Visitors to a Northumberland museum can today help recreate a famous painting of its namesake heroine.

As part of the Big Draw - a national campaign running this month to encourage more people to try drawing - visitors to the RNLI Grace Darling Museum in Bamburgh will be able to help recreate a famous painting of lifeboat heroine Grace by J W Carmichael.

They will be encouraged to draw their own Grace Darling themed pictures, a montage of which will then be put together and displayed in the museum. The session is free and there is no need to book.

A cockerel evicted from a Tyneside housing estate after a complaint about his crowing has been rehoused on the Northumberland coast at Bamburgh.

Basil was found in a garden on Henderson Avenue in Whickham, Gateshead, six months ago.

He made it his base under the watchful eye of homeowner Joyce Callaghan but Gateshead Housing Company told Joyce he had to go following a complaint.

A Seahouses chef has scooped a college award.

Gordon Watson, who is commis chef at the Bamburgh Castle Inn, has been given the title of Northumberland College's Catering and Hospitality Student of the Year.

Gordon, 21, of Rennington, was awarded the title in the college's annual achievement awards.

He was chosen for the award because of his flair and ability in the kitchen, having completed an NVQ Level 2 in Hospitality and Catering at the college.

Newcastle University and the Environment Agency are monitoring the results of new land management techniques in the catchment upstream of Belford in Northumberland.

More than 30 properties and a caravan park in the town are at risk of flooding from Belford Burn, but the layout of Belford means building traditional flood walls and embankments is too expensive.

Transport bosses were last night facing mounting anger over a decision to shelve plans to dual a notorious stretch of the A1 in Northumberland on which a man died.

Police have now named the dead man, who was driving a car which collided head on with a HGV in Friday's crash on the Mousen Bends, near Belford, as fisherman Alan Joseph Gair, 37, of Amble.

A woman who took ill on Holy Island was taken to hospital following a rescue mission involving a lifeboat, an ambulance crew and an RAF helicopter.

The woman complained of severe abdominal pains in the early hours of yesterday, at Holy Island, off the Northumberland coast, and needed hospital treatment.

The North East Ambulance Service control centre was contacted.

A Northumberland farm is to create the region's first dedicated free-range egg processing facility - with help from the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE).

The new unit at Detchant Farm in Belford will offer specialist free-range grading, branding and packing services for the first time in the North East, with the potential to handle more than 18 million eggs every year.

Exercise sessions are being run as part of Northumberland Care Trust's cardiac rehabilitation programme for people in rural areas.

A group in Belford meets once a month for a two-hour session of exercise and healthy living advice.