Thursday June 27th - A moving day that started okay but ended with frequent showers. We only travelled about 60 miles from Moffat to Haltwhistle but in doing so we waved goodbye to Scotland and Hi 👋 to Northumberland. We had an uneventful journey and when we got there we decided to award ourselves the rest of the day off because it kept raining!
Friday June 28th - Not a good one 😟! The wind had howled all night and the rain had pelted making sleep a bit of a rarity, and added to that I wasn't very well (but the least said about that the better). Another anomaly was the fact that we've been all through the Highlands of Scotland and never seen a single midge but this place has certainly made up for it - the marauding little buggers are everywhere! So with the rain and wind persisting through the afternoon we just nipped out to do some shopping and then contented ourselves with a reading, puzzles and dozing for the rest of the day.
Saturday June 29th - I felt much better today and the sun tried very hard to put in an appearance so we quickly had our picnic packed and and headed out to The National Trusts Allen Banks and Staward Gorge. The bumf said " with its deep gorge, created by the River Allen, and the largest area of ancient natural woodland in Northumberland this 617 acre site provides the perfect setting for an adventure", so we thought we'd be in for a treat.
We'd planned to follow a 5 and a half mile way marked route that take us through Staward Gorge (with the River Allen beside us) and that would eventually lead us to the medieval Peel Tower. However, in the end we weren't overly impressed. The best bit about our walk was probably the summerhouse which in times gone by had been designed to give views of 4 outstanding features of the woodland from 4 separate portholes. When the woodland was gifted to the National Trust in 1942 a replica was built and I suppose at that time the views may still have been visible, but now the foliage has taken over and all we could see was 🌳 🌲 🌴 🌳 😂.
But not to be deterred we continued on our way but in many places there had been substantial landslides of rock, soil and massive tree trunks and in others the paths were derelict and very overgrown. There was also a lot of steep slippery hills to go up and down and when we got to our final destination there was nothing left to see of Peel Tower, nature had reclaimed it, and neither was there anywhere to sit to eat our lunch! It was a bit disappointing 😞 and we were hungry but there was no other choice than to retrace our steps until we finally managed to find a perch beside the river.
After we'd eaten we headed back to the car and nipped into Haltwhistle to find the geographic centre of Britain where there is a pretty plaque to stand on for pics. The info states that from the plaque it's 290 miles from Portland in Dorset and also from North Orkney - but what about Shetland???😂
Sunday June 30th - Peeks of sunshine and quiet humid so out came the midges again 🐙! Sadly I think Haltwhistle is fast becoming one of our less favourite places and although today's walk provided some magnificent far reaching views the terrain took our attention away from them quite a bit! Our walk was along the tract of part of Hadrian's Wall 🧱 - starting at Cawfield Quarry and crossing 3.5 miles to Walltown Quarry and then back again but for most of the time the Wall was absent and we were just traversing across rough farmland that was occupied by both sheep and cattle who had left lots of 💩 💩 💩 that needed to be avoided 😂!
We've walked parts of the Wall before but as that was quite a while ago we needed to refresh our memories as to its origin and purposes. Apparently the Wall recently turned 1900 years old and its construction began in 122 C.E. (Common Era) when Emperor Hadrian ordered the Roman Army to build a wall to separate Britannia from the contested Scottish lands to the North. It look 15,000 men around 6 years to build it and Milecastles were built along its length as lookout posts and also as gateways that allowed soldiers to patrol to the north.
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| A Picture of a Picture of a Milecastle |
While we were carefully placing our feet 😂 along the length of out walk the midges were mostly absent but when we reached Walltown they were back with a vengeance and I'm sure we probably enjoyed extra protein rations as we munched our picnic😮. We also considered buying ice-cream as a reward for our efforts but the black sprinkles on other people's treats put us off!
Out walk back to Cawfield Quarry took just as long but in the early stages we needed to be very quite! We didn't want to wake the Sleeping 😴 Giant who rests there.
Monday 1st July white 🐇 🐇 🐇 s! Oh dear - more rain so until now (3pm) we've stayed in our dry little cocoon 🙄! So this is another day with nothing much to say!
Tuesday 2nd July - Mostly cloudy with peeks of 🌞 and one or two showers 🚿! After our day of enforced inactivity yesterday we were both a bit lethargic and undecided what to do with our last day here at Haltwhistle. It was either to be a visit to RSPB Geltsdale or a walk from the campsite to Lambley Viaduct and in the end we chose the latter. In total it was about 5 and a half miles and along the way we passed several interesting features. The first was the gothic Featherstone Castle which is a Grade 1 listed building parts of which date back to the 14th century. However, these day's it operates as a conference centre and a wedding venue.
As we walked further along the banks of the South Tyne river we came to the derelict entrance to a prisoner of war camp were thousands of German Officers were held in The Second World War.
Then finally we came to the HUGE structure of The Lambley Viaduct which was built by the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway Company and was opened on 17th November 1852. It seems The Viaduct was built of sandstone quarried at Sloggyford near Hexham and it carried the track bed 32 metres above the River South Tyne. It has 9 main arches and 7 smaller ones but because sandstone isn't one of the toughest materials the condition of the Viaduct deteriorated over time and eventually masonry fell from it and trees started to grow between the stones. This wasn't remedied until 1995/6 when much of the stonework was replaced with the largest individual stone weighing in at 950kg
We sat in the shadow of this massive structure beside the river munching our picnic but then to continue our walk we needed to get up to where the track bed used to be. To do this we scrambled up an extremely steep slippery slope only to find our way was obstructed by a tall fence! Well, there was no way we could go back down so the only way was over - John managed it with ease but me - well let's just say it wasn't very ladylike😂.
From there our way home was along part of The South Tyne Trail which in total is an 11 mile track that runs from Haltwhistle to the Lambley Viaduct were it abruptly finishes at a dead end!
And that's it for another episode but we hope you'll join us again when we get to Braithwaite in the Lake District were we'll be celebrating 🍾 a very special occasion 😀 xx
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