The felltop road from Nenthead to Garrigill is still icy and we have to go carefully. Patches of snow linger behind dry stone walls despite the sunlight that delineates the workings and ruins of these heavily mined moors. Garrigill village, once a hub of industry where 1,000 people lived, is now a quiet collection of houses around a triangular green. The Spine Race ultramarathon recently passed through here on the Pennine Way and I think of those runners, way-finding by head torch, keeping on going through the night, challenged by weather, heading for the Scottish borders.
It’s the geology that drew people to settle here and to mine the hills for lead and silver, and it’s the geology that has fashioned the landscape of our walk. Looking over Garrigill Bridge, it’s extraordinary to think that this stripling river, rushing through its narrow gorge, is the South Tyne. Water tumbles over horizontal layers of limestone, sandstone and shale, sedimentary rocks laid down 330m years ago as mud silt and sand, thrust through by mineral veins of galena and fluorspar.
