Walking in the North Pennines

The area between the Yorkshire Dales and Hadrian's Wall, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Most of the walks are circular and range from 4 to 13 miles. There are 42 day-walks in the guide, then a section of six longer walks presented in outline form only.

When National Parks were being established in England and Wales, the North Pennines seem to have been overlooked. John Dower described a National Park as “an extensive area of beautiful and relatively wild country”. The North Pennines display the most extensive area of supreme wilderness which isn’t matched on the same scale in any of the National Parks. The Hobhouse Committee recommended that twelve National Parks should be created, of which eleven subsequently achieved that status. The same commitee identiffied other areas with great landscape value and many of these were subsequently designated as Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs). The North Pennines was again notably absent.

When a document recommending AONB status for the North Pennines was presented to the Secretary of State for the Environment, it was promptly filed away in a drawer to gather dust. A concerted lobby brought it back to the fore, then a public enquiry was initiated. The North Pennines became a minor battleground - “No to AONB” signs went up and some landowners declared that their property had no beauty. In June of 1988 the North Pennines was declared an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty - the 38th such designation and at 772 square miles also the largest. There has already been a renewed call for National Park status to be granted.

The designated boundary of the AONB takes in all the high ground and most of the dales. Half of Teesdale and Weardale has been excluded, along with the major forests of Hamsterley and Slaley. Some land which is technically part of the Yorkshire Dales, but never claimed by the National Park, has been included in the AONB. This is a piece of bureaucratic nonsense - the Yorkshire Dales ends at the A66 and the North Pennines continue northwards from there. The counties of Cumbria, Durham and Northumberland administer the AONB and have jointly appointed a project officer to work there.

The Pennine Way has introduced many thousands of walkers to the North Pennines and many of them are drawn back to make further explorations. It can be confusing country - partly because of its sheer scale and wilderness quality, but also because of its access problems. Vast areas are managed for grouse-shooting, huge tracts have been claimed as strict nature reserves and the Ministry of Defence has staked out an enormous “Danger Area” subject to constant artillery bombardment.

On the plus side, there is a network of good, firm, clear tracks suitable for walking. Wilderness and lead mining are recurrent themes. Breathtaking waterfalls pour forth their glory. The flora and fauna features a bewildering host of species - some of which are unique to the area. Walkers with enquiring minds will find a wealth of interest. Forty-two day-walks and six long distance walks are offered and this is the only walking guide which tackles the whole of the North Pennines in any depth.

Geology

The geology of the North Pennines is basically quite simple, but it can become an exceedingly complicated study in some areas. The main bulk of exposed rocks belong to the Carboniferous Period and consists of a thickness of limestone overlain by a series of shales and sandstones which includes coal measures. The foundations underlying this succession are largely hidden and consist of ancient slates and a large area of granite.

Let’s start with the bedrock, imagining a time when only the ancient slates and granite were exposed. A shallow sea lapped over that landscape and covered it with a pebbly surface. The sea was clear, warm and shallow, so corals were able to grow. As the sea deepened the corals grew ever towards the light and built up a thick reef deposit of limy materials. There were many other creatures with hard shells which lived in the sea and as these died their remains were piled up and the limy material grew thicker and thicker. Some remains were so small that the resultant limestone is very fine grained. In some cases it has simply become crystalline.

Meanwhile, much further away from this area, a vast range of mountains was being worn away by immense rivers. These rivers carried sand and mud into the sea, eventually reaching this area. The mud cut out the light and killed off the corals. Mud banks built up over the reefs. In times of severe flooding sand was carried into the sea and dumped on top of the mudbanks. This inter-bedded series eventually built up so that it occasionally stood slightly above the sea. It was in fact a vast delta system which came to cover the area. Sometimes strange fern-like trees or giant horsetail-type plants could get a roothold, but fluctuating water levels sometimes drowned the lot. The vegetable matter would become entombed in further layers of sand and mud. In time it turned into coal.

The whole series which is displayed today - limestones, shales and sandstones - is tilted back slightly from west to east. For all intents and purposes, this tilt is so slight that many small locations could be said to display horizontal strata. However, given that the tilt is over many miles, it means that limestones are more commonly exposed in the west and shales and sandstones in the east. There are also a series of fault-lines which have upset the simple succession and broken the area into separate blocks whose strata don’t quite match. The arrangement is further upset by the presence of the Whin Sill - a foreign rock which arrived as a molten sheet squeezed between the existing layered succession. Incredible heat and pressures also forced hot gases and liquids into the rocks, which cooled to form mineral veins, containing metals and other substances foreign to the original series.

A geological map is an interesting acccompaniment on many of the walks, enabling rock types to be identified and named. These maps, plus some detailed back-up reading, would help the walker to interpret the very complicated arrangement of foothills along the East Fellside flank of the North Pennines. A complex fault-line has mixed up the simple succession with the older bedrocks, breaktaking each series apart before tilting and mis-matching them. The East Fellside is a specialist study - something to look at if you want a PhD.