NORTHUMBERLAND National Park has joined forces with community organisation North East Wilds to help provide ‘at-home’ nature experiences for young people impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Access and reliance on nature and natural spaces has become more important than ever, with the national park seeing a rise in people accessing it last summer. However, some children in the region have difficulty accessing the outdoors for their wellbeing, which has only been further hindered by the isolation caused by coronavirus. In collaboration with the national park, North East Wilds has created 100 activity boxes for children across the region. The boxes are designed to help children use their imagination to connect with nature, with items including Northumberland meadow seeds, star bird feeders, a mobile curlew, a woodcut printmaking kit, grow your own basil set, a jigsaw and make your own Boggart kit.
Northumberland has come out on top as being the best location for finding peace and quiet in England. According to research by holiday letting agency Cottages in Northumberland, the county is also the second best place to find peace and quiet in the whole of the UK. Powys in Wales was found to be the best place in the UK. Northumberland is home to the Northumberland National Park, one Dark Sky Orion site and 22 Dark Sky Milky Way sites, more than anywhere else in the UK. The Travel Chapter identified the most peaceful places by breaking down the counties, council districts and regions throughout the UK and gathering data on population count per square kilometre, as well as information on natural sanctuaries such as national parks, and Dark Sky parks and sites.
NORTHUMBERLAND National Park is working together with CLIF Bar to launch an initiative that aims to inspire a new generation of stargazers after the launch of the first virtual Northumberland Dark Skies Festival. The park was one of five in the UK to receive a grant from the organisation as part of their National Parks Protectors Fund, receiving a £10,000 grant to support its dark skies conservation projects, which help to raise public awareness of the issues of light pollution and the need to help conserve the pristine dark skies. Some of the grant is now being used to educate the next generation on dark skies and the importance of conservation; the park has created a Dark Sky Discovery Loans Box, available to any schools within the county to borrow and use in the classroom for up to four weeks. The box includes a light meter, a piece of meteorite, binoculars, red and white light torches, constellation guides, nocturnal wildlife information and a replica bronze age sky disk
TWO Northumberland companies are preparing to battle it out against businesses from across the UK ahead of the Amazon backed Rural Business Awards final, due to take place today. Ingram Valley Farm will represent Alnwick and Northumbrian Flowers will represent Hexham in the Best Rural Diversification Project category in this year’s final, which is taking place virtually. Ingram Valley Farm works alongside Northumberland Estates, Northumberland National Park, Natural England and Historic England to protect the area s history-rich landscape under a National Pilot Heritage Partnership Agreement. Speaking ahead of the final, Rebecca Wilson, of Ingram Valley Farm, said: “We’re very excited to be in the running for a Rural Business Award.
Dan Burn-Forti
In 2012, Walter Riddell was running an investment management portfolio worth $35 billion for Morgan Stanley. Then, one day, he had enough.
“I was a very, very stroppy 30-year-old. I probably quit five times before, but my colleagues were indulgent enough to make life easy for me to stay. So they were quite used to me saying that I wanted to go and live in a bog.”
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But this time he was serious. He had long juggled working remotely with his office job – but was immensely frustrated. His true destination was an ancestral home in Hepple, which he inherited when his father, Sir John Riddell, died in 2010.