Newcastle and around

Based on the info you’ve provided you should be fine without a car, though more detail of your itinerary would give me more certainty. You certainly don’t need a car for Newcastle and immediate surrounds. Northumberland you may need one, but it depends where in the county you want to go; some of it is perfectly accessible without a car, but other parts of it will require one.

Also, Alnwick itself doesn’t have a railway station, it’s served by Alnmouth. It’s not too far away from Alnwick, but it’s an additional journey to the town rather than dropping you in the middle of it.

You could see the places you mention by train, but I think your experience would be enhanced by a car so that you could visit Holy Island, Berwick on Tweed and the stunning coastline and castles around this area. I would prefer to stay in Belford or Bamburgh than Alnwick, but I’m not a Harry Potter fan. Alnwick is larger.

Cragside is one of my favourite National Trust properties and I spent about 4/5 hours there on my first visit including walking the estate.

I did not realize that Alnwick did not have a rail station. Even though it would be doable to get there from Almouth this kind of makes me not want to try this option. I do realize the more expanded version would probably be better. Thanks, this helps with my decision.

If you do choose to hire a car, it could be easier and cheaper to take the train to Newcastle and hire one there instead of driving all the way up from London. Also, you can get the Metro straight from Newcastle station to the Airport, where there's plenty of hire cars available without the hassle of having to navigate the city centre roads. You could easily arrive, spend a few days without a car in the city centre, then go and get one from the airport to begin exploring Northumberland.

I’m assuming you’re spending time in London prior to visiting Newcastle, hence the train journey. If you're not, then flying to Newcastle via a hub airport i.e. LHR, AMS, DUB or CDG is the much wiser choice.

Thank you for your replies. If we do decide to get a car we will get it in Newcastle on the day we leave there. Thanks for your input on where to get the car. Also, I have listed that we would fly to London and take the train from there. Only because I haven't investigated it further. We have United miles, and I'm not sure at this point if United flies in to Newcastle. Perhaps it's a matter of flying into Heathrow with United and taking a flight from there? I'm just not sure how this works. Maybe airlines other than United fly to Newcastle, but since we have miles, I'd like to stick with them.

United discontinued their flights to Newcastle last year, sadly. If you wanted to fly to NCL using your miles you’d have to find a codeshare - US to Dublin then DUB to NCL on Aer Lingus might be an option. Either that or BA to LHR then connect to a domestic flight to NCL.

Durham is a great city to visit.

Durham is wonderful. Beautiful cathedral. Beautiful town.