Christopher Somerville

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window


If an alien walker enquired the season and place to catch upland Britain at its very best, I’d direct him to spring in the Durham Dales, here in Upper Teesdale with the Tees blustering down the valley, its waterfalls seething, nesting lapwing and curlew giving their haunting cries in the meadows, and the wild flowers in full glory all along the dale.

The setting of the valley is superb, too, sinuating with the broad river between tall dark crags of volcanic dolerite that give way to green pastures and miles of bleak moorland. Farmhouses and barns are dotted around the hills, but there is something notably wild about Upper Teesdale, lending a sense of freedom and exhilaration to any walk here.

On a cool grey afternoon we gazed from the Swingy Bridge (officially Wynch Bridge, a bouncy span) upriver to where the Tees poured in creamy cascades over its jagged bed and down the rocky steps of Low Force. The grassy banks were spattered thickly with wild flowers, all blooming together in a rush to take advantage of the short spring season – primroses and cowslips, spherical yellow globeflowers, bluebells and wood sorrel, violets and early purple orchids.

As we followed the Pennine Way upriver a muted roar and rumble heralded High Force, a tossing wall of peaty brown water crashing seventy feet down three huge steps of the Whim Sill, the dolerite intrusion that shapes the dale. We stood at the brink, watching the fat lip of water curl downward into space and thunder off its walls into the rocky basin at the foot.

Along the path juniper bushes yielded a savour of gin when pinched. Once past the quarry at Dine Holm Scar the view lifted into an altogether wilder prospect, with long ridges of moorland ahead. On the way up the knobbled knoll of Bracken Rigg the path ran beside a fence excluding the sheep, and there on the other side, safe from the nibbling teeth, was a little clump of bird’s-eye primroses, tiny and deep pink with egg-yolk yellow ‘eyes’ – remnant flora of the post-glacial tundra still thriving up here.

We descended to Cronkley Farm and recrossed the Tees where sandpipers were pattering on the pebbles. The homeward way lay just above the dale road, a path through pastures where brown hares scampered off, lapwings tilted earthward with creaking cries, and young blackfaced lambs ran to the admonitory bleating of ewes in ragged fleeces still stained with winter.

How hard is it? 8 miles; moderate; some rough places underfoot.

Start: Bowlees Visitor Centre, near Middleton-in-Teesdale DL12 9XE (OS ref NY 907282)

Getting there: Bowlees Visitor Centre is signed on B6277 (Middleton-in-Teesdale to Alston)

Walk (OS Explorer OL31): From Visitor Centre cross B6277; path to cross Wynch Bridge (904279). Right on Pennine Way for 4 miles to cross Cronkley Bridge (862294). Pennine Way turns left, but follow track ahead. In 50m ahead up flagstone path. At top, right through gate (864294); through next gate; left past barn. Through wicket gate; past house, follow drive to road (866299). Right; in 100m left through car park; left; in 100m, right (868299) past school and cottages. Wall stile to field path; lane from Dale Cottage (872296); field path from Middle Moor Riggs (877293). Pass ruined East Moor Riggs (880292); in next field, half left to bottom right corner. Gate by corner of house; drive to road (884294)’ right. In ½ mile on right bend, ahead (890289); follow walled lane for 1½ miles to Bowlees.

Lunch/Accommodation: Langdon Beck Hotel, Forest-in-Teesdale DL12 0XP (01833-622267, langdonbeckhotel.com)

Info: Middleton-in-Teesdale TIC (01833-641001)
thisisdurham.com; northpennines.org.uk

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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Thirty years ago only fools or psychogeographers would have set out to walk the coast of County Durham. This was ‘Get Carter’ country, a dozen miles of grim coastline massively polluted by coal mining and pit waste tipping.

After the last of Durham’s coastal pits closed in 1993, a remarkable operation named ‘Turning the Tide’ saw a clean-up of the cliffs, the beaches and the steep wooded valleys called ‘denes’. Following the clifftop path south from Seaham Harbour on a fine windy morning, we couldn’t believe this was the same colliery coast that we’d once known.

Down on Blast Beach the sea is slowly eroding the minestone. Blast Beach got its name from the blast furnaces of the adjacent ironworks which covered the beach with a thick layer of grease and sludge. Mixed with coal waste from Dawdon Colliery, this scab of industrial slag was dubbed ‘minestone’ by locals. It’s a remarkable sight, a flat shelf of pale grey and orange that extends seaward from the feet of the pale magnesian limestone cliffs, to form its own miniature cliff at the high water mark.

We walked Blast Beach, marvelling at the contrast between the barren layer of minestone and the rich flora that has developed under the cliffs – buttery yellow bird’s-foot trefoil, intensely purple bloody cranesbill. Fulmars planed along the cliffs, and nesting kittiwakes looked down on us with eyes as soft and black as pandas.

Up on the cliffs again, we strolled the grassy meadows where bee orchids grew in clumps. On the sheltered beach of Hawthorn Hive a man was collecting waste coal into a sack. ‘Sea coalers’ were a common phenomenon hereabouts when the collieries were in full swing, but there’s little sea coal left today.

Easington Colliery’s beach was once a wasteland where a gaunt gantry dropped a continuous stream of mine filth into a blackened sea. Now it’s a beautiful sweep of pale pebbles on which the waves break in white foam.

Horden Beach was a three-mile swathe of stones and sands, its minestone ledge now sea-nibbled halfway back to the cliffs. From here we struck up the path into Castle Eden Dene, and walked up into Peterlee through a green canopied cleft full of ferns and water-sculpted rocks. Goldcrests squeaked in the treetops, and the underworld below the trees was hazed and smoky with bluebells.

Start: Seaham Harbour, Co Durham SR7 7DR (OS ref NZ 431494)

Getting there: Bus X6, X7 (Peterlee-Sunderland)
Road: Seaham is on B1404, signed from A19, just south of Sunderland.
Chevron Taxis (Peterlee-Seaham, about £12): 0191-586-0222/0555.

Walk (10 miles, moderate coastal walk, OS Explorer 308): From Seaham Harbour walk south along coast path beside A182 (occasional brown ‘England Coast Path’ waymark). In 1 mile at Nose’s Point (437478), descend to Blast Beach (steep, slippery descent). Cross beach; steps up to coast path are beside the prominent rock stack near the far end (439469). In ⅔ mile at Hawthorn Dene (440461) either take steep steps down to cross beach, or cross railway line into woods and follow ‘Heritage Coast Footpath’ yellow arrows across dene and on.

In another 4¼ miles at Hartlepool Point, at foot of dene mouth with reedbeds (455407), pass end of path that goes inland past tank traps, and take next path from beach inland up Castle Eden Dene. Under railway (451405) and across A1086 (448405) ; on along footpath. In 1 mile, fork right after Garden of Eden bridge (438399), with Castle Eden Burn on right, up waymarked Yew Tree Trail for nearly 1 mile to Visitor Centre (427393). Ahead up Stanhope Chase to cross Durham Way; path ahead to edge of playing field (426397). Right for 150m, left up right side of playing field, then path ahead through North Blunts woodland to Peterlee bus station (428407).
Conditions: Paths in Castle Eden Dene can be slippery after rain.

Lunch: Picnic on the cliffs or beaches

Info: Castle Eden Dene Visitor Centre, SR8 1NJ (0191-586-0004)
Durham Heritage Coast (0300-026-8131, durhamheritagecoast.org)
satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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Today was one of those ‘Shall we?’ days – a morning of chilly winds over County Durham, and a weather forecast of spitting showers followed by proper rain. It wasn’t really conducive, the thought of pulling on all the raingear and setting out through a dank and dripping Hamsterley Forest. But in the end we were glad we did.

‘Oh, it can get a bit clarty up there in the forest,’ said the jolly young ranger in the Visitor Centre. We hadn’t heard that local word meaning ‘mucky’ for many a day. And a bit clarty it turned out to be, once we’d got off the hard-surfaced tracks.

We had a look at the ranger’s map and decided on the Three Becks Walk, thoroughly waymarked and well laid out. The Bedburn Beck, charged with rain, went bouncing down under the trees, a vigorous young stream of water stained toffee-brown with peat from the moors. The forest steamed, a heady whiff of bark, resin and damp pine needles.

Timber climbing frames beside the trail catered for youngsters with energy to burn. In its maturity Hamsterley Forest plays a role as a leisure woodland for walkers, cyclists, runners and riders, but when it was created in the 1930s, it was as a severely commercial softwood forest.

Back then the north-east of England was in the grip of the Great Depression, and local pitmen and shipyard workers who had lost their jobs were only too happy to be paid for planting young trees in their millions. They lived on site in barrack-like wooden huts, still to be seen near the Visitor Centre.

We followed the Three Becks Walk west among the pines and larches, their hard dark presence softened by borders of beech, oak and sycamore. There was a steady trickle of chaffinch song, a background chitter of wrens, and in the treetops the excited thin squeaking of goldcrests foraging high up.

Soon we forked off the surfaced track, up a stony forest path bound together with knotty conifer roots. Clearings opened up, large areas left to grow scrubby where spindly rowans and silver birch swayed to the windy swirls of rain.

A steep descent on a slippery track, across Bedburn Beck and up through Frog Wood on an old drove road to a view over a gate onto open moorland rusty with heather sprigs and bracken. Down past the ruin of Metcalf’s House, once an inn for the drovers, with an apse-shaped bread oven at the house end. And a return along Redford Meadows beside Bedburn Beck, a beautiful lush end to the walk in steady rain, watching for dippers along the stream and breathing in the scent of the wet exhaling forest.

Start: Hamsterley Forest Visitor Centre, Co. Durham DL13 3NL (OS ref NZ 092312). Car park £6/day.

Getting there: Hamsterley Forest is signed from A68 (Darlington-Tow Law) at Witton-le-Wear.

Walk (5½ miles, easy, OS Explorer OL31): Follow the well-waymarked Three Becks Walk (white arrow on orange square) all the way round. NB Hamsterley Forest contains many walking and cycle trails, so look out for the right waymarks! On the return leg, vary the route by following Riverside Walk (blue arrows) from the road at Low Redford Bridge (081310). Turn right along road here to cross Aisford Beck; in 80m, left through car park (080309, ‘public footpath’ fingerpost) and follow Riverside Walk back to Visitor Centre.

Conditions: well surfaced, well waymarked trails. Trail maps available from Visitor Centre.

Lunch: Hamsterley Café, Visitor Centre.

Info: Hamsterley Forest Visitor Centre (01388-488312, forestryengland.uk); satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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Cyclists flocked round the Durham Dales Centre in Stanhope, and curious tourists took photos of the village’s famous 250 million-year-old fossil tree in the churchyard wall. When a beautiful day like this one arrives over the moors and valleys of West Durham, everyone wants to be out and about. The chatter and fuss of the selfie-takers were soon overlaid by the quiet chuckle of Stanhope Burn as we walked up its narrowing dale against the flow.

The hillsides north of the village wore the velvety nap and lumpy complexion that betokens a lead-mining landscape. In the throat of the valley we found the pitch-black levels and abandoned buildings of old workings where local miners earned their crusts through hard and health-shattering labour.

Nowadays Stanhope Burn runs clean and sparkling. Grey wagtails flirted their yellow underbellies on the stones, and a dipper bobbed its white shirtfront mid-stream under a bridge.

Above the mine buildings we left the valley track and followed a narrow path across hillsides where swallows cut low arcs across the heather and sand martins went scooting along a line of nestholes in the crumbling stream bank. We forded and re-forded the shallow burn, and headed south across trackless moorland where agitated grouse scuttled off, scolding us: Back! Back! G’back!

A line of wind-tattered conifers on the skyline formed a handy aiming point. When we had come up with them we found ourselves by Park Plantation with its long encircling wall and swathes of grey and brown stumps of recently harvested trees. The sun blazed and the wind blew fiercely in our faces as we followed the wall south, leaping over boggy sikes or streams that wound through the heather to join Stanhope Burn.

Snipe were displaying over the moors, extending their tail feathers as they dived to produce an eerie, tremulous hooting noise. We turned off along a farm track by Mount Pleasant and Pease Mires, and dropped down to Stanhope through woods where late bluebells and early purple orchids glowed under beech trunks striped with sunlight.

Start: Durham Dales Centre, Stanhope, Co Durham DL13 2FJ (OS ref NY 996393)

Getting there: Bus service 101 (Stanhope-Bishop Auckland).
Road – Stanhope is on A689 (Bishop Auckland – Alston)

Walk (8¼ miles, rugged moorland walking, OS Explorer 307): from Durham Dales Centre, right along A689. In 200m, right up Garden Close. Dogleg right/left to Chapel Street; left; right up path (fingerpost) beside allotments. Through kissing gate/KG at top of lane; on up with hedge on left to a track (995396). Left (KG); follow track to cross B6278 (991400, fingerpost).

In 100m fork left along Stanhope Grange fence. Follow lane for 1¼ miles to derelict mine. After shed on right, and before last one on left, fork right off main lane (987413). Don’t fork immediately left, but keep ahead up stony path which curves left. In 200m through gate; yellow arrow/YA points right, but keep ahead, with Stanhope Burn on left, for ⅔ mile to derelict old cottage. Ford burn near here (987425), and recross just beyond, after left bend in burn. In 500m, at Access Land notice and gate with YA, recross burn (983431).

On south side, grassy track climbs bank. Follow its indented course, then a pathless route SSW across moor, aiming for line of pine trees on skyline. In ⅔ mile, cross stony track (977423), make for right corner of Park Plantation wall (975421). Left along track for 1 mile, keeping parallel with wall, skirting quarry hole (970414) and crossing Reahope Burn, Deep Sike and Isaac Sike to cross Stoneby Sike (966408). 450m beyond Stoneby Sike, left through gate (970404) along farm track past Mount Pleasant (972405) and Pease Mires (979407) to road (982406).

Right; in 450m, left (982402) down drive to Widley Field (984402). Half right here across field to far right corner; over ladder stile (986401). Left; in 50m, left over stile; ahead through trees for 20m, then right along woodland path for ½ mile to A689. Left to car park.

Conditions: For confident walkers with map/compass/GPS. Inadvisable in mist.

Lunch: Durham Dales Centre tearoom.

Accommodation: Stanhope Old Hall, Stanhope DL13 2PF (01388-529036, stanhopeoldhall.co.uk)

Info: Durham Dales Centre (01388-527650, durhamdalescentre.co.uk); thisisdurham.com; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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The Teesdale town of Barnard Castle on a busy weekday, bustling, friendly, and packed with local shops. Some of these were not entirely traditional in produce, however; goat curry pasties were wowing the shoppers at the Moody Baker. William Peat, Master Butcher (or one of his representatives) came haring out into the street after a departing customer with: ‘Sausages, Missus! You forgot your sausages!’

We passed the gaunt, broken walls of the castle that overhangs the Tees. Down by the river we stopped beside the rushing white bar of the weir just in time to catch sight of a dipper alighting there. It bobbed its white shirt front energetically up and down before skimming off upriver in flight as straight as an arrow. We followed it along the Teesdale Way, an undulating path now rocky, now muddy, that shadowed the river through beautiful woods of young limes and beeches.

There’s always an element of uncertainty about the wild flowers you might find on a springtime walk in this northern part of England, where the colder and more upland situation squeezes the flowering season into a shorter and more intense timeframe than further south. But on this woodland walk today, everything had popped out and was displaying ensemble – wood anemones white and purple, bluebells and stitchwort, primroses side by side with red campion. Wild garlic and celandine, violets next to wild strawberries, forget-me-not, speedwell and water avens – it was altogether an astonishing display, with drifts of red, white and blue flooding the shadows under the trees.

Opposite Cotherstone we found the most perfect picnic spot in Teesdale, a primrose bank from which we looked down through young ash leaves on the river snaking noisily round a bend. Pied wagtails curtsied on the rocks, swallows skimmed the water, and a fisherman stood knee-deep and cast for a trout.

We descended to cross the Tees, then climbed to the return path along the rim of the dale. The sky turned slate grey behind us in the west. A bolt of rain, a whistle of wind, a crash of thunder and a spatter of hail like buckshot on our backs. Then brilliant spring sunshine spreading like butter across the pastures at Cooper House where plump lambs grazed and a brown hare sat tight in the wet grass, ears flattened along his damp furry back, delicately grooming each paw in turn.

Start: Barnard Castle long-stay car park, DL12 8GB (OS ref NZ 051163)

Getting there: Bus X75, X76, 84, 85, 95, 96 (Darlington),
Road – Barnard Castle is signed off A66, between Greta Bridge and Bowes (A1M, Scotch Corner junction).

Walk (8½ miles, moderate, OS Explorer OL31): Right to Market Cross; right up main street. At right bend, left by Methodist Church (‘Castle’). Follow ‘Riverside Walk and Cotherstone’ down to riverside (047166); bear right and follow ‘Teesdale Way’/TW through woods, close beside river. In 1¾ miles, through gate into field (033183). In 100m right through gate (TW), steeply up to gate at top. Left along upper wood edge.

500m beyond West Holme House, cross stream on footbridge by waterfall (025195); bear half right up bank (yellow arrow/YA) and curve round left to cross wall stile (YA). Cross next field, aiming for corner of wood straight ahead of you. Follow it with wall on left. In ½ mile, left (017201, TW) to descend through trees to cross gorsy meadow. At 2-finger TW post (014202), left across Tees; on far side, left to cross tributary (013201).

To visit Cotherstone, turn right here; to continue walk, climb steep bank opposite; up steps and along top of bank, following TW. In 1 mile pass Cooper House (023192); in 100m, left through kissing gate (TW) and bear right along lower wall. In ½ mile, descend to 2-finger TW post opposite pool (027186); right across stone footbridge and on. In 2 miles meet B6277 (045167); left across Tees footbridge (‘Cycle Route 70’); right to Barnard Castle.

Conditions: Some sections rocky and stumbly; a couple of short sharp climbs

Lunch: Picnic; or Fox & Hounds, Cotherstone (01833-650241, cotherstonefox.co.uk)

Accommodation: Three Horseshoes Inn, 5-7 Galgate, Barnard Castle, Durham (01833-631777; three-horse-shoes.co.uk) – smart, tidy and welcoming.

Info: Barnard Castle TIC (03000-262626), thisisdurham.com

visitengland.com; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk