This is about the second week of our trip north during the half of September 2018. The first one I spent in the Lake District, mainly painting at Higham Hall. More about that, with photos of the scenery and my paintings, on my Water and Art blog - Art in the Lake District.
To see the sketches I did this week, and the paintings developed back home afterwards, again please visit my Water and Art Blog - Art in the North Pennines.
To see the sketches I did this week, and the paintings developed back home afterwards, again please visit my Water and Art Blog - Art in the North Pennines.
Notes from
the North Pennines September 2018.
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| Sketch of the countryside near Alston - Copyright Joan Lee (2018) |
Stayed at a very comfortable cottage: Lord
Mayor’s Barn a couple of miles west of Alston. Mixed weather, but generally
mild, with a good deal of good weather for walking / getting out. Pleased to
report the South Tyne and other nearby rivers running well and recovered from
the prolonged summer drought. Rain on Monday night raising the River Tees made
for plenty of flow over High and Low Force on the Tuesday.
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| Tour of Britain Stage 6, near Higham Hall |
On Friday 7th
September, my painting course finished in the morning. I thanked Robert Dutton
for a good course: intensive, but lots to take home, including potential
material for future painting and printmaking. I liked painting in a different,
wilder part of the country. Mostly painting / drawing Honister Pass, including
a Plein air session there on the Tuesday. I left, generally was well motivated
to up my game.
My Cycling Man came over to Higham from the North
Pennines around midday, to pick me, and all my painting stuff up. It so
happened that Stage 6 of the Tour of Britain was passing close by. Rolling road
closures. Bunting and a bicycle outside the gates of the hall. We walked up the
hill to where the road levelled out and watched it there. Chris Froome, last
year’s Tour de France winner taking part as part of Team Sky. Peloton preceded
by 20+ high speed police motor cycles and team cars. Encountered the Tour
again, waiting on the A66 just outside Keswick on our journey east.
An great view ascending Hartside Summit, on
the western escarpment of the Pennines. Had seen this escarpment from Cat Bells
the weekend before. Had appreciated how long and steep the climb was. Highest
point just over 1900ft. Views all the better in the late afternoon light, with
the sun's rays shining through the clouds towards the watershed between the
Vale of Eden and the Lake District. Lakeland Fells visible in the distance, as
were the Solway and Galloway coast to the NW.
Saturday 8th
September – Hexham
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| The Tyne at Hexham |
River Tyne walk to / from Waters Meet. Light
lunch in the town. Pleased to see the River Tyne revived, having
hit near rock-bottom during the heatwave drought of May-July, especially the
South Tyne. Account to the Environment Agency (Monthly Water Situation Report
for NE England, July 2018), the mean monthly the flow at Haydon Bridge just
upstream of Hexham was just 1.4 cumecs (cubic metres per second). The North Tyne was less affect its flow
is regulated by releases from Kielder Reservoir. In flood, the Tyne is one of
the most powerful rivers in England. This was the first time I'd seen the Tyne
since the December 2015 floods (Storm Desmond). Then, the peak flow at Bywell
upstream of Newcastle was 1730 cumecs (CEH / NRFA report on the Winter 2015/16
floods in northern Britain, published December 2016). That’s the second highest
flow recorded in England, the first being 1740 cumecs on the Lune at Caton
during the same event; and one of the highest in Britain. Without the
mitigating effects of Kielder Reservoir, the flow would have been even higher.
Though this was during particularly extreme weather / rainfall, the Tyne has a
history of devastating floods, most notably in 1771, when all or nearly all the
bridges were washed away. The flow then would have been well in excess of the
above. Even when the Hexham bypass (Constantius Bridge) was built, a late
summer flood in 1975 disrupted operations.
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| Reflected branches above the weir at Hexham |
Today the river was benign, with branches
reflected in the water, coxes doing Saturday rowing along the broad stretch
through Tyne Green just above Hexham Bridge. The large weir immediately
downstream of the bridge was clearly built to take a lot of water. Upstream,
sizeable branches / trunks caught on the decaying pillars of what we took to be
a railway crossing. Since our last visit (2008), it had gotten very overgrown
at the Waters Meet confluence of the two Tynes, there no longer being a clear
view.
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| Meeting of the Waters - North and South Tyne rivers |
I first came to this area in June 1991),
during a week's holiday in Northumberland with my parents and brother who'd
just finished at university in the north. We stayed in a deceptively large
townhouse in Hexham. On the first evening, I walked round the town with Dad,
starting higher up near the Abbey, park with the bandstand. When we saw
chimneys steaming down the hill, it put Dad off heading down to the Tyne. “I
think you're in for a disappointment.”. Back then, our images of the Tyne and
NE England were still shaped by depressing news reports from the early Thatcher
era and a film I'd seen at school as a seven year old about the “polluted”
River Tyne. By then, though, the Tyne was much cleaner, with salmon. If it
hadn’t been for the guy spotting us dithering on the pavement outside his house
(well-spoken southern, not local), asking if he could help, we might not have
been introduced. The factory is still there, with a particularly prominent
chimney “steaming”, with a plume visible from Hadrian’s Wall at Once Brewed. It
is a chipboard factory, owned by an Austrian company, EGGER. Most of Hexham's
shoppers gravitate to the retail park down the hill, with Tesco, Waitrose, Next
etc. My Cycling-Literary Man was pleased to see the independent bookshop, still in the high street up
the hill.
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| Hexham Bridge Club (Constantius Bridge, A69) |
Sunday 9th September – walked the
classic section of Hadrian’s Wall between Once Brewed and Housesteads Roman
Fort, where the Wall passes over the Whin Sill. The sun shining through broken
cloud made for ever changing light. Most of the showers stayed to the south,
but a couple of heavy ones during the afternoon. We got wet during the second
one, but quickly dried out as it was very breezy and mild. Since our last visit, they’d built a swanky
new visitor centre at Once Brewed, called The Sill, after the Whin Sill. Other
than rebuilding YHA Once Brewed and car park / car flap control, not clear what
it was for; the interior having an overly corporate feel and lacking in
content.
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Monday 10th
September – Weardale
An interesting, if steep and fiddly drive up
to about 2000ft and down again into Weardale. We went to Stanhope first,
parking outside the Durham Dales Centre and walking up the hill to follow the Geotrail around Ashes Quarry.
There, for seventy years until the late 1940s, they quarried the Great
Limestone, part of the Carboniferous strata making up the Pennines. Before they
could get to that, they had to dig out overburden, many metres deep. There was
some machinery, such as a compressor, but most of the digging was by hand. Hard
back breaking work, “hellish in a hot summer”.
The quarry was now reverting
back to nature. The mounds of overburden now grassed / grown over forming an
interesting abstract pattern of ridges and slopes. There was also a mile long
hole where limestone quarried out the limestone. Hole now partially filled with
ponds, where there were herons and vegetation.
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| Ashes Quarry, Stanhope |
Views down to Stanhope, across Weardale, to
the hills separating it from Teesdale. Mine works. The quarry extended up to Crawley Ledge and further down the hill nearer the village, with a tunnel under East Lane, with a couple of houses precariously close to another big hole and sheer limestone cliff.
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| River Wear, Stanhope |
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| Ford and stepping stones, Stanhope |
This September's show just finished, but there were still signs up directing any terriers and lurchers looking for somewhere to park and corralling Judges and Officials straight ahead, Dogs, furs and feather off to the left. Followed the road along the river north out of the town. A railway track. Gypsy caravan parked on the river bank near stone bridge. Their horses chained up in the semi-wooded area near a quarry pond and another sheer cliff of limestone. The river here was narrower and flowing through a small gorge.
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| Quarry lake (with "tidemark" near the Wear above Stanhope. |
Killhope Lead Mining Museum
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Tuesday 11th
September – Teesdale
One of those days when it seemed the water spirits were with me, timing the weather just right for what I wanted to see. The barn where were were staying was detached and situated fairly high up above Alston, meaning we heard the wind and rain much more than usual. On Monday night, lots of it and it sounded heavy. Tuesday, though dry, mild and increasingly sunny for our walk in Teesdale. As noted above and seen before when we've been in the north, Pennine rivers notorious for their rapid response to rainfall, transforming within a few hours from low and slow like the Wear at Stanhope into frothing torrents the colour of Theakston's Old Peculiar / brown ale. Then dropping back equally quickly after the rain stops. Today's was a typical short-lived spate, affecting rivers throughout the North Pennines and at the northern Lake District. The peak of the spate on the South Tyne and Tees was early on Tuesday morning, according to the Environment Agency's Rivers and Sea Levels pages. Glimpsing the South Tyne when we crossed it at Alston bridge, it had transformed completely and subsequently dropped after a sharp spike on the hydrograph. Things looked good for high Tees at High Force.
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| Low Force |
But for the bit between the Tees and YHA
Langdon Beck, we essentially did the walk my other half had done the Thursday before,
but in the reverse direction. We started and finished at the car park near the
Bowlees Visitor Centre. Crossed the Bowlees Beck; a white breasted dipper, like
the one pictured on the Teesdale Way signs. Then across the road past the VC
into the woods on the left bank of the Tees close to Low Force.
Here some very
reflective obelisks and figures cast in stainless steel. This was an art
installation by Rob Mulholland. More
about him in the catalogue at the VC café over a cuppa at the end of our walk.
Similar installations in southern France and in Scotland, on the theme of
people as part of a landscape through time. Designed by catch the light and
reflect the surrounding trees etc. These here best appreciated when no other
people about. Busier on our way back, so as well we got it in early.
We crossed the one-at-a-time suspension
footbridge and followed the path along the right bank of the Tees past Lower
Force. This in itself was impressive with the raised water level. Cycling Man said there'd been nothing much to see here during the more subdued flow last week.
High Force was about a mile upstream beyond
the footbridge to the hotel. A slightly tucked away, easily missed view point
on the right bank. The water plunging down the main falls on our left was the
colour of froth on top of beer. More unusually, but not exceptionally, a more
slender stream of water on the right. Cycling Man said only the main one last week and
even that had been much more subdued.
The falls are formed as the Tees crosses over the Whin Sill and cuts down into the less resistant sandstone and limestone beds beneath it. From the right back, the distinction between the sill and sediment, the first much paler and more thickly layered, was clearer than on the left bank when I looked during my OU Geology summer school week in 2002. The left bank view (fee to pay) is lower down. It was a duller, wetter day than today and the main fall was further from the bank. The falls now were even more impressive when viewed from the top (video above).
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| High Force |
The falls are formed as the Tees crosses over the Whin Sill and cuts down into the less resistant sandstone and limestone beds beneath it. From the right back, the distinction between the sill and sediment, the first much paler and more thickly layered, was clearer than on the left bank when I looked during my OU Geology summer school week in 2002. The left bank view (fee to pay) is lower down. It was a duller, wetter day than today and the main fall was further from the bank. The falls now were even more impressive when viewed from the top (video above).
We carried on upstream, amid the noise of the
fast flowing Tees and machinery in Force Garth Quarry across the water, where
they were quarrying and crushing the Whin Sill for roadstone. Lorry movements.
Packed lunch near a tributary beck, Blea Beck coming out opposite the quarry,
with its own waterfall. Continued across two more Becks joining the Tees in
quick succession, then up the hill past a meander round the quarry rock.
Quieter here, upwind of the quarry and the upper slopes of it blocking the
noise.
Down hill again past a farm, to a footbridge taking the Pennine Way over the Tees. That was just downstream of the confluence of the Tees with the Harwood Beck, on our near side. A derelict farmhouse set back from the rivers. The Tees came in on the far side, round the crag dark against the light. Beyond that and out of view, were the Cauldron Snout cascade and the Cow Green Reservoir.
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| Force Garth Quarry |
Down hill again past a farm, to a footbridge taking the Pennine Way over the Tees. That was just downstream of the confluence of the Tees with the Harwood Beck, on our near side. A derelict farmhouse set back from the rivers. The Tees came in on the far side, round the crag dark against the light. Beyond that and out of view, were the Cauldron Snout cascade and the Cow Green Reservoir.
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| Near Langdon Beck |
Turned round where the path ran close to the
bank. The level of the Tees was falling noticeably by now. Back at High Force,
water was still pouring down the lesser right channel, but less than this morning.
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Wednesday 12th
September – River Tees walk, Barnard Castle
A fine, mild day for our circular walk along
the Tees. Out along the left bank for about three miles to the footbridge near
the Balder confluence; and back along the right bank.
About an hour’s drive from Alston, along
Teesdale, past High Force and through Middleton-in-Teesdale. Passed a café
called Tees Pot. Came into Barnard Castle from the east, passing the Castle on
the sandstone cliffs above the Tees. Crossed the bridge and parked in the town
centre up the hill.
We started our walk at the Castle, turning
right along a path running above the river. Past some benches with stone
carvings about drownings in the Tees. Until the Cow Green Reservoir killed it,
or rather slowed the rate of propagation of spates downstream, a wave of
water up to 2m high would race down the
Tees after heavy rainfall. This was the notorious Tees Roll. In 1942, seven soldiers drowned and dead sheep would
regularly be washed downstream. According to the local graffiti, things had
moved on from river issues to dogs cutting their paws on broken glass bottles.
Today the Tees was benign and flowing
relatively gently, but well. The reservoirs probably help maintain would
maintain healthier flows during summers like this last one, too.
Footbridge near the Castle and Deepdale Beck
on the far side, closed, with big blue water pipe snaking over it. That was
what the roadworks on our way in, and following the road in again at the end of
our walk were about. A flow gauge. Rebuilt in 2014, with a fish ladder in the middle.
The path ran through woodland beneath cliffs
of sandstone, with trees growing precariously close to the edges, some had
tumbled down. We then came out in a field on the inner bend of a meander. Here
we went down to the boulder water’s edge. An interesting froth eddy between the
main current flowing over a shallower rocky shoal and deeper area nearer the
bank, the current doubling back beneath a cliff. 
Then back into the woods, steeply up the hill,
clearing the trees; contouring above the river through farmland. Past a farmhouse,
sheep being rounded up by sheepdog.
Lunch overlooking the river on the hillside
just before Cotherstone (top photo, this section). Down from there and across the footbridge near the
inflow of the River Balder on the right bank. That came in fairly steeply and
seemed to be adding quite a bit of water to the main flow as it flowed around
an islet.
Metal sculpture mimicking nature on both sides
of the bridge: a branch on the wall just across it, and a leaf filled with
rainwater up hill from the River Balder.
Up hill from there to more farmland, path
skirting round the corners of fields. Then down again into woodland. As on the
other side, sandstone cliffs, with precarious trees.
Lost the Teesdale Way dipper signposts for a
while, missing a turning through tedious pinewood and old railway route; but
found it again nearing the town. Crossed the bridge benefits the Castle and
headed up into town for a cuppa.
Barnard Castle
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Thursday 13th
September |
| South Tyne, Alston, near heritage railway |
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| South Tyne from railway bridge near the station |
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| The junction of the South Tyne and the Nent (top left) |
This weekend btw, the 50th anniversary of the great southeast England floods of 1968. Still the biggest flood in living memory, in much of the area, most notably along the Mole and Wey. Though not as bad as Storm Desmond in the north, bad enough; certainly for what has always been a densely populated area. Earlier that year, in the March, bad flooding in the north, including Carlisle, where the flow of the Eden hit over 1300 cumecs, prompting the building of the Carlisle flood banks, but of course not enough to contain the floods of 2015 or 2005. Photo on Wikipedia of the Tees in full force over High Force; the river pouring not only round both sides of central cliff, but over it as well. The same happened again during the Storm Desmond rains, even with Cow Green Reservoir (1971) holding back some of the flow. Back at the Nent bridge in Alston, I don’t know what repairs involved, but temporary traffic lights an unusual selection of vans, including diamond drill cutting and diving services.
From the old station, followed the trail past
the signal box and signals, the line running roughly parallel to the South
Tyne. Past the metal remnants of a steam engine. Both got talking to a couple
from Cornwall, out walking their dog. Crossed the bridge over the river; with
shallow rapids on the far side of the track and slower deeper water flowing in
pools beneath a rocky platform. Turned round shortly after that and walked up
the steep, cobbly, busy high street. The
High Plaice fish and chips opposite a gallery selling ceramics inspired by
the surrounding fells and rivers. Post Office near here as well, where Cycling Man said he posted a whole load of OS maps home to lighten the load during his 1986
End-to-End cycle ride. He'd stayed at YHA Langdon Beck the night before and was
descending Alston’s steep hill, before pedalling on into Scotland.
With the rain setting in and getting heavy, we
headed back to the cottage around midday. An afternoon of artwork and packing.
Started a MM picture of High Force, but felt constrained by not being able to
splash paint around / having to watch no spillages etc. No hair dryer to dry
paint quickly either.
Environment Agency River and Sea Levels
Ditto Water Situation Reports for England, including river flows
