Cockshot Wood

Dark conifers tower overhead, their needles deadening every footstep. Cockshot Wood is proper old-school Northumberland woodland - the kind where you lose phone signal and actually notice it. It's a working forest, not a manicured nature reserve, which means you get genuine quiet rather than manufactured peace.

The woodland sits just outside Haltwhistle and makes a decent afternoon wander if you're camped at one of the nearby sites. Haltwhistle Camping and Caravanning Club Site is barely a mile away, so it's easy to slip in for a couple of hours between other activities. The paths aren't signposted to death, which some will love and others will find annoying. Bring a map if you're planning to properly explore rather than just potter about.

This is walker territory, really. Young kids might get bored after an hour once they've exhausted the novelty of finding sticks. The forest floor is soft underfoot and there's something weirdly atmospheric about the gloom, especially on grey days - which, let's be honest, is most days round here.

If you're doing the Hadrian's Wall circuit from one of the five-star sites like Herding Hill Farm, Cockshot Wood works as a palate cleanser between wall ruins and visitor centres. It won't blow your mind, but it's free, it's close, and it does what it says on the tin. Sometimes that's exactly what you need.