The late Alfred Wainwright is best known for his walks in the Lake District, and the wonderful series of guides that he wrote, complete with hand-drawn maps. However, in 1938 he escaped the rising tensions in the country brought on by the threat of impending war by taking a holiday from work to go walking in the dales of Yorkshire, heading through into Teesdale and Weardale, reaching the climax of his walk on his arrival at Hadrian’s Wall before heading back down south, all on foot. This was well before the days of the Internet and accommodation booking websites, so when he turned up at his chosen overnight destination, unless he was lucky enough to find a room at the inn, he would knock on a random door to enquire about rooms in the private homes of the area – unthinkable nowadays. Wainwright documented his holiday in his book A Pennine Journey.
When we think of The Dales, it is the Yorkshire Dales which immediately spring to mind. However, a bit further north is Teesdale in County Durham, which I visited for the first time a few years ago, and found quite charming. Wainwright’s introduction to Teesdale is a descent “from heather to pastureland, and”...”further downhill amongst meadows and woodlands”. He comes to Cotherstone with its village green and prosperous air, too posh to offer accommodation to the passing walker. He therefore ends up spending the night in Romaldkirk, with two inns: the upmarket Rose and Crown and the much more modest and neglected Kirk Inn. Wainwright opts for the latter, which he likens to a shy woman looking over her shoulder at a prospective lover (the Rose and Crown). Wainwright is less taken with the larger Middleton with its “homes built in long, ugly rows”. For present-day visitors, the Rose and Crown is still operating as a hotel and the Kirk Inn as a pub but with no accommodation.
The highlight of Wainwright’s walk is Hadrian’s Wall, and he makes no bones about his excitement on approaching this great feature of the landscape of Northern England. The first hint that he is approaching his much anticipated goal is when he comes to a village called Wall, around 5 miles north of Hexham. His eagerness to reach the Wall is such that he breaks into a run on approaching it.
When he joins the Wall he can’t see it as it is buried under tarmac at this point, but he presses on to Cilurnum – now known as Chesters Roman Fort and Museum, run by English Heritage. In Wainwright’s day you just knocked up the caretaker and paid a fee. Now there is a proper visitor entrance, a shop, cafe and toilets. He then heads west to Borcovicium, better known as Housesteads, where he encounters a single solitary car in the car park – a bit different to when we visited a few years ago. Like Chesters Roman Fort, Housesteads has a cafe, shop and toilets for modern day visitors, and is also run by English Heritage.
After exploring the Wall, Wainwright heads south again via Appleby-in-Westmorland, with the village of Dent in Dentdale as his last overnight stop. He gives a vivid description of Dent, which is across the border in Cumbria, as being “like a fairy tale”, with narrow twisting streets paved with cobbles, “one block of jumbled masonry”. Then homeward via Ingleton (famous for its waterfalls and dominated by the peak of Ingleborough) to Settle. He arrives back home relieved that there is not going to be a war (for now – little does he know what is coming). Anyone wanting to retrace this part of his journey but reluctant to do it on foot can take the Settle to Carlisle Railway, which has stops at Dent and Appleby.
Main Street, Dent. Photo by Parrot of Doom, via Wikimedia Commons.
For A Pennine Journey Route Summary, follow this link.
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