The Coquet bears the palm for picturesqueness amongst Northumbrian valleys, and is about forty miles in length. From Alwinton, the first village after crossing the Cheviots, where the Alwine joins the Coquet--"a place of slumber and of dreams remote among the hills"--to Warkworth Castle, the stream carries history and romance in every league of its course. Here are such names as Biddlestone, the "Osbaldistone," of "Rob Roy" (there are other claimants such as Chillingham and Naworth); Harbottle, a hamlet of venerable antiquity; Holystone, mentioned already in connection with Paulinus; Hepple, with the remnant of a strong peel tower of the Ogles; and Rothbury, the capital of Upper Coquetdale, a snug township in the midst of an amphitheatre of the wild, stony Simonside hills. In the old days it was a reiving centre of notoriety. All this part of Northumberland, indeed, was a constant freebooting arena, neither Scots nor English being content without some fray on hand. There is not a village, or a town, or farmhouse even, but has some tale to tell of that uncanny period. Cragside, Lord Armstrong's palatial seat, reclaimed, like Abbotsford, from the barren mountain side, is within a mile of Rothbury. Then come Brinkburn Priory, "an ancient fabric awful in repose," founded by William de Bertram, lord of Mitford, in the reign of Henry I.; Felton, a neat little village, where Alexander of Scotland received the homage of the Northumbrian barons; and Warkworth, "proud of the Percy name," one of the quaintest and oldest towns in Northumberland, and teeming with historical and romantic associations. So near the sea, and with some of the rarest river scenery in the county close at hand, the place is in high favour as a holiday resort. A Saxon settlement, all interest centres around its dismantled Castle, believed to have been built by Roger Fitz-Richard, to whom Henry II. granted in 1158 the manor of Warkworth. Strengthened from time to time, it became a Percy possession, and was the chief residence of the family to the middle of the 15th century. At the height of its power it must have been well-nigh impregnable, encircled on three sides by the winding banks and overhanging woods of the Coquet, and on a commanding eminence above it; and though time and many devastating hands have long since riven its ancient walls, the pile still presents a splendid example of a baronial stronghold, second to few on the Borders.