North of the Cheviot by Anthony Toole
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Until recently, I had not ventured into that quadrant of hills centred on the Cheviot and contained within the sweep from Harthope Burn to the Scottish border. I have visited the Cheviot’s boggy summit many times, but though I gazed across the hills to the north, I merely filed them away for the future.
When circumstances brought me to Wooler, and left me with some hours of free time, I took the opportunity to open the file, and visit the valley of College Burn. What I found there has since called me back and will do so again.
Northumberland’s valleys all have their own distinct characters, and College Valley is no exception. Knocking on Scotland’s door, it feels isolated from the rest of the county. It receives fewer visitors than other valleys and has an atmosphere almost of silence. Its beauties seem more expansive than the compact attractions of Harthope and Breamish valleys. Yet it contains hidden secrets. Some pop up unexpectedly. Finding others demands a sustained effort.
The quietness is helped by its isolation and by the fact that it is a privately owned estate, managed with conservation in mind. A small car park at Hethpool gives access to walkers and cyclists throughout the year. A maximum of 12 cars per day may be allowed to go farther, except during the lambing months of April and May. A permit can be obtained, free of charge, from estate agents, Sale and Partners, 18-20, Glendale Road, Wooler.
On a not-too-promising March morning, I left the car park in drizzling rain, and crossed the river by a bridge at the end of the village. After negotiating deep mud, I followed a track, then a wall up the hillside beyond. For a time, the rain abated, but as I reached a gate in the wall, it returned with a wintry chill that turned it to snow. I continued across the slope toward the col between the main peak, Newton Tors, and the slightly lower Hare Law, then up to the latter. The snow thickened, and for several minutes I sat in the deep well of a circular cairn while the view disappeared.
The sky cleared and a hazy sun raised the temperature by several degrees. I headed south, down a long, gentle slope to a boggy plateau, across this and up a shorter gradient to the summit of Coldburn Hill, where I stopped for lunch.
The continuation slope fell away gradually for some distance, then appeared to drop abruptly into the next valley. On the far side of this rose the Cheviot, looking quite formidable, its northern face marked by the deep gash and snow-clad crags of The Bizzle.
I moved downhill to the west, to meet the main valley road between Coldburn and Southernknowe, and followed this for about two miles back to Hethpool. I met four people on the way.
The peaceful ambience of College Valley masks a great deal of work. As well as sheep farming, significant areas are given over to forestry. During the next twenty years, the Forestry Commission plans to replace much of its conifer forests with native broadleaved trees. Some areas of Scots pine will be left to provide a habitat for wildlife such as red squirrels.
Conservation management includes bracken control, to encourage diversity of grassland species, and a project to increase numbers of the rare black grouse that breed here. Other birds that frequent the valley include raptors such as peregrine, buzzard and merlin, water birds like dipper and goosander, and moorland species such as curlew, snipe and golden plover.
A month after my initial visit, I returned with a friend to explore the hills to the west. Though the breeze was cool, and a few snow patches decorated the upper reaches of The Cheviot, we found a valley on the cusp of springtime.
The first hill, Great Hetha, was lower and easier than Newton Tors. As well as stunning views, back toward Hethpool and south to The Cheviot, it held, on its summit, the remains of an extensive Bronze Age hill fort.
A grassy ridge took us down to a pass over which a road led to farm buildings. Crossing this, we continued along a footpath that overlooked the steep-sided Trowupburn valley. College Valley itself was little more than a mile behind us, yet the nearby hills and forests seemed to cut us off from it, to create the illusion that it was much more distant.
A heavy rain shower caught us near the end of the valley, but blew away by the time we reached the summit of White Law. Here we joined the fence marking the Scottish border, and a track that was part of the Pennine Way. A few miles to the west lay Kirk Yetholm, the starting, or finishing point for that long-distance footpath.
We followed the fence southward to a col, then up the long drag to Black Hag summit. This was as far south as Coldburn Hill, the limit of my previous walk. The Pennine Way continued over The Schil, where it disappeared to trace the rest of its course down the backbone of England. We, on the other hand, headed north-east, over bogs and down Blackhaggs Rigg, back into the College Valley.
Two weeks later, the spring had fully arrived. Rather than walk the length of the valley from Hethpool, I decided to approach The Bizzle from Harthope Valley. A good track led gently uphill from the car park near Langleeford. This passed over the boggy plateau between Broadhope Hill and Scald Hill, then down toward Lambden Burn, a tributary of College Burn. A rubble forestry road swung north round the hillside to where a footpath wound through the edge of a conifer plantation, and down open fields to Goldscleuch Farm. From there, a metalled road brought me, after a mile, to Dunsdale.
Rising above the road, near where a bridge carries it over the river, is Dunsdale Crag. Consisting of volcanic rock, this is different from almost any other crag in Northumberland, and resembles more the rock walls of the western Lake District. Though easy-angled and somewhat broken, the crag is around thirty metres high in places. In the 1940s, it was a popular rock climbing venue, with several climbs on its faces. However, it lost much of its popularity after a fatal accident, and now, mainly because of its isolation, is rarely visited.
A short road to Dunsdale Farm gave way to a track leading through deep heather for half-a-mile into the mouth of The Bizzle. This proved as dramatic as it had appeared from Coldburn Hill. The floor was broad, but curved up on both sides to near verticality. The west wall was fringed along its upper edge by crags, the most obvious of which was split by a deep crack. This was Bizzle Chimney, a classic rock climb that had its first ascent around 1907. In view of its inaccessibility, I wondered how many years might have passed since it was last climbed.
Somewhere in the vicinity of those crags lies the wreckage of an American B-17 bomber, a Flying Fortress, which crashed there while returning from a bombing raid in December 1944. Remarkably, most of the crew survived, and were able to be brought down safely into the College valley.
My three trips into the College Valley within little more than a month had revealed a few of its secrets, but only as tantalising glimpses. There were more hills to reach and tributary valleys to explore. Dunsdale Crag and the high walls of The Bizzle might repay further acquaintance. The whole southern half of the valley, right up into the Hen Hole, remained unknown to me. And it was still only springtime. I had the whole summer to look forward to.