Rising north out of Allendale, the stony track is fringed by tall, windblown grasses and the occasional scruffy, red-berried rowan. Pipits lift from the walls of this old drover’s road to fly in erratic patterns across the moorland. I look back over the valley to where two lead-mining chimneys punctuate the distant skyline. This route to Hexham is the slow way, the old way, to get from one valley to the other.
Out on the open moor, the waving path is a dark line sunk in knee-high heather. Grouse scatter, calling and chuckling, and a solitary raven cronks as it drifts past. A few muted patches of heather are still in flower. The way drops down to a dilapidated bridge across Anchey Sike – one of several tiny streams that thread the moors – and climbs to a high point looking over the Tyne Valley. From up here I can see Deadwater Fell, the great curved back of the Cheviot, and the wind turbines on the Wanneys.
Through sheep fields, past farm walls, I enter West Dipton Wood. Fallen rowan berries glimmer along a path that’s now soft underfoot. The wind barely stirs the woodland in this sheltered dene. Its steep slope falls away down to the burn where the Queen’s Cave is hidden in the shadows. Fallen trees from winter storms still lie across the footpath, but the shoulder-high bracken has now turned autumn bronze, and polypores bracket the silver birches.
Another drove road skirts Hexham Racecourse, where white rails loop around a central lake. Above a dry, sandy bank, stippled by the nest holes of solitary bees, a hundred goldfinches flash and flicker between thistle and dock seedheads. From this, the windy Yarridge, ridge of the yarrows, it’s a long road down to Hexham on ungiving asphalt until the marketplace beneath its sheltering 12th-century abbey.
My walk was inspired by Slow Ways, an initiative to connect cities towns and villages through a network of walking routes, each beginning and ending with public transport. My usual journey to Hexham takes 20 minutes; this walk took me half a day but, lulled by the rhythm of my walking, my thoughts settled, my appreciation of the landscape became richer.
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