Our Setting

At the northernmost point of England, along the border with Scotland, is the English county of Northumberland.  At the northern tip of Northumberland, along the coast of the North Sea, the River Tweed, aka Tweed Waters, flow into the North Sea.  This being the mouth of the Tweed River, there is a town there called Tweedmouth.  Across the river to the north is another town called Berwick-upon-Tweed, as the town is "upon" the Tweed River.

Berwick-upon-Tweed on the left, Tweedmouth on the right.
See more beautiful photos of the area.

Northumberland is a large and quiet part of the country.  In modern-day Northumberland, the large Northumberland National Park consumes about one quarter of the county.  It is rich in Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and religious history.  The area was once part of the Roman Empire, and as part of the Borders region, has been the scene of many wars between England and Scotland.  Castles dot the landscape as evidence of its violent past.

Salmon Netting in Paxton

Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland National Park

Across the border with Scotland (the River Tweed which makes about 20 miles of the border with Scotland), is the the Scottish Borders region.  This eastern-most region of the Scottish Borders was known until 1975 (local government reorganization) as  Berwickshire, named after Berwick-upon-Tweed.  Ironically, Berwick-upon-Tweed along with a small radius of land, was lost by Scotland to England in 1482, so that the England-Scotland border diverts from the Tweed river in a semi-circle northward, just a few kilometers from the coast.  In this area, the Whiteaddr Water comes in from the north-east and merges with the Tweed just after it crosses the border into England.

Right in the corner of the River Tweed, the Whiteaddr Water, and the diverted border, in the Scottish Borders district of Scotland, sits a traditional, country village surrounded by farmland, called Paxton.  Paxton is traditionally home to villagers working the land or working the salmon in the River Tweed.

While the hills of the west have made way to a mostly flat region near the coast, the broader region is rural (avg about 62 people per sq. km.) hilly, and noted for its undeveloped landscape of high moorland, popular with landscape artists.

This is the setting, in the village of Tweedmouth, that our story begins...

The village of Tweedmouth, Northumberland, England