Away across the valley, the cliffs of Cronkley Scar rise up, a sombre grey wall of dolerite columns. We cross the Tees by Cronkley Bridge, the river running low in this dry spring. Then it’s up through a forest of twisted junipers – the largest area of this native conifer in England – and across the moor to join the Green Trod. This ancient drover’s road is a wide green band that climbs up to Cronkley Fell in the Moor House-Upper Teesdale national nature reserve. To botanists these names, along with Widdybank Fell and Cow Green to the west, hold a kind of magic.
As the path gains height it fragments into a mass of boulders. Grouse retreat into the heather telling us to “go back, go back”. On the flat exposed hilltop is the first of several exclosures fenced against grazing. We edge round it, using binoculars to spot treasures growing among straw-coloured grasses.
