Malcolm & Josh Green’s Tyne Story Pilgrimage – Section 2 Day 3
Moralee to Fourstones We park the car near West Moralee Farm having left the other car in Fourstones. Again, a short enough trip, but we’ve come to know well by now that speed and distance is not what this is about. A garden warbler sings overhead as we start the walk up a narrow road. The few cars that pass, generously make way for us seeming to recognise that we are really the ones with right of way here. The track drops down past a farm and traverses large empty fields on the valley edge above a small woodland. We pass a gateless opening in the wall, and a bonsai blackthorn stands up perkily […]
Malcolm & Josh Green’s Tyne Story Pilgrimage – Section 2 Day 2
Ridley Hall to Bardon Mill We start the day with the song of the blackcap as we leave our road verge parking spot outside of Haltwhistle. We follow a minor road which is distinguished by a land of well-kept wealth – large houses, manicured gardens, dog training areas and walled gardens – a family of mallard ducklings taking refuge by a pretty cottage amidst hopping bunnies and jackdaws – some kind of Beatrix potter scene unfolds. We stray off the designated footpath on the road and take a short track down to the river’s edge. Mounds of pebbles, sunshine, the […]
Malcolm & Josh Green’s Tyne Story Pilgrimage – Section 2 Day 1
Haltwhistle We leave the Lambley bypass car park at about 4.30pm, having left the other car in Haltwhistle. It makes for a short trip but we walk slowly. We start a little distracted, still full of thoughts of other worlds, and slowly different beings of the landscape draw us in – the giant cream-coloured slime mould on a fallen alder (commonly known as ‘moon poo’), the pink purslane with their cupped leaves, the song of the willow warbler. Then stopping by the flowing water opposite the old prisoner of war camp approaching Featherstone castle we give our attention fully to […]
Malcolm & Josh Green’s Tyne Story Pilgrimage – Section 1 Day 3
Lintley Halt to Lambley We wake in the hotel owned by Guy and Helen. A warm welcome and a double breakfast; a place familiar from the days of the North Pennines Storytelling Festival After dropping one car at Lambley, we return to Lintley and encounter the farmer, Willie Lee on his quad bike with a trailer full of dead lambs – It costs £13 to dispose of a dead sheep. You aren’t to bury them because of the potential for pollution. A nod to that underground water connecting places, disrupting the separation of things. Willie is bright eyed with a […]
Malcolm & Josh Green’s Tyne Story Pilgrimage – Section 1 Day 2
Garigill to Lintley Halt We start from Garrigill and pass a ramshackle of buildings. It looks like a place that might be inhabited by an edge-dweller of sorts. A metal chimney comes out of a tin box. There is a tame skinny goat claiming ownership and two red-billed, red-eyed, red-legged oystercatchers on the roof of one of the buildings. There is some overt presence here at least. The river is rusty brown, we see our first dipper and three roe deer. We walk along a narrow path held in by a stone wall covered in moss and lichen. The division […]
Malcolm & Josh Green’s Tyne Story Pilgrimage – Section 1 Day 1
The Source and Garigill We leave the car as far up the road as you can drive, towards the source of the South Tyne. It’s a gloomy scene: abandoned diggers, piles of manure, derelict buildings, sheep shielding from the wind. In a moment of levity, several hundred fieldfares pierce the grey and are gone again. Not a fanfare of welcome or a place of romance. A barnful of cows wading in their own poo, old barrels stuffed in doorways. The river is there, running cold, as it has always done. Providing definition to the land in this desolate place. Water […]