Border Walk – Back to Kielder

I left Byrness at about 8-ish and wandered down to the Pennine Way, crossed the River Rede and took the unwaymarked path up through the forest to join the Toll Road back to Kielder.
This is point and fire stuff. There’s no messing about here, and little of immediate interest unless you really like trees – that is, spruce trees, not oak or anything with a bit of life in it – just spruce. Miles and miles and miles and miles of….  spruce.

I got to the summit of the road at Blakehope Nick in fairly short order and found that it was only six miles to Kielder Castle. More point and fire happened, but now it was mainly downhill.

Just a note of information for anybody daft enough intent on bagging the Dewey Wool Meath. It’s very very rough. But you can leave your pack somewhere in the trees near Ridge End Burn.  Or there’s a small car park at the summit of the road….! (for those with a car).
By about one o’clock I was talking to the nice police lady at the car park behind the Anglers’ Arms about why I’d abandoned my car there for three days and scared the locals into thinking I’d gone off into the woods to top meself.
She was very nice about it, though

Today was 12 miles and 1400 feet and not specially interesting. I could have made more out of the wild life hides (I thought the notice was an obvious statement… wild life does hide, doesn’t it?) and the Osprey thingy, but I just couldn’t be arsed, to be honest.
For anybody walking the Border, it’s a very quick and easy way to Byrness and will only take half a day, so best have a lazy breakfast at the Kielder castle tea room.
So that’s that. There’s a bit more Borders sweeping up to do, but we now have A Route. The high level route is easier walking than the Kielder-Byrness bridleway, but is 22 miles and will likely take an extra half a day.

Border walk Peel Fell and Carlin Tooth

This is day 1 of a three day walk along the Scottish/English Border – the bit that I missed out on another occasion.
Some silly bugger had been playing with all the clocks, so I set off an hour late, or dead on time Greenwich Meantime. It was still dark, but I arrived in a deserted Kielder somewhere around dawn and abandoned the knipemobile.

Forest tracks and a derelict road took me up to Deadwater Fell, upon the summit of which there are “things”. I’ve not much clue as to what they are, but they have CCTV cameras and notices about navigation aids. There’s also an architect-designed too-far-up-his-own arsehole-for-his-own-good shelter which lets the wind in and, through which, if you look through the cracks, you can imagine it’s just like looking through the gaps in the trees. Look, matey boy, architect person, this is Kielder Forest. It has hundreds of millions of trees. You don’t need to imagine what it’s like artistically. cos the real thing is , well, just everywhere.

Deadwater fell is the only English top that sound’s like it’s been named by Cisco Kid by the way.  Eee-har, throw another injun on the fire, Jake….
A boggy path leads to The Riever’s Cross – an ancient cairn with a shelter fashioned in the middle and a small cross. More bogginess takes the already soggy rambler fairly easily to Peel Fell where there’s a little cairn.


Just before the top , there’s the “Kielder Stane Spur”. This is a boggy path (I’m sure you’re getting the picture by now) which leads downhill to the Kielder Stone. The Kielder Stone is a point on the Border which, in less lawful times, people could rush up, leave a message and bugger off before anybody saw – and somebody else would do likewise form the other side and pick it up. So, it’s a significant point.

However (and this is a big however girls and guys) the ground around the Stone is probably the roughest anywhere for about a kilometre in any direction. Any movement is slow and ponderous and teeters between deep heather, badly spaced tussocks and sphagnum bogs. My advice , for those intent on the ridge, is to give it a miss. the walking higher up is much, much easier. The only problem, of course, is for the purist Border follower because the Border doesn’t follow the ridge at this point but ducks down to the Kielder stone and then messes about trying to find an excuse not to go back up to the ridge.

A determined effort and some blasphemy brought me back to the ridge, and what a fine bit of walking this is. On the “Scottish” side of the fence, the grass is short and the views into Scotland are specially fine. There’s a few gritstone outcrops and a trig inside a shelter. This is Carlin Tooth, a fine hill which needs to be transferred to England. A carlin by the way could be a “pea” but it’s more likely to be a wife who has special “powers”, one of which may well be to turn herself into a hare or a crow. A tooth is a tooth is a tooth.

As the sun was yawning, winding up the clock, putting the cat out and getting ready for cocoa and bed, I thought I’d better put the tent up at this point. I found a heathery. sloping spot near to a very small stream of tea-coloured water. And there , I spent the next fifteen hours. You get a lot of rest, backpacking at this time of year. Except that it was halloween, of course and I’m on the witches hill. And it’s dark…. oooer…. its very dark……

10 miles and 2000 feet up uphill……
Cripes…
Another two days of this shortly. What was that  noise?outside..?

Border Walk Day 4 Kielder to Byrness

There’s phrase for today is “A walk on Northumberland County Council’s Comedy Bridleway”
I started well again – in the correct direction (albeit after some urgent replanning) and with happier feet than last night.
I’d originally intended to follow the Border ridge over Peel Fell and Carlin Tooth to Carter Bar and then on to Hungry Law. Reality stepped in somewhere and I realised that, for me, this would be a two day walk, or at least one and a half…

Anybody else determined to walk the Border should really go this way and allow the appropriate amount of time. As it was, I wasn’t up to it, I had a bed booked at Byrness and a ticket at Berwick, so I could only take an extra day by forfeiting these things. Look, I’m a Yorkshireman, don’t be so daft.
So a direct bridleway going almost all the way the Byrness in fairly short order looked to be an easy option. How wrong could I be?
The Toll road at the A68 from Kielder leads the innocent innocuously into the inhospitable interior (thats enough of that now…)  At East Kielder the bridleway starts over rough pastures with cows and sheep and a vague air of neglect.

At Kielderhead bothy, there’s a beck to be paddled, some deep nettles and a barricaded gate all of which would effectively prevent a person on horseback progressing any further. The bothy is locked and bolted and closed due to Neds and their boozy parties and random vandalism and general arseholiness. It adds to the atmosphere but shows that the Forestry Commission can spend money on blocking up this building but bugger-all on the right of way.

I entered tussock land. The tussocks here are deep and green and lush and big. The line of the path is less than obvious.
As it progresses eastwards, it gets no better. Sometimes there’s a thin trod which appears to be more of a sheep trod. Sometimes there is deep and ravenous bracken, well over head height. Within the bracken there are holes for the ankles.

Eventually, after many an hour of struggle, it gets worse. It started raining very heavily at this point, just to add to the delight, and having just put my foot into a two foot deep hole full of cold, black methane-water, I was rejoicing at being out, I can tell you.
I heaved my way up throught he dep heather and ever deeper bracken to Girdle Fell, using GPS to hit the boundary at just over 520 metres. Here, there was a bit of a path and a noticeboard describing the walk to the waterfall and picnic place. Its a good job I didn;t try to go there. Both the path and the pickernick area are pure figment of Tilshill Forestry’s fevered imagination. maybe they get a grant or something.

Just as things were getting better (it stopped raining) – it got a lot worse. The bridleway plunges very steeply through seven foot deep bracken down a forest ride. Lower down the ride is competely blocked by large fallen trees. The local black flies add to the sheer fckn enjoyment of this place.
Eventually, I was on the verge of giving up altogether when I noticed, on the opposite side of the beck, a forest road. The bridleway itself was nowhere to be seen More bracken and trees seemed to be in the way. I plunged through the last of the jungle and crossed the beck. The forest ride, which incidentally was supposed to have the picnic area lead easily through a locked gate (how are you supposed to get to the non-existent picnic area?) – through a beef field, of which I was in no mood to have any nonsense from – so they allran away – down to Catcleugh reservoir where it started chucking it down again.

I eventually arrived, somewhat bedraggled, or at least , more bedraggled than usual at the Forest view Hostel at Byrness where I was gently deprived of my soaking waterproof, boots and nasty socks and had hot tea and cold beer and a bit of sympathy from Colin and Joyce.  Joyce and Colin must be well rehearsed in tending to the needs of the fragged off the Pennine Way and, despite the return of the pain in the foot, it was a good end to a duff day.
About the bridleway – Something Must Be Done. This is an important route. Its not Government Cuts, Northumberland County Council, its years and years of neglect. A few strong words with those foresters would be a start, and maybe a few wooden stakes will yellow paint on the top would help to establish a path that can be followed. You know , the sort of thing they have everywhere else…….
In theory at least, I covered 13 Miles  with 1500 feet of ascent. It felt like a week in the Burmese jungle.
On the plus side, I got the socks washed and the the tent dried and I got fed, showered, watered, beered and cheered up. I will be in contact with Northumberland CC about this.
More of which later…

Border Walk Day 3 Newcastleton to Kielder

The word for today was “Trees”.   Lots and lots of trees.
Today was almost all in commercial forest - Newcastleton Forest on the Scpttish side and Kielder Forest on the English side. They both look the same, though.
By way of a change, and after visiting the village Costcutter, I set off in the correct direction in ordinary kit, that is to say, not full waterproofs. Any dripping was from the forehead, ears, eyes, neck……
I marched up the road to Dykecrofts, a centre for mountain bikers. There were lots of signs, including one which said “Cross Border Route”, pointing towards the Isle of Man. I assumed this would turn into the correct direction so I followed it uphill. And it did!  Ecky thump, as they say in parts of Preston (still) – onwards to – a dead end. I found a steep track zig-zagging downhill to another forestry road with a sign saying “Cross Border Route” pointing towards the Isle of Man. If I followed this, I would surely complete a circle. Who knows what disasters may befall should the circle be ever-decreasing. I turned towards Moscow and gradually we (that is, me, I usually see double without my specs on) – slowly we (me) made our way towards the old drovers road (auld droverrrrrs rrrrrooad) that leads to England.

I (we) plodded uphill to an auld rrrrradio station where, according to the map, a few hundred metres or so South would lie a good path to the summit of Larriston Fell. It was a lie. I knew it was a lie, I’d been here before, some years ago. I sort of half-hoped that a path might have formed. No. Not on your nelly it hasn’t. The heather is knee deep. In between the lethal bogs its knee deep anyway. I struggled and huffed and altered direction in a fruitless and pathetic search for a sheep track. Or anything. No chance pal. I eventually struggled up to the trig point, did a GPS thingy on the route through a forest break which would be the shortest route to another forestry road and which had this notional path running down it. It was going to be rough. It was rough. Gwan – ask me how rough it was.

Eventually, after a couple of nervous breakdowns and a Mars bar, I arrived, according to the GPS. A fence over to the West looked like it might have a gate. It didn’t but below the forest had been clear-felled to brash and through the middle of the havoc and destruction, a clear, yellow path squiggled and squirmed towards Kielder. I hade for it, bashing through the twigs and logs and bits of foresters arms and legs and stuff, so distinctive of apprentice chain saw operators and eventually got to the path. It was just two feet wide. I followed it. It arrived, after a while at three mountain bikers and a foresty road. They told me the path was a new mountain bike path to Bloody Bush. Well fit me with a false identity. Course it was. I knew that.
I headed North east on good forest tracks that shadowed the Border. There was a crossing into England, and another into Scotland, then back into England. These are the Debateable Lands.

Soon, I was on the campsite with warnings about midgies. I camped for a bit then limped off badly to the Anglers Arms, luckily not too far away. I seem to have acquired some kind of non-blister-like lump on my foot. If I stop walking it swells up and I can;t start again.
Dinner, at the Anglers Arms, though, is good scoff and good value and I allow myself to be exploited to the tune of a chicken pie and several pints of Spitfire and I watched the first half of an England footy match. But soon home to bed with my poorly foot.
Today was 15 Miles and 1900 feet and it only rained for about an hour. That’s good innit?

Border Marches March develops a bit

Some alert readers may remember me going on about a route along the English/Scottish Border.

Auchope Cairn Cheviot Hills

Well, as its been chucking it down in Crook yet again, and I’ve been at a bit of a loose-end, I’ve been playing with the maps and I’ve come up with a first draft – or , as it’s November – a first draught, possibly, of a route.

And this is it:

Start at The Sands Centre in Carlisle. I’d been lead to consider starting at Gretna, which may be more logical, but its easier to get to Carlisle and you don’t have to get married. Its quite a bit longer, starting at Carlisle, but the paths are better.

So – we start at Carlisle and follow the Cumbria Coastal path northwards as far as it goes, to a place called “Metal Bridge”. Lanes take us into Longtown. End of first day. Its about 23km and should be fairly easy walking. Good start, I think.

Day 2 Goes alongside the River Esk for a bit then uses quiet lanes to get into the forest and forest tracks and paths to Newcastleton aka Copsawholme, which is a much better name. 27 km. This day starts well and deteriorates a bit on the lanes and forest roads. But it gets a bit further East, which is what we want.

Near Byreness

Day 3 Takes an old drovers road to Bloodybush and, very roughly over Larriston Fell for more forest roads into Kielder. 22km

There’s a campsite and a pub at Kielder, so thats OK then. Larriston Fell could be a shock after all that easy walking – but training for more rough stuff is required. Think of this as a granny-stopper.

Day 4/5 Goes up Peel Fell, down to the Kielder Stone, and, basically, follows the border fence over Carlin Tooth to Carter Bar and a bit further till a track down to Byreness is taken. This is a long way - 33+km. Some people may consider that two days with a big pack over vicious tussocks may be the thing. There’s usually a tea van at Carter Bar. The independent hostel Forest View at Byrness will probably turn out to be an oasis in a desert of brown grass. This may save your sanity. Onwards!

Day 5/6/7 - After an initial walk back up to the border fence, follows the Pennine Way from Chew Green to Kirk Yetholm. 40+km. Probably two days. There are multiple wild camping spots, specially on the Scottish side of the border, and two garden huts, sorry, refuge huts, and B&B off route at Uswayford.

Day 6/7/8 Goes to Town Yetholm and by lanes to the River Tweed, which is the border, which is followed on footpaths and lanes to Cornhill on Tweed 27km.

Day 7/8/9 More riverside paths and lanes to Berwick on Tweed for Fish and Chips, Beer and the train home. 29km

Hows that for a walk, then? _ I think I’ll have a crack at this next year….