Thank you for a fascinating piece about a beautiful county (I live on its southern borders).
However, I wish you hadn't written it! Northumberland is one of England's best-kept secrets. Part of its charm is the lack of mass tourism.
I really wish that newspapers and magazines would close down their travel sections. Every time a journalist writes a piece about some "undiscovered" place or other, it is forever ruined both as a destination and a place to live. I know of one coastal village in Scotland (where my wife grew up) that regularly appears in those kiss-of-death Top Ten lists of beautiful places: as a result, its small-town ambience has been ruined, residential homes have been converted to AirBnBs, and such houses as are left have risen so much in value that local families have been priced out of the market.
I wish such places could be left to attract the attention by happenchance of those who are inquisitive and adventurous enough to wander to unfamiliar places - rather than them being hawked around in a glare of publicity as carnival sideshow attractions.
Thank you for your kind words about the article, but yes there's always a fine balance to be struck with travel articles, between highlighting special places - but also promoting them so much that they get swamped with tourists. Hopefully, with Northumberland being so large and underdeveloped as a tourist region, there's a long way to go before it suffers from too many visitors.
But overtourism has increasingly been very much in the news of course, with protests in places such as Barcelona and Venice, and hopefully that will help trigger solutions to encourage tourists to explore more and more lesser-known destinations instead.
Many travel writers and editors would want that to happen, and hopefully more and more the cruise companies, package holiday companies and others in the travel trade are taking heed and increasingly looking at changing itineries and holiday offerings that will lessen overtourism.
Thank you for a fascinating piece about a beautiful county (I live on its southern borders).
However, I wish you hadn't written it! Northumberland is one of England's best-kept secrets. Part of its charm is the lack of mass tourism.
I really wish that newspapers and magazines would close down their travel sections. Every time a journalist writes a piece about some "undiscovered" place or other, it is forever ruined both as a destination and a place to live. I know of one coastal village in Scotland (where my wife grew up) that regularly appears in those kiss-of-death Top Ten lists of beautiful places: as a result, its small-town ambience has been ruined, residential homes have been converted to AirBnBs, and such houses as are left have risen so much in value that local families have been priced out of the market.
I wish such places could be left to attract the attention by happenchance of those who are inquisitive and adventurous enough to wander to unfamiliar places - rather than them being hawked around in a glare of publicity as carnival sideshow attractions.
Just saying...
Hi Christopher
Thank you for your kind words about the article, but yes there's always a fine balance to be struck with travel articles, between highlighting special places - but also promoting them so much that they get swamped with tourists. Hopefully, with Northumberland being so large and underdeveloped as a tourist region, there's a long way to go before it suffers from too many visitors.
But overtourism has increasingly been very much in the news of course, with protests in places such as Barcelona and Venice, and hopefully that will help trigger solutions to encourage tourists to explore more and more lesser-known destinations instead.
Many travel writers and editors would want that to happen, and hopefully more and more the cruise companies, package holiday companies and others in the travel trade are taking heed and increasingly looking at changing itineries and holiday offerings that will lessen overtourism.