Day Six

April 1, 2019

Three counties

Spring was a bit of a shock after a freakishly benign winter. The last week in March felt very cold, and the first day of April started the same way, with me pulling on all my clothing during the night to stay at least vaguely warm in my sleeping bag.

My intention was to do a luggage free loop, returning to the tent at the end of the day. First, I had to push the bike across rough bog and moorland for half a kilometre, picking up the track that'd take me to the Alston road. Starting in County Durham, I reached the Tyne-Tees watershed and tipped over the border into Cumbria. Turning onto NCN Route 7, my bike still white with frost, I took the rough track to Nenthead and was soon riding downhill into an area modified (despoiled? enhanced?) by lead mining.

A system of sluices and gates, probably used for 'bousing,' the process by which water was used to separate heavy galena (lead ore) from lighter sediments.

The first clue was a series of sluices and gates on both sides of the main streamway, but dropping further led me into the Nenthead Mine complex. It's a fascinating place, well worth a visit, but it'd be hard to describe this scarred wasteland as beautiful.

The landscape immediately above Nenthead is one of devastation.

Hmm, I feel my old caving instincts twitching. Now, where's my head torch...?

The nearby Killhope Mining Museum is also supposed to be good, and they're bang on trend, offering onsite accommodation in yurts if you fancy a bit of glamping. I was heading the other way, though, north into my third county of the day: Northumberland. Mainly road riding now, but when it's this good I'm not complaining. A strong tailwind bore me up over Acton and Dryburn Moors to the high, wild ground above the village of Allendale...

Early Nineteenth Century chimneys on the moors high above Allendale.

This is the best surviving example I've found of this kind of structure. The chimneys sit at the end of large brick lined tunnels (flues) that run up the hillside for over three kilometres from the remains of the smelting mill in the valley.

The two parallel flues have collapsed in places...

...but further downhill there are long sections still intact. The track to the right of the flue is the Carriers' Way, a turnpike route along which packhorses carried ore to the smelting mill, then took the resulting lead ingots out to coastal ports.

Looking out from inside one of the flues.

I'd always assumed the chimneys and flues were built to carry noxious fumes away from the smelting operation, but it turns out that was just a happy side-effect! The main function of the flues was actually to allow the hot fumes to cool down, causing lead and silver oxides to condense out on the roof and walls. Smelting operations would periodically be shut down so some poor, luckless bastards could be sent inside to scrape off these deposits and thus boost the mining company coffers! Given the vegetation downwind of the chimney vents was poisoned, stunted or dead, one can only imagine what working in the flues would have been like...

Historic England: Allen smelt mill, flue and chimneys – good information on lead mining in general and, lower down the page, this specific site.

The track running down alongside the flues provided a fast descent into Allendale, and the Dukesfield Project suggests this Carriers' Way route might reward further investigation. After buying food for my evening meal in the local shop, I turned into the wind and thrashed out more road miles through Allenheads (good cafe) and back over to Cowshill in County Durham.

Then it was just a grunt over the Grasshill Causeway, an unsurfaced road rising to almost 700m. It was OK, but would've been more enjoyable if the surface hadn't been minced by offroad motorists (google it and you'll find lots of videos of overweight plonkers on dirtbikes or sitting in 4x4s). Many of the Dales tracks I first attempted to ride in the early 1990s had been destroyed by offroad motoring, and it's notable how well they've recovered since the National Park banned such activities on most of the old green lane network.

With a forecast of bad weather coming in, I decided to rig down the tent and run for cover. Consulting my internal database of simple mountain shelters, I came up with a likely contender, and got there just as the first sleet began falling...

Not so much a bothy as a bothy annexe, but it's surprising how comfy you can get in a sleeping bag on two benches pushed side-by-side.

Height gain: 1368m/4488ft

Today's ride: 70 km (43 miles)
Total: 321 km (199 miles)

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