Tour Alnwick Castle and the rooms of the Percy family

Go through the locked gates of the Poison Garden with a guide

Watch the water cascade at the Alnwick Garden

Alnwick Castle has been the home of the Percy family since 1309 and has stood in for Hogwarts on film. Beside it, the Duchess of Northumberland's garden opened in October 2001 around a great water cascade, and in February 2005 she added the Poison Garden, where the plants behind the locked gates can kill and the guides tell you not to smell anything. In the old railway station in the town, Barter Books is one of the largest second-hand bookshops in Britain.

Alnwick: The Castle, the Poison Garden and Barter Books

Alnwick

Nine nights from Hadrian's Wall to Berwick-upon-Tweed: Housesteads and Vindolanda, the dark skies at Kielder, Alnwick and Cragside, then the castle coast from Dunstanburgh and Bamburgh to the Farne Islands and Lindisfarne.

Northumberland: Hadrian's Wall and the Castle Coast

Walk the coast path from Craster to Dunstanburgh Castle

Walk round the curtain wall and the twin-towered gatehouse

Buy kippers at Robson's smokehouse in Craster

In spring and summer, look for the kittiwakes nesting on the Gull Crag cliffs below the castle

Dunstanburgh is the largest castle in Northumberland by area and can only be reached on foot, a mile and a quarter along the coast from Craster, where Robson's smokehouse has been curing herring over oak smoke since 1856. The path runs under the crag with the ruined gatehouse towers ahead of you the whole way.

Craster and Dunstanburgh: Kippers and the Biggest Castle in Northumberland

Climb through the Percy keep that towers over the village

Find out how Hotspur's rebellion ended at Shrewsbury in 1403

Work out why seven cannon shots were enough when Henry IV came north in 1405

Walk down to the river Coquet round the loop below the castle

Warkworth Castle stands in a loop of the River Coquet less than a mile from the North Sea. The Percys took it in the 14th century, and Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland, added the great keep that looms over the village. He helped put Henry IV on the throne; then he and his son Henry 'Hotspur' Percy fell out with the king and rebelled. After Hotspur was killed at Shrewsbury in 1403 the earl fled here, then submitted and was pardoned; when he rebelled again in 1405 and Henry IV came north, the defenders gave in, the king wrote, after seven shots from his cannon. English Heritage has cared for it since 1984.

Warkworth: Hotspur's Castle on the Coquet

Tour the house and find Armstrong's hydraulic and electric inventions

Walk the lakes and dams that powered the estate

Walk down through the rock garden, then drive the estate Carriage Drive

Walk down from the estate into Rothbury and along the Coquet in the town

William Armstrong — inventor of the hydraulic crane, armaments manufacturer and the first engineer to be made a peer — built Cragside above Rothbury from 1862 and filled it with his own machinery: dams and lakes driving a sawmill, a water-powered laundry, early versions of a dishwasher and a dumb waiter, a hydraulic lift and a hydroelectric rotisserie. It was the first house in the world lit by hydroelectric power.

Cragside: The First House Lit by Hydroelectric Power

Tour Bamburgh Castle on its dolerite crag, besieged for nine months in 1464 by the Earl of Warwick with heavy use of artillery, and restored by the industrialist William Armstrong

Walk the sands below the castle towards Seahouses

Find Grace Darling's grave and memorial at St Aidan's church

Look out to the Farne Islands and Longstone from the dunes

Bamburgh Castle stands on a dolerite crag of the Whin Sill above a long sandy beach backed by dunes, on the site of Din Guarie, the fort that may have been the capital of the kingdom of Bernicia and was taken by King Ida in 547. The village below has the church of St Aidan and the grave of Grace Darling, and the Farne Islands lie offshore.

Bamburgh: The Castle on the Whin Sill

Take a boat trip from Seahouses to the Farne Islands and land on Inner Farne, where St Cuthbert lived as a hermit

Look for puffins, Arctic terns and guillemots on the islands' cliffs in the nesting season from April to July

See Longstone Lighthouse, from which Grace Darling and her father rowed out in 1838 to rescue survivors of the Forfarshire

Visit the Grace Darling Museum in Bamburgh, run by the RNLI

The Farne Islands lie off Seahouses. St Aidan came here in 651, and St Cuthbert lived as a hermit on Inner Farne, where he died in 687; the protection he gave the nesting eider ducks and seabirds in 676 is thought to be the earliest bird-protection law anywhere. Puffins, Arctic terns and guillemots nest on the islands from April to July. On the outer group stands the Longstone lighthouse, from which Grace Darling and her father rowed out in 1838 to rescue survivors of the Forfarshire; the RNLI's Grace Darling Museum is in Bamburgh.

The Farne Islands: Puffins and St Cuthbert's Island

Check the tide tables and cross the causeway to Holy Island, then visit Lindisfarne Priory, founded in AD 634 by St Aidan and raided by Vikings in 793

Tour Lindisfarne Castle, the 16th-century fort converted by Edwin Lutyens in 1901

Birdwatch at the Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve on the island's dunes and mudflats

Holy Island is reached across a tidal causeway. St Aidan founded Lindisfarne Priory here in AD 634, and Vikings raided it in 793. Lindisfarne Castle, a 16th-century fort, was converted by Edwin Lutyens in 1901, and the dunes and mudflats around the island are a national nature reserve.

Lindisfarne: The Priory, the Castle and the Causeway

Walk the full circuit of the Elizabethan ramparts

See from outside the barracks of 1717–1721, attributed to Hawksmoor and among the earliest in Britain

Cross the Old Bridge and look at the Royal Border Bridge and the Royal Tweed Bridge

Follow the Lowry Trail round the spots he painted

Berwick changed hands between England and Scotland again and again, and Elizabeth I spent a fortune — one source puts it at £128,648, the most expensive undertaking of her reign — on ramparts in the new Italian style, designed to take artillery fire and to fire back. They are among the finest of their kind left in the country, and the barracks of 1717–1721 inside them, attributed to Nicholas Hawksmoor, are among Britain's earliest. Three bridges cross the Tweed side by side, and L.S. Lowry painted the town for years.

Berwick-upon-Tweed: Elizabethan Ramparts and Three Bridges

Walk the nave and the great cellarium of Fountains Abbey

Follow the water garden canals and ponds at Studley Royal

Find the view of the abbey framed from the Surprise View

Thirteen monks expelled from St Mary's in York founded Fountains in 1132 under Archbishop Thurstan, joined the Cistercians after a hard winter, and built what became one of the wealthiest monasteries in England. In the 18th century the ruin was made the eye-catcher of the Studley Royal water garden next door; together they are a World Heritage Site.