Photo: IanChristopherWeston (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio tour of the town the Percy family has held since 1309. It starts in the railway station of 1887 that became Barter Books, where the original Keep Calm and Carry On poster turned up in a box in 2002, and goes on to the Percy Tenantry Column, raised by grateful tenants and known locally as the Farmers' Folly. Then the Alnwick Garden's Grand Cascade and the Poison Garden gates, Bondgate Tower, built by Hotspur's son around 1450, the triangular medieval Market Place, Keith Maddison's bronze of Harry Hotspur, and Pottergate Tower, which the town rebuilt in 1768. The walk ends on the castle side of town: the Bailiffgate Museum in a former Catholic church, St Michael's with its lookout turret and Hotspur Capital, the Ratten Row gate into Hulne Park, the Lion Bridge of 1773 and the fourteenth-century barbican of Alnwick Castle.
12 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 82 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 14 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Barter Books and the old station, Percy Tenantry Column, The Alnwick Garden, Bondgate Tower (Hotspur Gate).
Market Place, Harry Hotspur statue.
Pottergate Tower, Bailiffgate Museum, St Michael's Church, Hulne Park gate, Ratten Row, Lion Bridge, Alnwick Castle Barbican.
The North Eastern Railway station of 1887, a bookshop since 1991, with a model railway above the shelves.
A Doric column of 1816 put up by the 2nd Duke's tenants to thank him for cutting their rents, called locally the Farmers' Folly.
The town-wall gatehouse of about 1450, built by Hotspur's son; Hotspur himself, killed in 1403, never saw it.
Keith Maddison's bronze of 2010, marking 700 years of the Percys at Alnwick.
The medieval parish church above the river, with a lookout turret for border raiders and the Hotspur Capital in St Catherine's Chapel.
The fourteenth-century forward defence of the castle, with carved warriors standing along its battlements.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 12 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 12 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Alnwick — the Percys, Harry Hotspur and the Castle Town, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
12 narration points, including Barter Books and the old station, The Alnwick Garden, Bondgate Tower (Hotspur Gate), Market Place and Harry Hotspur statue. That is about 21 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~2 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 12 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.