Alnwick (pronounced "Annick" — don't say it as written) is the traditional county town of Northumberland, and it punches well above its weight for a market town of 8,000 people. The two great draws are the castle and the garden. Alnwick Castle is one of the grandest medieval castles in England — the seat of the Percy family, Dukes of Northumberland, for over 700 years, and familiar to millions as the exterior of Hogwarts in the early Harry Potter films. The Alnwick Garden, created from the late 1990s by the Duchess of Northumberland, is one of the most ambitious new gardens in Britain — and contains, among its features, a Poison Garden planted exclusively with plants that can kill you.
The town itself is pleasant without being spectacular: a market square, a mediaeval gateway at Bondgate, and a Georgian street grid behind it. But Barter Books, housed in the old Victorian railway station, is worth making a detour for on its own terms — one of the largest second-hand bookshops in Britain, with a model railway running along the ceiling and open fires in winter. It is also the place where a copy of the original "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster was found in 2000, unwittingly launching what became a global merchandising phenomenon.
Alnwick makes a good base for Northumberland coast and countryside. The magnificent Dunstanburgh Castle is eight miles down the coast, reachable by a coastal walk from Craster. Warkworth, with its own fine castle, is seven miles south. The National Trust's Cragside — the first house in the world to be lit by hydro-electricity — is in the hills above Rothbury, about twelve miles to the west.