George Stephenson, the ‘father of the railways’, was born in 1781 in a cottage beside the old wagonway at Wylam, now a National Trust house you can visit. The village was a cradle of early steam — the pioneering locomotive Puffing Billy ran on the Wylam waggonway before Stephenson made his name. That trackbed is now a level, leafy walking and cycling route along the Tyne toward Newcastle. Wylam has its own station on the Tyne Valley line.
