Why is my Northumberland being locked down?

I am from Northumberland. You might have heard of the place, or even been there: the glorious coastline is increasingly popular for holidays, though the Cheviot Hills (even more deserving of attention) are less well-known.

Often, the county is lumped into a bigger mass known as ‘the north-east’. Which I suppose makes a certain sense, given the basic geography and accents that – at least to outsiders – sound broadly similar. (I might return to this another day, but the idea that the accent of the Upper Coquet Valley sounds anything like, say, that of Sunderland is actually comical.)

Northumberland is a curious construction as a local authority area. It’s big by English standards and largely empty. There are 64 people for every square kilometre – the English average is 274.

That makes Northumberland almost the most sparsely populated bit of England: West Devon and Richmondshire have slightly lower densities, but unlike Northumberland, they don’t have a significant urban area.