeth, and a statue to her was unveiled in the town’s Carlisle Park in 2018.
Morpeth
The photograph of Sanderson House was taken by Graham Robson and shared under the creative commons licence. I have resized it slightly, as permitted in the terms of the licence. Photo © Graham Robson (cc-by-sa/2.0)
Lindisfarne
Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island, is reached by a causeway which is only crossable twice a day, so visitors have to be careful to take note of the tide times if they don’t want to be stranded there! Due to these tide times we didn’t have time to see the whole island, but we did manage to see a view of the priory and some of the beautiful beaches before we had to head back.
Janet's Adventures in Waterstones 