North Pennines AONB Partnership 3.39

The North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) is a stunning landscape of open heather moors, dramatic dales, tumbling upland rivers, wonderful woods, close-knit communities, glorious waterfalls, fantastic birds, colourful hay meadows, stone-built villages, intriguing imprints of a mining and industrial past, distinctive plants and much, much more.

As well as being an AONB the North Pennines is also a European and Global Geopark - an accolade endorsed by UNESCO.

The North Pennines is a distinctive landscape of high moorland and broad upland dales in the North of England. It shares a boundary with the Yorkshire Dales National Park in the south and extends as far as the Tyne Valley, just south of Hadrian's Wall, in the north. Parts of the North Pennines are in the three English counties of Cumbria, Durham and Northumberland.

The North Pennines was designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) by the UK Government in 1988. It is the second largest of the 40 AONBs in England and Wales, covering an area of 1983km2.