Welcome

NRWS is a friendly walking group based in Northumberland, founded in 1986 to encourage preservation of our disused railway lines as walking corridors.

We welcome members from a wide catchment area which is reflected in our varied walk programme.

Our walk leaders aim to provide a fun and interesting day out typically over 5-8miles with points of interest reflecting our local heritage and history especially but not exclusively, our railways. We walk on Sundays twice per month. The group often gather for coffee or food too at the end of a walk. With concern growing for climate change we have been actively involved as volunteers in local environmental projects such as tree planting and maintenance.

We also organise walking holidays and social events as part of our annual programme. 

Your membership includes a quarterly printed journal called Trackchat which provides reports on past walks and details of future walks

For details of our forthcoming walks programme please visit our Forthcoming Events page {now updated with events to the end of March 2026}, our programme for 2026 is now available on our Annual Programme page. 

Regretfully dogs are not allowed on our walks

We have changed the way we show photographs of our activities. The home page now only shows our two most recent activities, for more photographs of earlier activities over the years, please click here for our Photo Gallery 2026 giving photographs from this years walks. For previous years walks see Photo Gallery 2025 and Photo Gallery pre 2025 

Sunday 18th January 2026

Our second normal walk of the year was a visit arranged by Prof Brian Randell to the School of Computing of Newcastle University. which started with a short 28 minutes to the School of Computing, passing a fine stretch of the Medieval City Wall.  After visiting the School’s Historic Computing Display, we then walked  the short distance to the Discovery Museum (free) and visit the but excellent Enigma Cipher Machine Gallery.  Photographs by Dave Turpin, Bob Preston and other members of the society.