Walking in the North Pennines. Paddy Dillon

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INTRODUCTION

      The North Pennines has been called ‘England’s last wilderness’, and there is nowhere else in the country where the land is so consistently high, wild, bleak and remote. In fact, this is a region of superlatives – once the world’s greatest producer of lead, location of England’s most powerful waterfalls, holding several records for extreme weather conditions, home to an assortment of wild flowers, and refuge for most of England’s black grouse population. The region is protected as an ‘area of outstanding natural beauty’, and renowned for its wild and wide-open spaces.

      There is plenty of room for everyone to enjoy exploring the North Pennines, with walking routes to suit all abilities, from old, level railway trackbeds to extensive, pathless, tussocky moorland. For many years the region was relatively unknown, being surrounded on all sides by more popular national parks. Since 1965, the Pennine Way has introduced more and more walkers to the region, many of them being surprised at how wild this part of the Pennines is, especially when compared to the gentler, greener Yorkshire Dales.

      When national parks were being established in England and Wales, the North Pennines was overlooked. John Dower described a national park as ‘an extensive area of beautiful and relatively wild country’. The North Pennines features an extensive area of supremely wild country that isn’t matched on the same scale in any of the national parks. The Hobhouse Committee recommended that 12 national parks should be created, and also identified other areas with great landscape value, many of which were subsequently designated as ‘areas of outstanding natural beauty’, or AONBs. The North Pennines was notably absent from all these listings.

      When a document recommending AONB status for the North Pennines was presented to the Secretary of State for the Environment, it was promptly filed and forgotten. A concerted lobby brought it back to the fore and a public enquiry was launched. The North Pennines became a minor battleground, with ‘No to AONB’ signs appearing in some places, while some landowners declared that their property had no beauty. In June of 1988 the North Pennines was at last declared an area of outstanding natural beauty, becoming the 38th such designation and, at 2000km2 (772 square miles), also the largest at that time. This was almost immediately followed by a renewed call for national park status to be granted.

      The AONB boundary is roughly enclosed, in a clockwise direction, by Hexham, Consett, Barnard Castle, Kirkby Stephen, Appleby and Brampton. While all those places lie outside the boundary, each could be considered a ‘gateway’ to the North Pennines. The largest town inside the AONB is Alston, but Stanhope and Middleton-in-Teesdale are only just outside the boundary.

      The AONB includes all the high ground and most of the dales, though half of Teesdale and Weardale are excluded, along with the large forests at Hamsterley and Slaley. Some land south of the busy A66, which was never claimed by the Yorkshire Dales National Park, has been included in the North Pennines. The counties of Cumbria, Durham and Northumberland each claim a third share of the North Pennines, and an office administering the AONB has been established at Stanhope.

      The North Pennines was once the world’s greatest producer of lead, providing everything from roofing material for churches to lead shot for warfare. A considerable quantity of silver was also mined. The broad, bleak and boggy heather moorlands have long been managed for the sport of grouse shooting, and are best seen when flushed purple in high summer. For many years, walkers wanting to reach the most remote and untrodden parts of the North Pennines might have been put off because of the lack of rights of way, but the recent Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 has resulted in vast areas being designated ‘access land’.

      There has probably never been a better time to explore the North Pennines and this guidebook contains detailed descriptions of 50 one-day walks. These cover nearly 800km (500 miles) of rich and varied terrain, serving to illustrate the region’s history, heritage, countryside and natural wonders. This terrain ranges from field paths and old railway tracks to open moorlands on the high Pennines. You will be able to discover the region’s geology, natural history and heritage by following informative trails, or taking in specific sites of interest along the way. A network of tourist information centres can help you discover the best places to stay, how to get around and what to see.

Geology

      The geology of the North Pennines can be presented in a fairly simple manner, but can also become extremely complex in some areas. The North Pennines was designated the first ‘Geopark’ in Britain in 2003, in recognition of how its geology and mineral wealth have shaped the region. The oldest known bedrock is seldom seen at the surface, but is notable along the East Fellside. Ancient Ordovician rock, comprising mudstones and volcanics, features on most of the little hills between the Vale of Eden and the high Pennines, but being heavily faulted, tilted and contorted, is very difficult to understand, even for students of geology. Ordovician rock is about 450 million years old and lies beneath the whole of the North Pennines. There is also a significant granite mass, known as the Weardale Granite, which outcrops nowhere, but was ‘proved’ at a borehole drilled at Rookhope.

      Late-flowering hayfields can be enjoyed in Upper Teesdale and Upper Weardale (Walk 28)

      Looking back to the Carboniferous period, 350 million years ago, the whole area was covered by a warm, shallow tropical sea. Countless billions of shelled, soft-bodied creatures lived and died in this sea. Coral reefs grew, and even microscopic organisms sometimes had a type of hard external or internal structure. Over the aeons, these creatures left their hard shells in heaps on the seabed, and these deposits became the massive grey limestone seen on the fellsides and flanks of the dales today. A dark, durable, fossiliferous limestone outcropping in Weardale is known as Frosterley Marble. Even though it is not a true marble, it polishes well and exhibits remarkable cross sections of fossils.

      Even while thick beds of limestone were being laid down, distant mountain ranges, being worn away by storms and vast rivers, brought mud, sand and gravel down into the sea. These murky deposits cut down the light in the water and caused delicate coral reefs and other creatures to die. As more mud and sand were washed into the sea, a vast delta system spread across the region.

      Frosterley Marble

      At times, shoals of sand and gravel stood above the waterline, and these became colonised by strange, fern-like trees. The level of water in the rivers and sea was in a state of fluctuation, and sometimes the forested delta would be completely flooded, so that plants would be buried under more sand and gravel. The compressed plant material within the beds of sand and mud became thin bands of coal, known as the Coal Measures. This alternating series of sandstones and mudstones, with occasional seams of coal, can be seen all the way across the region. The various hard and soft layers can often be detected where the hill slopes have a vaguely stepped appearance today.

      Other geological processes were more violent, resulting in the fracturing and tilting of these ordered sedimentary deposits. The whole series is tilted so that the highest parts of the Pennines are to the west, diminishing in height as they extend east. Far away from the North Pennines, there were violent volcanic episodes, and at one stage a sheet of molten rock was squeezed between existing layers of rock, solidifying as the ‘Whin Sill’. Deep-seated heat and pressure brought streams of super-heated, mineral-rich liquids and vapours into cracks and joints in the rocks. These condensed СКАЧАТЬ