12 About Wooler. 



first was to Haughhead, by a delightful road. You 

 turn round the upper side of the town down a deli- 

 cious descent to Wooler Bridge another with many 

 angles and then crossing it, enter a wide plain with a 

 steepish hill on one side near Wooler laid out in pretty 

 walks, and then you pass on to a region of gentle 

 swelling hills. The road winds, and the Wooler Water 

 spreads here and there over gravelly reaches, and 

 chatters and sings to itself, and then passes into deeper 

 pools, and, like deep things, is then silent. Haughhead 

 is a good place for picnic parties to go to if they wish 

 quiet, and they had need to picnic, for the inn there is not 

 now what it was in the olden coaching days. But what 

 gives its main interest to the place is the fact that here 

 the English army lay encamped for two days just be- 

 fore Flodden. It was from this place that the Earl of 

 Surrey sent that letter of 7th September, upbraiding 

 the Scottish king for breaking his promise to meet the 

 English forces, and offering to give him battle next day 

 on MilfieJd Plain. 



The second was to Humbleton, to see what is called 

 " The Cup and Saucer Camp." It is an intrenchment 

 which is said to have been one of the strongholds 

 of the ancient Britons. Mr. Hall gives a very full 

 description of it: "It is 180 yards in circumference, 

 having a hollow in the centre of the area, and is 

 surrounded by a rampier of stone and earth, which is 

 yet in some parts three feet high." There is not a 

 little here to interest the lover of nature as well as 

 the antiquarian, for some of the views from this point 

 are fine, and the fact that numerous skeletons have been 

 dug up here exceedingly well preserved gives it a kind 

 of claim upon the regard of ethnologists. 



A letter from Sir Walter Scott to his friend Clark, 



