SO I’m sitting at work doing my job – which consists of creating and editing the national news pages of The Northern Echo and one or two other things – when my eyes alight on a story from the Press Association about buzzards being wiped out by a government department to further the interests of the pheasant-shooting fraternity . . . Continue reading
VALLEYS that wriggle into hills. Hills that merge into ridges. Ridges that ascend into clouds and silently collide with other ridges. A man can easily get lost in the Howgills. And I did once. Not truly lost. Just temporarily misplaced at the point where several Ordnance Survey maps joined at the corners . . . Continue reading
YOU can see Scafell Pike – the highest mountain in England – from the forecourt garden of the terraced house in which I spent my early childhood. From the back garden of the bungalow the family moved to when I was eleven, which is on the other side of the village, stretches a panorama of Lakeland fells, from Black Combe in the west to the edge of Helvellyn in the east. Few finer views exist . . . Continue reading
SOMETIMES it’s enough just to walk, to place one foot in front of another and allow the miles to slip by. What’s that old Irish saying . . . ? Continue reading
BELDOO Moss is not the most spectacular hill in the north Pennines. Few people have heard of it; even fewer have tramped across it. But it does harbour one or two surprising features that make it worth a visit.
I’ve driven over Stainmore between Cumbria and County Durham hundreds of times and got my boots claggy with its peat on several occasions. But I’ve never climbed the high ground – Beldoo Moss – to the north of the summit, which rises in gritstone terraces to a plateau of bog and heather. And up there in that bog and heather, according to my dog-eared map, is a Roman road leading to a Roman fort.
This is a bit like Channel 4’s Time Team. I’m on a tight schedule today. I’ve only got a couple of hours before I’m off to work. Will I find what I’m looking for? Will I unearth any fresh mysteries? Join me again after the break . . . Continue reading
THE name Whitechapel has a ring to it that awakens childhood memories. It’s the brown square on the Monopoly board along with the Old Kent Road. It is also where Jack the Ripper butchered his victims and has associations with the Elephant Man and the Krays. But Whitechapel is more colourful than Monopoly brown. And it’s a great place to start a walk through London’s quirky history . . . Continue reading
I HAVE a theory about Dick Whittington. After backpacking from the Forest of Dean to London and discovering the streets were not made of gold, it wasn’t the stirring sound of Bow bells that persuaded him to turn again and make the capital his home – it was the steepness of Highgate Hill . . . Continue reading
THE last train steamed over Stainmore Summit in 1962. I missed it. It’s not my fault – I was only five-and-a-half at the time. But if I hang around there just might be another along shortly . . . Continue reading
HAIL blasts across the fell and bounces off rocks. Wind stings the land. There are no shapes in this grey world – only noise and coldness and sloping ground. Then the mist parts briefly and something dark and vaguely eerie hovers on the edge of the visible world. It’s an old railway goods wagon – twelve miles from the nearest siding and at an altitude of 1,684ft.
That’s thrown me. I’m descending Clough Head, above Keswick, to the Old Coach Road, and was dwelling on a mystery concerning coaches and horses. But now I’ve got a railway wagon near the top of a mountain. Better start at the beginning . . . Continue reading
I LIVE on an ancient highway. It’s called the Great North Road. For many hundreds of years it’s been the main arterial link between the capital cities of two countries – England and Scotland. It is woven into history, folklore and legend. Dick Turpin galloped up it to his death. The Gododdin rode down it to theirs. Bonnie Prince Charlie got part way down, bottled out and turned back. The Leather Boys drove all the way up and all the way down in one day from the Ace Cafe on the North Circular. I consider it a privilege to be able to sit in my front room and watch traffic pass by . . . Continue reading
I LIKE Swindale because it’s not an easy place to find. It’s an even harder place to visit because parking’s not allowed in the valley. Outsiders are obliged to leave their cars on the common at the entrance because the road is so desperately narrow. I don’t like using the word “remote” because it is so often abused. St Kilda is remote. Terra del Fuego is remote. But if you want remote in a Lakeland context, then Swindale is as close as it gets . . . Continue reading
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I HAVE a plan. Tomorrow is my day off because I worked Sunday. I’ll drive across the icy Pennines to the Lake District, abandon the car on a rough piece of land at a charming cross-roads above Dockray, climb Birkett … Continue reading
