Alnwick Garden Holiday Cottages. Barter Books, the finest second hand bookshop in England is not to be missed.

Barter Books

Photo by Steve & Jemma Copley

'The British Library of Second Hand Books', according to The New Statesman.

'British Library' or not, if books are your thing, this is the place to be. Opened in 1991 by Mary Manley, Barter Books is one of the largest second hand bookshops in Britain.

The shop has many extra features: open fires in the Winter, beloved by all. Coffee and cookies. A model railway acting as a link between the book columns of the central room. A mini-cybercafe (well, two computers!). Generous seating. A children's room with enough toys to allow parents and grandparents to browse elsewhere in peace. (Or so we hope.) And a whole huge room lined with glass cases containing many of the more interesting antiquarian books. (There are no rooms in the bookshop, by the way, that are open to some and not to others.)

Preservation and Restoration: because of its architecture and history, the owners have done what they can (and felt privileged to do so) to restore and enhance their holding - as and when they could afford to. To that end, the lovely old canopy outside has been re-exposed, the fireplaces put back into working order, a missing skylight glassed in, rooms replastered and repainted. All of which, to our pleasure, has brought, after an absence of thirty years, public life back to a building that was made for it.

But there's still much work to be done. And probably always will be. Just as Stuart dreams of restoring the working train, for example, I dream of restoring the entire glass roof. And we both dream of having the time to just read a book.

Holiday Ideas, Northumberland.