South Tyneside is known as 'Catherine Cookson Country' - the area in which the popular author of gritty novels about life in the North was brought up.
The Cookson Museum in South Shields Museum and Art Gallery is the place to find out about this remarkable writer and her own amazing life story, which read like one of the rags to riches tales which made her one of the best selling authors in the world.
Also take time to visit the Souter Lighthouse, just two miles away from South Shields. The red and white striped landmark was the most advance in the world when it was built in 1871. Today visitors can climb the 70 steps to the top of it and relax afterwards with a cuppa in the lighthouse tearoom.
