Halton Red House to Knowesgate

After finishing the South Tyne Trail yesterday, and travelling by train from Haltwhistle to Hexham, we'd spent the night at the County Hotel in Hexham. It was very comfortable and we slept well. We were planning to catch the number 74 bus at 10.05 so we had a leisurely breakfast, then went shopping for lunch provisions for two days (conscious of the fact we're unlikely to encounter any shops before Rothbury) and more talcum powder (to handle my sweaty feet!).

For the second time in three days, we had a bus completely to ourselves and again the driver was very helpful. This time the cost for two of us, up to the military road and slightly east, was just £4.20. This is less than half the price of the AD122, which we could have caught from Hexham to Hadrian's Wall heading west (at somewhere like Chesters) but presumably the latter is seen as a tourist route and isn't subsidised. The number 74 was heading to Newcastle by a distinctly circuitous route; the bus stop we wanted was given as Halton Red House but the driver asked where we wanted to be dropped, and let us off just after he had turned the corner (NZ005686) to head - more rapidly than us! - to Great Whittington.

We were on OS Explorer Sheet 316 (Newcastle upon Tyne), the first of three maps we needed today; the others were OL43 (Hadrian's Wall) and OL42 (Kielder Water and Forest). The route included rather more road walking than we would choose, but it was after 10.30 when we set off and the road walking had the advantage of being fast. It was through glorious rolling Northumbrian countryside and it was dry and sunny all day, perhaps slightly too warm for walking but not excessively so.

The first kilometre or so of today's walk duplicated part of our route on the Hadrian's Wall Path on 2nd June. After walking around Down Hill, which is lovely and has splendid views over the Tyne Valley, we returned to the Military Road and walked alongside it, one of the aspects of Hadrian's Wall Path which we had not particularly enjoyed. It was also immediately obvious how much busier the Hadrian's Wall Path is than other paths including, from our experience in the past couple of days, the Pennine Way; although we were only walking on Hadrian's Wall Path for about a kilometre, we passed several other groups of walkers.

It was therefore something of a relief to take a left hand turn over a stile, signposted "St Oswald's Way". This sign looked a bit tatty and I was worried that when the route was just St Oswald's Way it would be underwalked and overgrown. It is true that we didn't meet any other walkers today, but the path is obviously reasonably well walked; in this first section we were on a pleasant grassy path along the edge of a field of cereals. After a small nettly section we climbed to the group of trees on top of Toft Hill, apparently following a recent re-routing of the path (though the route was as shown on our 2014 OS map). There were good views to Great Whittington and to Whittington Mill. We descended to the mill, passing fences and St Oswald's Way signs which looked very recent. The mill, when we got there, was in less good repair!

We turned right along the edge of the next field, which felt more like open moorland, with good views in all directions, including the distinctive shape of Simonside in the distance. We crossed a field with hay bales, then descended gradually to the road near New Bingfield.

We crossed a more major road, near Hallington Mill, and there then followed a rather tedious three miles of road walking. We went past the alliteratively named Hallington Hall (very definitely private, with what was either a haha or the watercourse leading from Hallington Reservoir West and East, which we caught glimpses of in the distance) and through a wooded area, which provided useful shade, and there were good views towards the end to a wind turbine, a quarry, and a building marked on the map as an old dovecote (NY975783), though discussion on the internet about the real history of the building seems to have drawn a blank. So perhaps I am being mean in describing this section as tedious, but three miles walking on one road is too much for me. Towards the end we sat down on the verge for a break; the fact that we were able to do this indicates how very quiet the road was...so, again, perhaps I am being mean...

We turned right onto a more major road through Little Bavington, then turned left alongside the quarry we had seen in the distance; there was quite a lot of activity, with lorries coming and going. The route is shown on the map as going through the place marked as Clay Walls, but the signposting sent us on a circuit around a farm. Then we walked through the hamlet of Great Bavington, slightly to the east of the official route which appeared to head straight through someone's garden. There was a notice telling us "why Great Bavington is great". We didn't stop to read it, but it seemed a pleasant enough little place. We said hello to a woman who was mowing her grass then turned right onto a track across sheep fields, which we followed most of the way to Kirkwhelpington. There was a dogleg right and then left around the farm buildings at West Harle, then a left hand turn onto a more grassy track in the approach to "Three Farms", past what is marked as "sheep wash" on the map (NY993833). In the distance ahead of us there was a wind farm under construction; none of the turbines were operational and one was still being built.

We turned right onto a minor road which took us down to the busy A696. Across the road we took another, theoretically minor, road into Kirkwhelpington. We crossed a bridge over a stream, then climbed up towards the pretty village, stopping for a rest at a bench by a bend in the road. When I worked in Newcastle upon Tyne I had a friend who lived out somewhere well to the north of the city, and it might have been here; given its location close to the A696 that would make a lot of sense. However, sitting on our bench we saw the other side of the equation: trendy four by fours and sports cars drove up the little road at too high a speed, presumably each heading for its city-working driver's des res in the country.

We walked past Kirkwhelpington Church, then took a track through a little orchard. We could see that we had a steep climb ahead of us to West Whitehill Farm, but the route was not clear. After a false start on which we went too far to the east, we found the correct route, out to the verge by the A696 then back into a field of cows to climb up towards the farmhouse. The view from the top, of the main road snaking its way up the hill, with attractive countryside beyond, made the climb worthwhile.