Morpeth is the county town of Northumberland, a busy market town in a loop of the River Wansbeck, fifteen miles north of Newcastle on the main line. It is a place people live rather than visit, but it makes a pleasant stop.
The thirteenth-century Chantry by the bridge houses the Morpeth Chantry Bagpipe Museum, devoted to the Northumbrian smallpipes. Across the river, Carlisle Park has riverside gardens and the mound of the old castle. The suffragette Emily Wilding Davison, who died after stepping in front of the King's horse at the 1913 Derby, is buried in St Mary's churchyard. Every spring the Northumbrian Gathering fills the town with folk music.