20km
Ewartly Shank – Linhope – Hedgehope Hill – Middleton Old Town
The
day started near the splendidly named farm of Ewartly Shank. To get there we drove backroads to Alnham,
then took off up a tiny, twisting, grass-centred road further out, passing
loose cows and scattering sheep.
Spotting the Shepherds’ Cairn, which marked the first poem of the day,
we pulled onto the verge. Outside it was
bright but a cold wind blew over the open hillside. It was only a short stroll uphill to the
cairn, erected in memory of two shepherds from Ewartly Shank who died one night
in the 1960s while trying to get home through a snowstorm. The poem talked of people carrying supplies
up to the farm afterwards, ‘Condolences and sympathies offered like lamp oil
and lint.’ It spoke of the transitory
nature of things, including ‘this poem, like an invisible wreath hung in the
air,’ which seemed an apt image for the fleetingness of the experience of
listening to the poem.
Jill
was going to wander round the area while I carried on into the Breamish
Valley. The paths were sketchy again,
the fences broken, gates rusty, waymarkers blank. At least the wind eased and the temperature
climbed. Past Alnhammoor Farm a car
whizzed up the sheep-dropping-spattered tarmac to the road, where I was
surprised to see a number of cars and a number of people. On reaching this point I found signs for
Linhope and Linhope Spout. It seemed I
had inadvertently happened upon some kind of tourist attraction. I joined the sparse line on people wandering
up the road.
Passing
a family group, the father was scolding his dog after it sniffed around a dead
rabbit. ‘Don’t touch it, it’s got
myxie.’ ‘What’s “myxie”,’ the little
girl asked, without receiving a reply.
A
good track led most of the way before a smaller path dropped into a valley
between high bracken. A short clamber down
rocks brought me to the deserted pool by the bottom of the waterfall. It was quite a pretty sight and made a lovely
sound, though this was drowned out by the sudden roar of a jet directly
overhead that left me twitching in blind panic.
People
started arriving so I left and continued on the track. To my surprise I came upon a sign for my next
destination, Hedgehope Hill. Not only
this but the unpromising path on the map turned out to be a pretty good one on
the ground. It was only towards the top
that it got first wet then rocky. It was
a steady pull without any difficulty, though my left foot was aching from the
miles of pounding footpath, and it had great views behind. I could see Simonside where I had been the
day before – and the rain that was falling to the south.
Just
as I approached the boulder-strewn top, a man came marching up from the other
direction, spoiling my quiet moment alone with the trig point. We chatted for a while though I could hardly
get through his north-eastern accent. He
seemed fixated on walking to/from Ingham and seemed unable to accept that I was
neither going there nor on to the Cheviot, which was basically the next hill
along.
He
trotted off while I ate a sandwich (no pease pudding today), and put on a coat
to keep out the increasingly strong wind.
I felt somehow disappointed that there wasn’t a poem to listen to. Perhaps the point is to create your own.
Pushing
on, the next section was a long, steep, horrible descent, as the bottom of
which it started to rain. A grandfather,
father and girl were coming the other way.
In a Scottish accent, the grandfather said, ‘I think we may have
mistimed it,’ nodding his head towards the dark clouds. They didn’t appear to have any waterproofs.
Shortly
after this the path, as shown on the map, vanished, and I stumbled my way as
best I could along its course over horrendous tussocks of grass and
bilberry. It was slow and
exhausting. The views to the rocky
outcrops and the big hills behind made up for it to a degree. When I made it back onto an estate track I
found myself on a wide, green motorway.
It was bliss and I zoomed along.
It
lasted a good way before I dropped down towards some farmers rounding up and
penning sheep, chasing recalcitrant ones through immobile, passive cows. A series of fields took me to Old Middleton,
a ruined, abandoned settlement, where Jill was sitting patiently on the
verge. This was the site of the last
poem in the series. Again it spoke of
transitoriness and provisionality, linking it to the ephemerality of a poem
that can only been listened to at that specific location and then lost to the
hearer. ‘Like writing it in air with a
fallen crow’s feather dipped in rainwater.’
The
rain started falling as we walked back down to the car, pausing only to chat to
the foreman of a stonewalling team.
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