North Tyne Source to Donkley Wood (missing out Kielder reservoir)
We arrive at a sign for the Scottish Borders on the narrow B road and park in a lay-by. It is a bright morning. We can see the stone monument, marking the ‘source’ of the north Tyne a few hundred yards to our right. A couple with their dog from Prudhoe have just come down from it.
It’s a wet place. We squelch up to the monument, placed there in 2013, and carry on past it, following the trickling stream that bubbles and hides under a mat of grasses and sedges. It’s a softer more vegetated start than the south Tyne which quickly finds itself tumbling over rock and stone.
In a way even more striking than with the south Tyne, there is no clear beginning to the river. We are in a wide absorbent basin absorbing and releasing water that will gradually come together along the way.
We stop to share a bit of silence with the stream; listening to the mesmerising tinkling then sharing with one another the experience. Malcolm fills his flask with spring water, Joshua is worried about contaminants. A reminder of the different times in which we were born. The transition from river water being seen as fresh and pure to contaminated and dangerous. We find a ruby tiger moth caterpillar, hear the calls of jays and buzzards.
We follow the stream downhill and soon find that it has been channelled into a ditch making a right angle at a field boundary and charting a straight line along the edge of what was an old railway line.
We meet a man working in his barn in the old station house (now his secluded property), who tells us that some of the sandstone quarried on the hills was transported to Scotland on those rail tracks to build Edinburgh’s great tenements.
There is similarity to the source of the south Tyne here in that there is both a wild and an industrial feel to the place. In this case primarily due to the vast forestry enterprise blanketing the ground with Sitka Spruce.
There are lots of straight lines, which is not restful and we hurry on.
We lunch by a bridge, the river a lot wider now having been fed by Deadwater burn, a more substantial stream originating higher up than the nominal source of the Tyne. We wonder why it hasn’t been given the title of the source and wonder about the power of naming. Deadwater itself means still or stagnant.
The river is meandering now through a wide flat area. It feels as if it is breathing again.
We go on through plantation woods with their edgings of birch and marvel at all the varieties of fungi: with luscious names: green brittlegill, birch webcap, witch’s hat, platterful, shaggy parasol, liberty cap.
We arrive back at our car in Kielder, where preparations for a marathon are in full swing so decide to leave the walk round the reservoir to another time and drive on to Falstone.
Here we are in a softer landscape. Fields undulating down to flat land along the river edge decorated with deciduous trees. The river is wider and flatter here. It would have been even wider and flatter in a past time. A dike holds it back from the field. We see cormorants and mallards tracing its course.
We greet a duo of menacing pug faced and slender-nosed tups. Then we stop at a little stony bank to listen again to the music of a different flow, more muscular than the tinkle of the source.
We pass an island in the river, the flow accelerated by sections of rapids. Josh gets the itch to cross and set foot on the island. Stripped to underwear with a bendy stick as a third leg he gingerly steps up to mid thigh crossing and encountering the power and will of the water. There and back with an unusual fern as bounty.
A small moment of self-initiated jeopardy. A wake-up to the imminent power and consequence of water, of this river.
We find our way back to the small road to find the car and onward to our pub lodgings at Greenhaugh.
