Walking Home

by Clare Balding

  Apart from the Fishing Boat Inn (which is still there), Boulmer is a collection of low stone sea-facing cottages with no shops or post office. Behind the cottages are walled fields where sheep were huddling against each other and into the walls to keep dry.

  As the tide was out, we walked down to the beach, where ours were the only footprints in the sand. The weather was filthy but, once we got into our stride, it became a challenge that was strangely invigorating.

  I was sporting a ‘showerproof’ jacket, which is about as useful as a chocolate teapot. I don’t quite understand the concept of ‘showerproof’. Most clothes are technically showerproof, as your skin won’t get wet for a few minutes if it’s only a passing shower, but what’s the point of advertising the fact that an item of clothing keeps out any water at all if it patently doesn’t? It would be better if they labelled it ‘not waterproof’.

  Within minutes I was wet through.

  The only group seeming to be really enjoying the weather were the black and white oystercatchers, who were running along with their long orange bills open, squealing with delight. They looked like children let out of school early, not sure what to do with themselves but very, very excited about it.

  When we got ourselves back on the main footpath, we saw a man coming the other way, bent double against the wind to carry the weight of the enormous rucksack on his back.

  ‘Glad to know there’re more crazy people out in this weather, not just me,’ he said, before explaining that he was walking St Oswald’s Way from south to north and had been wild camping. I wondered how much fun that had been last night, with Hurricane Bill for company.

  ‘Oh, it was fine,’ he said. ‘I’ve been up in Scotland for three months’ walking.’

  I’m not sure if that was meant to be an explanation as to why it was fine last night or just a change in direction, but he was clearly a committed hiker. He didn’t really care what the weather was doing, as long as he was in it.

  It was all a blur until we got to Alnmouth. I peeled off my clothes, which were stuck to my skin. I tried not to dwell on how lovely it would have been to have stayed snuggled up on the sofa at St Cuthbert’s House with the papers and a pot of real coffee.

  Weather and energy allowing, followers of St Oswald’s Way would walk on down the coast to Warkworth, site of another cracking castle, this one from the twelfth century, and more good B&Bs.

  I walked round Warkworth (try repeating that quickly) a year or so ago with an amazing all-female choir called Werca’s Folk. The name comes from the woman after whom Warkworth was named. Werca was described as a ‘wild and witchy woman’ by some and as ‘saintly’ by others. Sandra Kerr, who leads the choir, likes to think the choir has that combination of power and goodness with a naughty edge.

  She doesn’t hold auditions because, to her mind, commitment to the cause is more important than a natural ability to sing. She knows she can teach someone to sing better, but she says she can’t teach dedication. Werca’s Folk perform without music, so they all have to learn the words and harmonies to every song, and they can call on any one of eighty songs from memory.

  Where I believe in the ability of walking to solve the problems of the world, Sandra is a passionate advocate of the power of music.

  ‘We enjoy doing it, it makes us feel good, we feel better when we’ve done it, and so it goes on. We all know singing is good for us. It releases the same feel-good endorphins as sex and chocolate,’ she told me, amid much laughter from her choir, ‘but it’s much cheaper and less messy.’

  There are twenty women in the choir, most of whom have been members for eighteen years, singing and walking together. We set off from Warkworth Castle, past the Church of St Lawrence, where they all dived inside to make the most of the acoustics with a quick tune, then down to the riverbank and back in a big circle to Warkworth. They told me how much they valued their Thursday nights at choir practice as their own time to do something that required their entire concentration and wasn’t about the demands of family or work.

  They stopped opposite the Hermitage on the River Coquet to sing a haunting harmony called ‘Blood and Gold’. Sandra threw herself into energetic conducting. I watched their faces fill with joy and wondered what it would be like to be able to create a sound so beautiful. Sandra asked me to become a patron of Werca’s Folk and I accepted because I just love their spirit.

  I am not a natural singer – as Alice frequently reminds me. I can follow a tune if she is singing it (she has a great voice and was in Evita), but I can’t create one of my own, nor can I hold a note. So, all in all, I really can’t sing, even though Sandra tried to persuade me otherwise. Luckily, the microphone was not switched on at the time.

  The coastal stretch of St Oswald’s Way ends at Warkworth, where the route turns inland, along the River Coquet towards Rothbury. We joined a group for section four who were being guided by a former shepherd who had turned his attention to herding people rather than sheep.

  Jon Monks set up Shepherds Walks and takes people all over Northumberland, introducing them to the landscape (and the sheep). He’s a great guide because he gives everyone in the group the confidence that he knows where he’s going and that they are capable of walking as far as he can. He leads the walk but makes sure that he talks to all, cajoling those who need encouragement and steadying those who race ahead. He knows the land intimately, and plenty of the history of Northumberland as well. Jon is a fan of its newest long-distance path.

  ‘It’s more of a thinking person’s trail,’ he said. ‘It’s not got to the stage of attracting walkers who just want to tick off a long-distance path.’

  Part of the path follows the route of the Devil’s Causeway, a Roman road which goes from Port Gate to Berwick-upon-Tweed. It was the marching route to Scotland, and we tramped along in the footsteps of soldiers long gone.

  The North Sea Trail goes up the North Yorkshire coast from Filey, past Scarborough and Whitby, all the way to Saltburn. It links parts of Scotland with Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Germany and is a rather clever idea to promote tourism in North Sea coastal areas.

  We switched off the microphone for an hour because we were walking much further than we needed for the programme (to take back too much material just makes it a pain for Lucy, who has to listen to it all and chop out the boring bits – of which she says there are many). The benefit of switching off was that I could talk to Alice, who had joined us for the second half of St Oswald’s Way.

  She had never been to Northumberland before and I had done a big sell on the county. Sadly, she had been busy working so had missed all the coastal walking. I tried not to keep saying that we’d already done the best bits and stayed in the world’s finest B&B, but it was difficult.

  On the plus side, the route inland was very pretty. The sound of the River Coquet accompanied our every step as we walked through woodland and across fields. We crossed over a wide, solid stone bridge and stopped in the middle of a field for lunch. The grass was soft underneath and Jon had picked a spot with a view. The group chatted away and I could sense everyone relaxing a bit as they got to know each other better and compared sandwiches.

  I started talking to a retired doctor about the benefits of walking. She had seen good results with her patients, but she also knew the benefits from her own personal experience. She had suffered from depression and was in no doubt that walking had helped get her through it.

  ‘The trouble is,’ she said, ‘you can’t tell someone who is depressed to get out and exercise more, because they just don’t feel like it. I had friends who came with me and we started very gently. Eventually, I had the confidence to go out on my own, and it definitely helped.’

  We packed our lunch remains away and headed off again via Pauperhaugh and Thistleyhaugh towards Rothbury. ‘Haugh’ (pronounced ‘hoff’) means a flat area next to the river; there used to be a workhouse at Pauperhaugh, so the place was named after poor people living adjacent to the river. I know this becau
se Jon told me. Thistleyhaugh is a thistly area near the river, and Cow Haugh car park is where they used to graze the cows – near the river, of course.

  We arrived in Rothbury by mid-afternoon and checked into a rather austere country house that had been converted into a hotel. Our room was a little bit damp and the bathroom had soap in a plastic cover. I started to tell Alice how lovely St Cuthbert’s House was but stopped when she gave me a funny look.

  We took the hire car to have a little drive around Rothbury and to see Cragside, where Lord Armstrong (of Bamburgh Castle fame) built the first house in the world to use hydroelectric power for its lighting. It was past closing time but I was at the wheel and feeling brave.

  ‘It says “DELIVERIES ONLY”! You can’t go up there,’ chorused Lucy and Alice.

  ‘Oh, come on.’ I laughed. ‘Let’s live a little dangerously. We won’t cause any harm and I just want to have a look at the house.’

  You can’t see anything of the house or the estate from the road, mainly because Lord Armstrong planted 7 million trees. Yes, 7 million.

  I wish I could tell you more about what Cragside was like but I was too busy looking out for security guards. I think it was Elizabethan in style, but when we got to the top of the drive I panicked because there wasn’t anywhere to turn around. So I bumped too quickly over a ramp and drove through the arch. We found ourselves right in front of the house and I kept driving, trying to look as if I knew exactly what I was doing and where I was going.

  ‘Keep moving!’ Lucy shouted.

  Apparently, the gardens are worth a long visit and the house is fascinating. I put my foot down, my heart racing, and sped out of there as quickly as I could.

  We took the car back to the hotel and went for a wander around Rothbury, which has an old-fashioned feel. Most of the shops are independents and it’s full of people who actually live and work there, rather than holiday cottages that are empty fifty weeks of the year. The locals are in constant dispute as to whether it’s a town or a village, but either way it’s very charming and deserves much better than the fame it achieved a year later than I was there as the hiding place of a murderer on the run.

  The next morning we set off from Rothbury with Russell Tait, the senior ranger for the Northumberland National Park. Let me paint you a picture of Russell, because it’s easy enough. He looks like George Clooney and he ticks off 24-mile walks for fun. He is happily married and lives in Rothbury. He and his wife drive out to the coast sometimes to watch the sunset because, he says, ‘It’s a lovely way to end the day.’ So, he’s handsome, athletic, faithful and romantic.

  I know, I know. Completely wasted on me and Alice.

  Or not, as it happens, because we thoroughly enjoyed his company and left Lucy to drool over his manly perfection. Russell told me that there used to be a racecourse in Rothbury and was thrilled to find someone who was actually interested in that fact. It staged one meeting a year, in April, but was closed in 1965, not long after the railway line had shut down for good.

  My God was Russell a walker. I mean a real walker. Not mucking about like us. He didn’t stop and pretend to look at the view while getting his breath back, or make out that a shoelace was undone so that he could rest for a minute, or give himself a secret reward of a chocolate eclair every mile. He just strode on, relentlessly. It was quite steep, that climb out of Rothbury to Simonside.

  I’d thought I was quite fit until that point, or at least that St Oswald’s Way had made me fitter. Turns out you can’t get fit in just four days, and I was puffing so much I couldn’t talk, which would be fine if I hadn’t been trying to make a radio programme. Lucy and Alice had gone red in the face and I found that strangely comforting: at least we would all die together.

  We headed up a stone path on the side of the hill built to protect walkers from sinking into the peat and to protect the hill from the erosion caused by footfall and the channels of water that rush down the path, washing vegetation away as they go. It was made from reclaimed stone from the Lancashire cotton mills.

  When we had finally hauled our way to the top, Russell stopped to show us the view of the Cheviot, the highest hill in Northumberland. From where I was looking – with my hands on my knees, gasping for air – it looked like a huge dark whale. I needed something to lean against, but there was nothing around. Bloody moorland. It’s so selfish to be that bare. I drank some water and ate a flapjack. That would work, I was sure.

  I tried to enjoy the views across to the coast, the North Sea quiet and seemingly calm in the distance.

  ‘How far are we actually walking?’ asked Alice, looking alarmed. I never know when answering questions like that whether one should be accurate or just lie so that the person feels better. I went for the latter option.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it’s not much further,’ I said. I had no idea. Based on our sections so far, it couldn’t be more than fourteen miles. We must be halfway. ‘At least we’ve done all the climbing now.’

  I said that last bit for my own benefit and was relieved to see Russell nod and smile. If he was lying to me to make me feel better, I would kill him.

  As we climbed the Simonside Hills, Russell told us to keep an eye out for a Duergar, although I was unlikely to see one during daylight hours. Duergars are the Simonside dwarves. They are hairy, ugly, tough little creatures who wear sheepskin coats and hats made of moss. I had heard tales that they took walkers and would roast them on a peat fire. Russell said not to worry as they were usually vegetarian, living on cloudberries, mushrooms, nuts and fruits of the forest … but they might lead you astray, perhaps into a bog.

  If Russell was telling me this to make me hurry up, it worked. I didn’t want still to be on the hillside when dusk fell. He explained that there used to be outlaws in the hills, which is probably where the legend of the Duergars came from. A few people had gone missing but, he assured me, not for many years.

  ‘Duergar spotting’ could be a major tourist attraction, and even a new sport. If the Loch Ness Monster could spawn a whole industry, I didn’t see why Duergars couldn’t do the same.

  The heather made it very hard walking until we came into the forest and could walk on a Forestry Commission path. We thought it would make it easier but in fact it became very tiring on the feet. I was feeling guilty that I’d inflicted such a long and difficult walk on Alice. It might put her off for life.

  ‘It’s not normally like this,’ said Lucy, her face flushed with effort.

  Russell grades his walk differently to most guides, who will tell you it is challenging, medium or easy. His walks are ranked according to food.

  ‘I would call this a two-sandwich-and-fruitcake walk,’ he said.

  I would have called it a three-course-dinner-and-coffee walk.

  When the torture finally ended, we bade the George Clooney lookalike goodbye. He was probably going off for an evening stroll of twenty miles or so. We were just hoping our hotel didn’t have stairs. As luck would have it, it didn’t. It was one of those faded, jaded places where bus parties go before heading off to look at Hadrian’s Wall or Alnwick Castle. Our room was down a long corridor and smelt of smoke and damp.

  I had stupidly suggested to Lucy that we mix up our accommodation to get a variety of B&Bs and hotels. I don’t know why I thought that was a good idea. We decided not to eat at the hotel, which was still in the age of a glass of orange juice being a starter, and went out to a wonderful pub called the Red Lion in Newbrough. Alice and I both ordered the twice-baked cheese soufflé and made little squeaks of joy as we spooned it up. I wanted to pick up the bowl and lick it out but I thought better of it. The other diners might not have appreciated how much we needed that food.

  The next day was our final section on St Oswald’s Way. We had covered coastline, farmland, heather-covered moorland; we had seen castles, wandered through villages; now we would finish with a bit of ancient history on Hadrian’s Wall.

  In celebration of St Oswald’s Way, we were joined by Gary Campbell, w
ho organized the project partners and funds needed to make it happen, and Martin Paminter, who mapped the route and wrote the guidebook. They agreed that the key to a good long-distance path is a variety of scenery, as well as good signage and clear paths.

  ‘We tried to have a village or a town at the end of each section so there were places to stay, and there are often pubs on the way,’ Martin said. Wise chap.

  If you’re wondering how much money it takes to organize and launch a long-distance path, I can tell you, because Gary told me. It cost £88,000 to complete the path, and they’ve worked out that walkers spend on average £80 a day in the local area, taking about seven days to finish the whole walk. Simple maths (which I can’t do without a calculator) suggests that walkers are contributing at least £170,000 a year to the local economy. Happy days.

  The one thing Gary and Martin can’t control is the weather, and for our final day it was chucking it down. Proper, relentless, wet rain. I had my ‘showerproof’ jacket on and had resigned myself to getting soaked. Alice had decent waterproofs but was looking a little miserable and Lucy just wanted to get the recording done and go home. I won’t lie to you – Hadrian’s Wall in the rain is grim.

  It’s not even a wall in most parts. It’s a ditch and a few rocks. The actual wall is underneath the military road, its stones having been used to make the foundations in the eighteenth century.

  ‘In my opinion,’ Martin said, ‘this is the most serious piece of archaeological vandalism our country has ever seen. All that’s left is the Vallum [the enormous ditch and mounds that form an essential part of the defence] and all those walls over there.’

  He pointed to the small, pretty walls dividing the fields. They were lovely, but they weren’t exactly a representation of one of the greatest ever feats of manual engineering. (There are, of course, much better sections of Hadrian’s Wall to enjoy; it stretches for eighty miles from the Solway Coast in Cumbria to Newcastle. I’d recommend the 10-mile stretch from the Roman Army Museum run by the Vindolanda Trust past Windshields, Highshield and Hotbank Crags to Housesteads Fort.)