In the open moorlands of the North I had time for more than just memories. In the haunting silence that sometimes settles on the Pennines in summer I heard my own heart. Over and above all the soul-searching, the coming to terms with the past, but there was also all the good things that happened to me while I was pottering along from hilltop to hilltop. I was learning the art of living in the moment.

The darling bud that was walking in the wet May of 1996, flowered in June into a wonderful full bloom. I was just about to have the time of my life.

I felt like a tourist as I headed out of Whitby next morning. I found myself reading a Yorkshire Tourist Board pamphlet, tripping along relishing the places of interest they had picked out for praise. I found myself thinking in guidebook mode.

Staithes, an archetypal small port wedged into a crack in the hostile wall of cliffs of North Yorkshire. This charming village of period fisherman’s houses is a taste of what life was like in the past. The bright blues and whites of the freshly painted cobles (the local name for the fisherman’s boats) make a fine sight as they lay at rest.

It is so easy when you trip round the country to skip like a pond skater over the surface of things. To restrict yourself to seeing things as being pretty, of being of interest (and of course, by omission, of no interest at all). I reminded myself to take a second look. I knew that I could do better than just absorbing the tourist guides.

It struck me as I walked around Staithes that the fisherman’s cobles must be one of the most photographed objects in Yorkshire. It also struck me that the milling crowds of people who fill up the villages narrow alleys must be a real pain for the people who actually live and work here. I snapped off a few photographs and then reminded myself to save my film for bits that the guidebooks don’t show. I headed off towards the open cliff tops.

After Staithes the coast path was dominated by the Boulby mineworkings, the deepest mine in England at 4,000 feet. Built in 1973 to extract potash, the produce of this mine is used in the production of agrichemicals and fertilisers. Boulby is the latest example of the way in which this coastline has been marked by mining and industry.

The weather took a turn for the worse as I climbed and I was bundled up by the time I reached the top of Rockhole Hill. I passed along the cliff-top, wrapped up in the clouds and the moodiness of old workings. The ground all around me was marked by the acne of old alum works. Then, after a long walk blundering through the cloud along the wilder bits of the coast path I came to a point high above Cattersty Sands. Down below I could see the village of Skinningrove with the remnants of its defunct steel works lying back from the coast like the wreck of a crashed space craft.

This part of the coastline had a dilapidated feel to it. It felt defeated, played out. I seemed to be seeing the whole place in sepia. The alum had gone, the ironstone had gone. One day, this scene suggested, the potash will be gone. Even the fishing boats drawn up on the beach looked battered, the ugly sisters of the painted ladies that I had seen back at Staithes. Perhaps the fish stocks were playing out too. I walked on alongside the track of the mineral railway, passing a stationary train of potash bound for Teeside.

I took stock on top of the cliffs above Saltburn Scar. I took a last look at the North Sea. My long walk up the East Coast was almost at an end. I could already see the great mass of the crackers and distillation columns clustered around Teesmouth. I planned to skirt around Middlesbrough rather than walk through the town. After Saltburn I planned to follow the Cleveland Way inland.

Saltburn looked jolly as I approach from the cliffs, with its small stubby pier and Sunday strollers. The sun had come back again after the showers of the morning, and while I enjoyed an ice cream on the beach I could hear the boom of a bass drum of a brass band playing further up in the town.

The first part of my inland route was also rather pleasant as I sauntered through a park along the Skelton Beck. After the ankle-high grass and moorland plants of the cliffs, the rich trees and grass of the park looked luxuriant to me. I felt lifted by this man-made garden.

Next morning I could not wait to climb up Roseberry Topping. I had visited this part of the world when I had been a student and the view from Roseberry Topping had made quite an impression on me then. I climbed up through trees to renew my acquaintance with the view out over Teesside. I was not disappointed when I finally got to the top of the hill.

Teesside steamed, an open topped cauldron. A giant crucible into which oil is poured; brewed; and then sold as fertilisers, as plastics, as a million and one items of everyday life. Even from the distance of the hills, the units at Teesside are vast. Its effect on the people of Middlesbrough is equally dramatic. This crucible has brought jobs, wealth and massive pollution. The first time that I came here, as a wide-eyed undergraduate from Durham, I was struck by its sheer size of this industrial complex and, if anything, time had added to my sense of feeling small in the face of this temple of production. This colossus works day in, day out. This god feeds and houses its worshippers. It is easy to get overawed by one’s first impressions of place, to forget the detail of what it had really been like when I first saw it in 1981.

With the introduction of computers and control equipment the number of staff required to feed the god diminished. With the rise in the price of crude in 1979 the money for research was also reduced. Labour battles had been fought to the point of futility. The numbers laid off went up and up, adding to the mass closures of the steel works, the ship yards and the coal mines of Durham. Hard times hit the whole North East, and not even the bright company men in the lab were exempt. It felt like everyone’s dad had just been made redundant. I remember their florid faces as they sat slightly dazed, in their freshly decorated living rooms wondering how long their pay-outs were going to have to last. I remember everyone telling me to get an education.

You can see other things from Roseberry Topping too. As you come over the top, you see the checkerboard flat lands at the foot of the hill. Farming land laid out neatly in plots of square fields interspersed with over-grown villages, swollen by commuter houses. Then, when you are less out of breath and have got your balance in the breeze your eye is drawn to the escarpment of the Cleveland Hills. To the woods that have been planted on its slopes. Finally, as you turn to go down, there are the open moors behind, a great dark openness.

It was difficult to believe it was early June. What I remember most about walking the Cleveland ridge that day was the wind.

The Cleveland Hills are not very high. They are sort of part-mountain, part-rockery. They were, however,a real challenge in this kind of weather. In the early parts of the walk I had been annoyed by the attentions of the wind, but now, high up on the hills I had become reconciled to it. In fact I was starting to enjoy it. It added an element of excitement. I felt euphoric when I nearly took off.

At Scugdale I knew that it was time to get off the ridge and to cross the flat fields below to the farm I was going to stay at in East Rounton. But before I left the North York Moors I wanted to capture the moment and found a rural phone box from which to contact some of my friends in London.

It was me, and the ghost of Beat Poets past on that pay phone. I was in love and I was rambling. I hope to god that no one recorded what I babbled down the line to them.

Summer started the next morning - sharp at 7.30am.

It had never really been spring in 1996. It shifted from winter overnight into summer, adding global warming and climate change to things that people talked to me about in pubs.

The weather had been dry through the long winter months of January and February and then had become almost balmy by April. My training walks had been on dry, sunny days. Then come May, come the start of the walk; it was cold, wet and thoroughly miserable. By now the plants like me had become totally confused as which season it really was.

Daffodils and bluebells bumped into each other while the white of the hawthorn decorated the hedgerows. The wild flowers had gone crazy in the fields and lanes. Red poppies mixed in with the yellows of primroses. It was like the energies of three months had been concentrated into one day. Every living thing wanted its time in the sun. I was sweating before I had made it a mile up the road. I could have done with losing a bit of weight though.

I had been treated to an amazingly huge meal the night before. Lady Mary Bell, my hostess for the night, had constructed an enormous game roast to eat and had invited her friends over to meet me. This was one of those occasions when the generosity and interest of my hosts was almost overwhelming. The intellectual interests of Mary and her friends were wide and deep, the expertise and insight they brought to questions like the beef crisis was daunting. The conversation did not get any easier when we moved onto the subject of me. I felt I sounded slightly foolish going on about this, my big adventure. I felt like a pretentious young turk being given a hard time on Radio 4. I don’t think that I explained myself very well. It did not help that I was desperately tired or that my mind kept wandering back to the hills. My thoughts were being blasted by the wind and as I sat and answered questions I could still hear its howl in my ears.

This morning I was walking the fat, farming land that lies between the Pennines and the North York Moors. I was heading towards the slow meandering curves of the River Tees, following field paths and the lines of pylons. I had been told by a local about the Teesdale Way that ran along the river’s banks, and planned to use the river to take me right up into the hills.

I had only previously walked the Tees at its head and near its estuary. After renewing my acquaintance with the stacks of Teesmouth yesterday I did not hold out much hope for enjoying this area until I came to the hills. I could not have been more wrong however, and I enjoyed my first meeting with the river at Hurworth as a moment of real delight. I watched an angler and his perfect reflection motionless in this smooth, lazy river. Time parted either side of the angler waders, leaving him undisturbed in its stream, a happy and contented man. Beside the Tees I was happy too.

This first section of Teesdale Way did have its frustrations. Having found the river, the route immediately went away from it again, along a series of rarely used paths. When I hit patches of brambles I regretted having changed into my shorts. The paths were not well marked either and I lost the trail. Instead of following an old angler’s path I found myself walking along the busy A167 right into Darlington. I finally rejoined the Tees again beyond Low Conniscliffe and settled down to a long walk by its side. As I walked around its wandering eccentric curves I watched the tranquil faces of anglers as they stared at the dance of the mayflies.

One thing I noticed that afternoon as I walked west was just how uncomfortable my rucksack had become. Having stripped off all my layers of padding between me and my load, every lump and bump in the bag stuck into my back. I sat down beside the river and tried to work out how to make it more comfortable.

Since leaving home I had gradually got the weight of my back pack down. Every time I met Pauline another couple of items were added to the list of non-essential luxuries. My shaver went on the first day. I was carrying the bare minimum now. I could not think what it was that hurt so much.It should not have surprised me that it turned out to be a CD that was the thorn in my side.

I should explain that I had briefly been a one-man record company a few years before and these last few copies of ‘Talk of Independence’ were a momento of the last time I had decided to do something out of the ordinary.

Chris had been recording with his band ‘The Big Blue’ and I had got excited and offered to pay for them to make an album. We sold slightly less of those CD’s in one year than the Spice Girls did in one brief day in 1996 and boxes of the things had insulated my loft for the next two winters. When I was looking for our tent to start the walk I stumbled upon the boxes and Pauline decided that they would make an apt souvenir for anyone participating in my latest piece of madness. I handed them out as I stomped around the country.

Walking the Tees simply got better and better and I enjoyed the cool moments of shade that I found beside the water. At Gainford next morning I was fascinated by the story I found hidden in the village’s name. My guide book told me that the name derived from a nasty dispute between the locals living to the north of the river in Gainford and their southerly neighbours at Barford. A dispute between Yorkshire and County Durham over who controlled the ford. Those to the north snatched control of the vital crossing point of the river and celebrated the fact by announcing their ‘gain’ in the name of their village. Those to the south were so pissed off that they tried to ‘bar’ access to river crossing, so cutting off Gainford’s hopes of trade. The party poopers of Barford had still not lost their touch; the bridge over the Tees is still private property and I was unable to cross the river like those many foot travellers of the past.

The Tees was changing as I walked towards Barnard Castle. Every time the footpath took me back to the river I noticed it was a little straighter, a little younger, a little faster over the stones that lined its bottom. It was gaining zest as I returned to its youth leaving its middle aged curves behind in the plain. I felt like I was flicking through a family album starting from the back.

That afternoon’s walk up the river from Barnard Castle to Middleton was one of the finest I had enjoyed since leaving home. The river had cut its way through the solid rock and ran its course in a ravine that was overhung by trees. Its surface ripped by rocks that produced sections of foam. It was a dramatic, dancing upland river. A body of water that cried out for a canoe.

Despite the beauty of the walk I was still pushing myself, straining like a dog against my leash. I was keen to cover the miles and reluctant to stop. I missed a sign board for the path going out of the river valley and stood looking up through the trees a little while later noting that the path was now one hundred foot overhead. I should have retraced my steps at this point but rule 7c of the walk spontaneously came into being, adding the sin of arrogance to my crime of stupidity. Rule 7c stated baldly No turning back ( even if I had gone completely wrong). I plodded on assuming I could find another route.

After a mile of hacking through trees roots and branches and through the broken debris of river flooding I came face to face with the end of the path. The trail came to a beach and then to the sheer wall of the cliff which was enclosed by the sweep of the Tees on my left. Logically I should have turned back. I noticed on my map however, that there was another footpath on the other side of the river and for a brief moment I convinced myself that the water would not be cold.

It was probably good evidence of how the walk was changing me that I was actually enjoyed myself as I paddled out into the river with my boots tied around my neck. There was also good evidence that it had not changed me altogether. When I got into a deep bit of the stream I slipped on a rock and fell over into the river. I found out quite quickly that it is hard to swim when you are wearing a rucksack. It’s also surprising at how much water a few pairs of socks can absorb.

My dip doubled the weight I had to carry that afternoon and I was forced to walk very slowly. To my credit I was still laughing at myself when I reached Middleton late that evening.

Next Chapter
Return to Home Page

© Gavin Stewart 1996-2004