The felltop road from Nenthead to Garrigill is still icy and we have to go carefully. Patches of snow linger behind dry stone walls despite the sunlight that delineates the workings and ruins of these heavily mined moors. Garrigill village, once a hub of industry where 1,000 people lived, is now a quiet collection of houses around a triangular green. The Spine Race ultramarathon recently passed through here on the Pennine Way and I think of those runners, way-finding by head torch, keeping on going through the night, challenged by weather, heading for the Scottish borders.
It’s the geology that drew people to settle here and to mine the hills for lead and silver, and it’s the geology that has fashioned the landscape of our walk. Looking over Garrigill Bridge, it’s extraordinary to think that this stripling river, rushing through its narrow gorge, is the South Tyne. Water tumbles over horizontal layers of limestone, sandstone and shale, sedimentary rocks laid down 330m years ago as mud silt and sand, thrust through by mineral veins of galena and fluorspar.
The path leads upriver past gale‑strewn branches ripped by recent storms. The air smells damp in the ravine, a microclimate where lichens, liverworts and mosses flourish. Sycamore, ash, Scots pine; the trees are festooned in epiphytic ferns. Peering down into the streambed, its patterns are like sea-washed sand, contoured waving patterns where the great slabs of rock have been shaped and smoothed.
The further we walk from the village, the gorge becomes craggier and deeper. Flat ledges of rock create a series of falls and, as we turn up a side river, they grow in size. There’s a sense of nearing something big and, as the ravine widens into a sweeping amphitheatre, we see the dramatic Ashgill Force plummeting 50ft, spanned high above it by a road bridge. Shales have worn away beneath the slabs of harder rock that jut out to form the cascade. Cliffs rise on either side. Moisture drip-drips on to saxifrage and avens, wood sedge lies flattened by winter snows.
In the past I’ve edged behind the falls, exhilarated by the sound, my view through blurred by moving water – but maybe not on this shivering winter day.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
