The North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, England's Last Wilderness, covers much of the west of County Durham together with parts of Northumberland and Cumbria. It encompasses extensive tracts of heather moorland and blanket bog and settled pastoral dales.

County Durham abounds in Areas of High Landscape Value and Sites of Special Scientific Interest and parts of the coast where low cliffs of magnesian limestone fall to sand and shingle beaches have now been designated as Heritage Coast.

A mainly rural county, Durham has 12 main towns and 240 other small towns and villages. The population is almost 500,000 with more than half of the residents living in villages of less than 10,000 people. Due to its low population density the North East is unspoiled and congestion free - travel times to work are shorter than the national average.

The North East also produces more energy from renewable sources than any other region except the East of England.

As well as its local links County Durham is twinned with nine communities around the globe including its namesake Durham, North Carolina in the USA.

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