Smaller communities should be thinking ahead to the day when they can generate all their own power, energy expert Dr Barbara Sexon believes.
Dr Sexon runs the Thropton Energy consultancy in the Northumberland village of the same name, near Rothbury.
She studied for a PhD 25 years ago on the potential of small scale wind turbines in the days before wind farms of considerably larger machines became the hot potato they are today.
A presentation on plans to revamp the region's hospitals takes place in Northumberland next week.
Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is proposing a new specialist emergency care hospital near Cramlington for people living in Northumberland and North Tyneside, improvements to Wansbeck and North Tyneside general hospitals and rebuilding community hospitals in Berwick and Haltwhistle.
A presentation on the plans takes place at a meeting of Warkworth Parish Council on Thursday, June 4 at 6.30pm in the Memorial Hall on Castle Street.
Large Hall, Thropton Memorial Hall NE65 7LT
Thursday 02 Jul 2009, 14:00 to 19:00
Main Hall, Jubilee Institute, Rothbury NE65 7SD
Thursday 03 Sep 2009, 14:00 to 19:00
There are also sessions at Alnwick.
For more information or to book an appointment visit www.blood.co.uk.
At a time when many post offices, pubs and community facilities are being turned into homes, one Northumberland woman is bucking the trend by converting a house into what she hopes will be a centre for her community.
Rita Colby, from Elsdon, is fulfilling a long-held dream by opening a tearoom in the village complete with gallery, community spaces for learning classes and a shop.
It will even have a replica Roman pottery workshop upstairs where visitors and locals alike can learn a bit of history from Rothbury archaeology expert Graham Taylor.
Historic churches in a part of Northumberland are opening their doors this weekend.
Upper Coquetdale Churches Together (UCCT) has organised the open day at 10 places of worship this Saturday to give people who would not normally go into churches the chance to enjoy the beauty and history that lies within each.
Alwinton Parish Church. Pictured below: All Saints Church Rothbury, Christchurch Hepple and Church of St Mary the Virgin at Holystone
It is also being hailed as a much- needed social occasion for an area which was hit by flooding last September.
It was a family affair at the Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling competition at the Northumberland County Show on Monday.
Joe Hale, from Rothbury, won the under-12 and the under-14 category while his brother Jack Hale won the under-18 class.
In the adult competition, John Harrington, from Bewaldeth in Cumbria, won the 11-and-a-half stone and under class.
Both the 13-and-a-half stone category and the all weights classes were won by Richard Fox from Heathersgill, near Carlisle.
A mother who drove with her six-year-old daughter in the car while almost four times the legal alcohol limit was spared jail yesterday.
British Airways air hostess Victoria Burrell-Corey, 38, of Thropton, near Rothbury, attempted to drive her child to school the morning after drinking a bottle of wine, a bottle of champagne and a brandy nightcap, to celebrate her birthday.
Burrell-Corey's car was seen being driven erratically and swerving onto the wrong side of the road, putting other motorists at risk at a busy time of the day.
Work to repair old listed homes devastated by flooding in a Northumberland village is finally under way after eight months.
The Armstrong Cottages at Rothbury were under five feet of water after the River Coquet 50ft away burst its banks in the heavy rain of September 6 last year.
Some of the elderly people living in the 12-cottage complex, owned by landlord Cheviot Homes, had to be carried from their homes. Their belongings and furniture were ruined.
Hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of Class A drugs were seized in a year-long crackdown by police vying to rid rural Northumberland communities of drug barons.
The Journal can today reveal the scale of the drug problem that plagues the county's isolated countryside, with a massive haul of drugs confiscated by police specialists.
Earlier this year a top judge said drug dealing gangs were targeting rural villages in sophisticated cannabis production operations.
Bosses at Northumberland's new super council are being recommended to stick with its controversial 0845 single telephone number.
County hall chiefs have been urged by campaigners both locally and nationally to change the 0845 6006400 number, which has been provided since April 1 for all people who need to contact the unitary authority.
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