Christopher Somerville

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


The friendly and hospitable Forest View inn at Byrness lies in a wild corner of the Cheviot Hills. From the forestry hamlet I followed the Pennine Way up through the trees, and soon turned off on a forest byway that dipped to the lonely valley of Cottonshope.

By the road I found a red flag fluttering and a notice warning of live firing on the adjacent Otterburn Ranges. But a call to Range Control elicited a courteous ‘That’ll be ok today, they won’t be over your way at all.’ A rattle of machine gun fire and the pop of a rifle sounded occasionally from some far-off valley, interspersed every now and then with artillery fire much further away, a curiously feeble and hollow sound, like a giant punching an empty biscuit tin.

I walked up the road to the lonely farm of Cottonshope, where a faint path climbed through rough grass pastures, swerving in and out of the boundary of Otterburn Ranges, up to meet the Pennine Way on Raven’s Knowe.

What a splendid view from the cairn up here. To the northeast the rounded bulk of Cheviot lifting gently to the cloudy sky, the flanks rolling and tumbling down to where I stood. South and west, lower ground with hills and forests running to the Scottish border. To the east, the barely perceptible path up which I’d come falling away into the Cottonshope Valley. South from Raven’s Knowe it was all forest, great swathes of the coniferous cladding that has adhered to the Redesdale hills since the area was planted between the world wars of the last century.

I turned for home along the boardwalks and squelchy corners of the Pennine Way, accompanied by a flittering meadow pipit. Catcleugh Reservoir came into view, a wedge of steely water among the trees. The Pennine Way descended among tuffets of bilberry and sphagnum, before suddenly slanting precipitously down a staircase of rocks.

Down in Byrness the little Church of St Francis held a stained glass window in memory of those who died constructing Catcleugh Reservoir late in the 19th century. It depicted men labouring with pick, shovel and wheelbarrow, with a little girl seated at their feet. In the background a dark, ominous train bears down on them. A very poignant and touching memorial.

How hard is it? 7½ miles; moderate/strenuous; forest and moorland tracks on well-marked Pennine Way.
NB Between Cottonshope and Raven’s Knowe, path veers in and out of Otterburn Ranges boundary. Ranges may be closed if live firing; ring Range Control (01830-520569) before setting out.

Start: Otterburn Green, Byrness NE19 1TS (OS ref NT 764027)

Getting there: Bus 131 (Newcastle-Jedburgh), once a day – nexus.org.uk
Road – Byrness is on A68 Between Otterburn and Jedburgh.

Walk (OS Explorer OL16): From Forest View, right along Otterburn Green; past village hall and on. At A68, by church, left along cycleway (771023, ‘Pennine Way’/PW). In 50m cross A68 (take care!); left up path. In 100m, go through hedge (PW); on through gate into trees (769026); continue up PW. In ⅓ mile, at 3rd major crossing track, right off PW (773030). In ¾ mile, left along Cottonshope Road in valley bottom (773030). In 1½ miles, just past farm sheds, left up track beside range flagpole and notice (789049). Follow clearly seen route for 1¼ miles over moorland to cairn on Raven’s Knowe (781061). Left along Pennine Way for 2¾ miles back to A68; retrace steps to Byrness.

Lunch/Accommodation: Forest View Walkers Inn, Byrness NE19 1TS (07928-376677, fortestviewbyrness.co.uk) – open 12 April–8 October 2023

Info: Otterburn Ranges Range Control access info: 01830-520569;
gov.uk/government/publications/otterburn-firing-times

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

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A cold and brilliant Northumberland morning, the sky blue over West Allen Dale, the light as clear and sharp as glass. Fat lambs in the pastures by the Mohope Burn went bouncing around; so did the hares, jumping and lolloping in close company.

We climbed the lane past the old lead-mining hamlet of Keirsleywell Row, its grassed-over spoil heaps as prominent as Viking burial mounds, then on up toward Mohope Moor on a broad rubbly track between stone walls. All around the land lay open under the sun, green inbye fields striped with walls and dotted with handsome pale stone farms rising to darker moor tops that rolled away out of sight.

Sycamores flanked the lane. These trees, so often sad urban droopers full of blight and insect wounds, were properly grown out here, with limbs stretched to the full. From the sedgy fields came the calls of curlew. Their silvery trilling song, and the abrupt whistling alarm call cur-leek! cur-leek!, seem the very soul of these northern moors.

A cold wind blew out of the southwest into our faces as we reached an old sheep dip flanked by square stone sheep passes in the lane walls. A boggy track led away south across the long upland waste of Mohope Moor, its line indicated by waymark posts among the peat and moss.

The broken shell of a curlew egg, its olive surface scribbled with tarry streaks for camouflage, lay by the way. Nearby two large pellets, ejected by some raptor with a mixed diet, were a clotted mass of fur, feathers, small bones and fragments of marine shells.

At the black trickling stream of Low Blackish Clough we turned back towards the West Allen Valley, tramping through rushes and down a grassy walled lane to find the homeward path along the pebbly flood meadows of the Mohope Burn.

Beyond Malakoff Bridge flashes of silver showed along the river bank. Sand martins were flicking through the air like a shoal of eager fish, darting into and out of their nesting cavities in the overhang of the bank. Their young stood like impatient Deliveroo customers at the threshold of each hole, squeaking as they waited for the next beakful of nutritious insects to be delivered to their doorstep.

How hard is it? 5½ miles; moderate; some rough, boggy moorland walking. Take binoculars to spot waymark posts on Mohope Moor.

Start: Ninebanks Bridge, Chapel Bank, Hexham NE47 8DB (OS ref NY 782524)

Getting there: Ninebanks is signed off A686, Alston-Haydon Bridge. Half a mile beyond Ninebanks, fork right (‘Mohope’); park just beyond bridge.

Walk (OS Explorer OL 43, 31): Take road signed ‘Mohope’. In ¾ mile at left bend, keep ahead (774518, ‘Isaac’s Tea Trail, Long Cross’); climb stony lane for 1 mile to stile at sheep dip (763508, ‘Welcome to the Moor’ signboard). In 100m track bends right; keep ahead here, over stile, then follow waymarked posts (yellow arrows/YA) across moor. In ¾ mile, the sixth post (2 YAs) stands on far bank of Low Blackish Cleugh stream (759497); don’t cross stream, but turn left, aiming a little left of farm on distant slope. In 300m you’ll see line of posts ahead; follow to wall corner (765499); walled green lane to road at Fairplay (769506). Ahead; in 300m, sharp right (771510). In 450m on right bend, keep ahead (774507, ‘Redheugh, Malakoff Bridge’); follow waymarked path for 1 mile to Malakoff Bridge (782518); left on road to car.

Lunch: Picnic

Accommodation: Ninebanks Hostel, Keirsleywell Row, near Hexham NE47 8DQ (01434-345288, ninebanks.org.uk)

Info: Hexham TIC (01670-620450); visitnorthumberland.com

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

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The nuns of Holystone Priory must have been a tough and determined bunch, to have maintained their prayerful community through all the hard times, Border battles, reivers’ raids and lack of funds associated with the Northumbrian borderlands of the wild Middle Ages.

There is a faint whisper of their presence in the little 12th-century (but much restored) Church of St Mary, and a breath of their holy spirit on the still waters of Lady’s Well, just north of the hamlet of Holystone. Legend has St Ninian, stern pioneer of Christianity in these parts, baptising three thousand sinners in the well around 500 AD. Today the waters still dimple and run, and the brook below the well is lined with beautiful monkey flowers, gold with orange-spotted nether lips.

We followed a lane through forestry, looking for the red squirrels that inhabit these trees. Bog myrtle in the verges released a churchy incense smell as we crushed the leaves between finger and thumb.

A scramble of a path up through the pinewoods of Cat Law brought us out into the heather uplands of Daw’s Moss. Within the walls of a cross-shaped plantation stood the Pedlar’s Stone, mysteriously named and never explained.

At lonely Craig Farm in the valley below, the massively strong structure of a bastle formed part of the farm buildings. A bastle was a fortified farmhouse, its stone walls five feet thick. With the animals locked in the vaulted basement below, the ladder pulled up and the family barricaded behind tiny windows, a farmer living here four hundred years ago could hope to hold out against the reivers – buccaneers who made their own laws and rustled cattle as a day-to-day business.

From Craig Farm our way led east across trackless moor where curlews bubbled their melancholy warning cries. We passed the Five Kings, a line of rough and rugged standing stones (four in number – one’s now a gatepost elsewhere), and came down to Dueshill Farm.

The farmer went bouncing across the pastures on a quad painted up like a racing car. The sheep ran bleating towards the field gate, and an old hand of a sheepdog kept the whole show together, now bullying, now coaxing – a masterful display of crowd control.

Start: Forestry Commission car park, Holystone, near Rothbury NE65 7AX (OS ref NT 951026)

Getting there: Holystone is signed from B6341 between Elsdon and Thropton

Walk (7 miles, strenuous, OS Explorer OL16, OL42): Right along road. In ¾ mile, beside Forestry Commission ‘Holystone Common’ sign (941020), fork left past barrier along forest track. In 500m track curves left (purple arrow/PA) to cross Holystone Burn (934013). In 250m, hairpin back left up track (933012). In 200m pass PA post on left; in 100m, right (935011, unmarked) up bank, then rough path south through trees to stile and gate at top by MoD notice (935010). Ahead with wall on left for 500m to road at Pedlar’s Stone walled copse (934005).

Ahead down road to Craig Farm. At farm entrance, left (938999, fingerpost ‘Dueshill 2½’) over stile. Follow grassy track into valley, aiming for far right corner of field with conifer plantation beyond. Over gate (943995, waymark post/WP); in 100m right across Keenshaw Burn; in 100m recross (footbridge). Follow edge of plantation (WPs). In 400m leave corner of plantation (948995), bearing a little left away from fence on right for 700m over rough ground (faint track), aiming for right hand corner of plantation ahead.

At MoD notice at corner (954999), ahead, keeping close to fence and trees on left. In 200m, cross stile at angle of fence (956000, yellow arrow/YA). Keep same direction for 150m through wood, picking your way over fallen timber, to MoD notice at far side (957001, stile). Ahead, keeping uphill of Five Kings standing stones, to left corner of plantation wall (958002, YA). Half left to gate (959003, YA) and on. At WP bear half left and follow fence downhill, keeping it on your right, to left corner of plantation below (959006).

Through gate (YA); ahead (YAs) for 350m to join farm road (960009). Left to Dueshill Farm. At gates (960013), through gate, across dip, through next gate with shed ahead. Left; through field gate (YA); right up field edge. At top of plantation, right over stile (960016, YA); left down fence. In 100m at edge of trees, ahead for 700m, crossing 2 stiles (YAs) to road (958023). Left into Holystone.

Conditions: A tough walk, reasonably well waymarked on faint tracks. For experienced self-guiding ramblers, properly equipped and clad.

Refreshments: Picnic

Accommodation: Coquetvale Hotel, Station Road, Rothbury NE65 7QH (01669-622900, coquetvale.co.uk) – modernised former railway hotel
Info: visitnorthumberland.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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Walking through the pine trees towards the sandhills of Hadston Links, we could hear the sea pounding the sands of Druridge Bay. A big roaring wind was building in the south, and once we were through the dunes and heading down the beach we had a half gale in our faces and the whole enormous bay – give or take a handful of dog ball throwers – to ourselves.

Druridge Bay is designated a Heritage Coast and a Site of Special Scientific Interest. This seven-mile curve of beach from Amble to Cresswell is totally unspoiled, a simple and grand arc of dull gold sand backed by flowery dunes, with crashing steel-grey waves coming in off the North Sea under huge overarching skies.

This is a beach for runners and kite-fliers, joggers and diggers, idlers and strollers. Black matchstick figures of men, women and dogs pushed hard into the wind. The sea rolled in, roaring softly on the sand and hissing up the beach in diminishing flounces of white foam. The air over the bay was laced with spray, lending a diffused pearly glow to the sky.

A flight of ringed plover went twinkling in black and white across the ribbed pools that had collected in the sands. On the landward side of each sandy ridge in every pool, a skin of gritty black had collected – tiny flecks of coal, sifted out of the low-lying hinterland behind the beach and filtered through the dunes by the trickling flow of tiny burns. The richness of the bird and flower life here, the windy solitude of the beach, make it easy to forget that this is coal-bearing country.

A couple of miles along the beach we cut inland through the dunes and past the wetlands and wildfowl lakes of Druridge Pools. Isolated in the fields beyond stands the lonely ruin of Low Chibburn Preceptory, a medieval chapel and hospital of the Knights of St John built on the ancient pilgrim route to Holy Island. The Hospitallers’ refuge has done duty in its time as a grand dower house, a cattle shed and a Second World War pillbox.

Before setting back for the beach and the return walk, we wandered slowly round the ruin, admiring its finely carved piscina, its arched windows and handsome stonework, survivors of changing fortunes over the course of seven hundred years in this remote corner of the Northumbrian coast.

Start: Druridge Bay Visitor Centre, near Amble, Northumberland NE61 5BX (OS ref NZ 272998)

Getting there: Visitor Centre signed off A1068, 2 miles south of Amble

Walk (6½ miles, easy, OS Explorer 325. Online maps, more walks at christophersomerville.co.uk): From car park, follow ‘Beach’. Path through trees, then dunes; down steps onto beach (273996). Turn right/south for 1½ miles. Where the dunes dip to a pool and Dunbar Burn, pass a pipe (broken in two) across the beach (277972). Continue along beach for 500m, then turn inland between tank blocks through gap in dunes (277965), past concrete blockhouse. Through fence gap (North Sea Trail ‘N’ waymark); right along road; in 200m, left between boulders (275966) on path (yellow arrow/YA) past Druridge Pools and on across 2 fields (YAs) to Low Chibburn Preceptory ruin (266965). Return same way. Nearing Visitor Centre, look for wooden steps up through dunes.

Lunch: Snacks at Visitor Centre café (open daily summer, weekends winter)

Accommodation: The Bridges B&B, 3 Togston Crescent, North Broomhill, near Amble NE65 9TP (01670-761989).

Druridge Info: northumberland.gov.uk, 01670-760968

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

Britain’s Best Walks: 200 Classic Walks from The Times by Christopher Somerville (HarperCollins, £30). To receive 30 per cent off plus free p&p visit harpercollins.co.uk and enter code TIMES30, or call 0844 5768122

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

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Hadrian’s Wall, its observation towers and guard-posts, the roads and townships that served it, form the most remarkable monument in Britain to those energetic, organised and life-loving invaders, the Romans. They wrenched our history so forcefully out of its former courses; and yet it’s the tiny details of their quotidian lives that fascinate us most.

How incredibly angry the tile-maker of Vindolanda must have been when that stupid pig walked all over the nice new clay flooring he’d left out to dry in the sun. A surviving tile from the spoiled batch, on display in Vindolanda’s museum just south of the Wall, carries the prints of the pig’s incurving toes, as sharp today as the hour they were dinted two thousand years ago. And here alongside are the hobnailed shoes and thong sandals of this Roman fort’s inhabitants, their nose-picks and knives and scribe-written birthday invitations; while outside lies the foundations of the town they lived and loved in, its houses, temples, wells and paved streets.

Walking the rushy meadows a mile or so to the south, I looked up at the thin line of the Wall as it rode the rollercoaster crags of the Whin Sill, the volcanic rampart that strides across the neck of Northumberland. A magnificent bull, muscled like a body-builder, lion-coloured and sporting a leonine mane, watched me cross the broad grassy ditch or vallum and turn east along the Wall.

The stepped path swooped me up the crests and down into hollows of the dolerite sill, passing the sites of the milecastles and turrets where conscripts from the Low Countries paced and shivered and looked out into the debatable lands to the north from where the wild Picts might come screaming at any moment. As I stared out from the Wall to the looming black line of Wark Forest, the blue humps of the Cheviot Hills beyond, it was all too easy to imagine those young men sulkily clutching their cloaks around them and wishing they were down in Vindolanda where the latrines ran with clean water and the stew came hot to the table.

The old house and barns of Hotbank Farm lay huddled on the slope of Hotbank Crags, their walls much patched with Roman stones. Here I left Hadrian’s Wall and headed across the vallum and down flowery meadow slopes, with Vindolanda spread below me in the evening sunlight.
Start: Vindolanda car park, near Bardon Mill, Northumberland NE47 7JN (OS ref NY 767664)

Getting there:
Bus – 685/85 to Bardon Mill
Road – signposted from B6318 at Once Brewed (north of A69, between Haydon Bridge and Haltwhistle at Bardon Mill).

Walk (8 miles, moderate – many short, steep slopes – OS Explorer OL53. NB: detailed directions, online maps, more walks at christophersomerville.co.uk): From Vindolanda car park, left along road; in 100m, left through gate, down track; in 400m, right (766660) on path (stiles, yellow arrows/YAs). NB After passing barn at Kit’s Shield (764659), negotiate tree blocking path! Skirt Layside (760659, YAs); on to road (756658). Left, then right along lane (‘Cranberry Brow’) for 1⅓ miles to road (735655). Right (fingerpost) on drive to Hill Top; on to road (730659). Right to cross B6318 (729663, stile, ‘Shield on the Wall’).

Path along field wall, then diagonally left across Roman Vallum ditch to Hadrian’s Wall (727669). Right along National Trail for 3 miles to Hotbank Farm (771680). Leave National Trail here; right down farm drive to B6318. Right along grass verge for 400m; left (770674, stile, ‘Vindolanda’) across field, aiming to cross stile on left of High Shield house (769672, YA). Left to stile (YA); down fields with fence on left. In 2nd field, fence trends away left, but keep a beeline ahead to stile and road at bottom (772665). Right to Vindolanda car park.

Conditions: Short, steep ups and downs on Hadrian’s Wall. Bulls, cows, calves may be in fields.

Refreshments: Vindolanda Café

Accommodation: Twice Brewed Inn (on B6318 near Bardon Mill), NE47 7AN (01434-344534; twicebrewedinn.co.uk) – very cheerful, walker-friendly stopover

Vindolanda: 01434-344277; vindolanda.com

Information: Northumberland National Park Centre, Once Brewed (on B6318 next to Twice Brewed Inn) – 01434-344396. Open weekends only in winter.
visitengland.com; www.satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk