Wylam to Scotswood
We leave the Boathouse at about 9am. Early for us.
There are fish leaping beneath the weir. A man tells us he saw a seal eating a salmon the previous night. I’m unsure whose side I am on.
There are arctic terns patrolling this section of the river. There is a sense of a change here where the tide reaches. The river has a new power, there is something immense about it. We remember the trickle of water at its source amongst the abandoned lead mines on the barren moor beneath Cross Fell.
Light reflects from the water onto the tree leaves, creating moving abstract images that flash around the foliage. The ash leaves themselves emulate ripples quaking on their stems as the water glides past.
We walk as close to the river as we can along little paths. As soon as a path is surfaced, it has the uncanny effect of creating a separation between the person and the place. There is a sense of passing through. I notice how much more tiring it is to walk on tarmac even if the alternative has brambles that scratch at my shins.
We pass a brick construction with a manhole cover. Leading to a pipe into the river. It stinks. Whatever is passing through there is not pleasant.
We converse about function and beauty. Josh expresses that beauty arises from the exquisite form that function takes. The whirling of leaves up a stem, the colours of a flower. I wonder if beauty is always a consequence of function or if it may also be there for its own sake. Is beauty always in the eye of the beholder or is it simply a quality that is intrinsic in nature?
We notice that we are both subtly falling in love with the river. We ask people on the path about their feelings for the river. The words used are: vital, a lifeblood, calming, tranquil, more to see, somewhere to go out of the house, a place with a view, places that need protection, not for profit. One man talks of corridors of identities. People travelled up rivers, so accents are similar from source to mouth, whereas they change in a few miles when you travel over a hill into the next valley.
As we venture towards Newburn the city rises into view. The river has been canalised. What was once a languorous spreading flow with islands and meadows has been deepened and constrained for the passage of ships back in the early 19th Century. Like myself, until recently, it is clear that most people have no idea of what it was one. This is what a river looks like: dark, deep and fast flowing. There are still the mudflats, where the lapwing and sandpipers have come after their breeding on the fells.
Along with the change in flow are the changes in sounds. Behind the popping of the broom seeds that create spiral forms in the sun, is the boom of the city.
We follow the path that hugs the meander towards Scotswood and are amazed at how this little bit of wildness creates a fizzing tongue right into the city. But soon the legs grow weary of walking on a hard surface, and we get a bus along the Scotswood Road to catch the train back to Corbridge.
A final splash of water on the face, at the river by the car park, a muttered thank you for all it has offered these last 3 days and we leave to go home.