It will be a case of return to sender as a cash windfall to be announced today paves the way for the return of priceless Roman letters to Northumberland.

The first letters, or thin wooden writing tablets, were found at Vindolanda fort in 1973 and since then around 1,600 have been stored at the British Museum.

Patricia Birley, director of the Vindolanda Trust

It is more than 20 years since any of the Vindolanda tablets have been on show at the fort near Bardon Mill.

Wild animals such as the beaver and the lynx could be reintroduced to the North East under Government plans to be announced today.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn will call for a "re-wilding" of Britain at the Labour Party conference in Brighton.

The lynx (a young cub is pictured) and the beaver could be two species to benefit from the plan

Under the scheme, which is still at the review stage, large parts of the UK would be allowed to run wild in an effort to boost conservation and combat biodiversity loss.

Plans to plug a looming gap in provision for elderly people in a rural Northumberland town are under threat because of indecision over the future of seven day care centres.

Last week Liberal Democrat county council leaders gave a firm commitment to replacing the Greenholme residential home and day centre building in Haltwhistle with a £3.7m extra care housing scheme.

The council says it has £1.5m of Department of Health funding available for the Tynedale area, some of which could be used to pay for the proposed 35-flat complex.

Northumberland is the UK's worst blackspot for deaths involving fork lift trucks, new figures have shown.

The county suffers more fork lift-related fatalities per head of its population than anywhere else in the country, according to statistics from the Fork Lift Truck Association.

The Berwick area was home to the most per capita deaths from fork lift truck accidents between 2001 and 2008.

Savage job losses and service cuts flagged up for Northumberland's new super council over the next four years have been described as a "worst case scenario" by a town hall leader.

Details of the potential cutbacks - which it is claimed could mean up to 3,500 redundancies and draconian service reductions - have emerged from a private briefing session involving senior county council officers and political group leaders.

They depict a gloomy scenario in which the unitary authority could find itself by 2013, and are based on predicted budget reductions totalling £80m.

A commitment to building a £3.7m flagship housing and care complex for older people in a Northumberland town has been given by council bosses.

The county council is to launch negotiations aimed at finding a partner to develop the 35-flat extra care housing scheme in Haltwhistle. It would be built on the site of the council-run Greenholme old people's home, which is on the brink of closure after virtually all of its elderly residents moved out.

But yesterday town councillor John Watson questioned whether funding will be available to pay for the scheme, and said locals are not confident of seeing it happen in the near future.

Golden leaves, lingering sunsets and flocks of migrating birds are among the many reasons to visit Northumberland in autumn, and a new campaign is appealing for more tourists to come and experience the region's charms.

Northumberland Tourism and its partners are inviting everyone from near and far to celebrate the beautiful season in the North East.

Called Autumn Warmth, the campaign will focus on walking, art and landscape, as well as Northumberland's trees and forests.

A refrigerated lorry overturned while driving through Northumberland National Park.

The Great North Air Ambulance was scrambled to the incident on the B6318 at Bardon Mill yesterday afternoon. (MON)

Air paramedics took two people to hospital but they were not thought to be seriously injured.

Ambulance response time figures released on Friday revealed crews are struggling to reach remote locations in the region within eight-minute target times. Paul Liversidge, director of ambulance operations for North East Ambulance Service NHS Trust sets out what his crews are doing to improve the "challenging and difficult" issues.

The ambulance service is an easy target for critics who point to response times in rural areas as a perceived "failure".

Yesterday's Journal printed one of these stories from a Freedom of Information request by the Berwick Conservative parliamentary candidate Anne-Marie Trevelyan. However, the suggestion that there is a 999 rural crisis which we cannot solve couldn't be further from the truth.

Only 3% of people surveyed in the UK were aware of the existence of Northumberland National Park. The figure comes from a State of the National Park report, which will be considered by the Northumberland National Park Authority next week.

The park covers 400 square miles of some of the best, varied and most unspoilt landscape in England and is geographically at the centre of Britain.

But the report says: "Generally, Northumberland National Park is still a well-kept secret to most people in the UK."

The park is one of the least visited national parks in England, with 1.5 million visitor days a year.