Kielder Rocks

Welcome to the most remote and wildest part of our region. It’s a place where the skies are darker and the stars shine brighter. Where ospreys feel safe enough to hunt and nest. Where red squirrels, goshawks and pine martens all feel at home and where other long disappeared species may soon be encouraged to make a comeback. Its Kielder’s landscape that makes that possible and it is its rocks that are the literal foundation of that.

This is a stunning place, one with a fascinating future and an amazing geological past. 

I’m hoping this podcast – and the accompanying booklet – will want to make you hike to these places, bike to them, or ride to them. You will visit some of the most out-of-the-way places in England and help you discover just how different our past and its environments have been.  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Series six Episode one Good morning. It's six thirty ish on the morning of the twenty fourth of April. What a beautiful morning. Total blue sky, frost on the grass, and there's an inversion. Cloud hanging in the Tyne Valley and all along the military road. It's been a while since there was a new episode. There's a couple of reasons. First I was asked to produce a booklet of geological trails in Keilda Forest. I finished that, and then my laptop hard drive failed completely, so that took a bit of sorting. I was happy to contribute to the celebration of a hundred years of the founding of Kilda Forest in 1926. But producing this little rock book explains why there hasn't been a podcast from me for a little while. But it has also allowed me to do a podcast episode, so this is another bit of opportunism. Kilda's a place I love. It's big, it's wild, and it's remote. And as you might expect, the stories in Kilda are abstracted from my Northumberland and Cumbrian rock books. So if you're a follower of these podcasts, you might have heard one or two of these places before, but these episodes do bring all the stories around Kilda Forest area together and in one place, and there's a fair bit of new information too. Lastly, I guess I should apologize for an even more nasal sounding recording than usual. I've had man flu for a few days. Rocks are important to the work forestry England do at Kilda. They influence the soils, and so the trees that are planted, and thus the wildlife that calls the forest home. Rocks supply the stone for the roads and the walls, and used to be mined for coal too. But their biggest impact is on the landscape. Rocks shaped Kilda. They are its bones, the literal foundation of its stunning, peaceful beauty, and the reason that visitors come. This podcast, like the booklet, invites you to explore ten places in and around Kilda that explain its amazing geological past. The rocky places in this guide will take you back into deep time millions of years ago. If you decide to come and visit some of these places yourself, one way you can navigate around these wonderful locations is by following one of the waymarked routes of the Reaver Trails, a network of forest roads within Kielder Forest, which can be accessed on foot, by bike, or on horse. The Forestry England of today began life in 1919 as part of the Forestry Commission, when the Forestry Act was introduced to solve severe timber shortages in Britain after the First World War. In the decades that followed, the organization has developed sustainable, multi-purpose forestry, bringing outdoor recreation to millions of visitors and supporting nature recovery. Kilda was the most ambitious project. It created the largest man-made forest in Western Europe. The first plantings in 1926 extended to 800 hectares of coniferous trees. Then in 1932 a further 19,000 hectares were purchased, and today Kilda Forest covers 62,000 hectares. That's 239 square miles. Although timber production remains an integral part of the forestry operation, Kilda also aims to encourage the public to use the forest as an educational resource and to sustain and enhance wildlife conservation too. Over 50% of the red squiddle population of England is now to be found in the forest. When Kilda Water was created by flooding the North Tyne Valley in 1982, a huge amount of effort was put into developing Kilda as a place for tourism and leisure. This podcast and the little booklet are just part of that. Kilda's landscape is stunning, and it's all because of its wonderful rocks. Those rocks started life between 354 and 330 million years ago, in the Carboniferous, our very distant past. Back then the island of Britain we now call home was not at fifty-five degrees north like now, but was close to the equator. Our landscape was different too. It was a time of rivers as big as the Amazon, tropical swamps and coral seas. We even had volcanoes and earthquakes back then. Those very different environments were the origin of the rocks we see at Kilda today, the sandstones, the limestones, the shales and the coals. Only twenty thousand years ago, Britain was covered with almost a kilometre of ice that sculpted the rocks and left a cover of stony clay and rock debris. When the ice melted, vegetation returned, and us humans. The landscape you see today, its rocky crags and steep valleys, the bogs and the hills are all a product of our amazing geological history. We are an ancient land, and we used to be some very different lands. In our geological past there was no Kilda Forest, no Northern England, no island called Britain, nor any of the continents or countries of the world we know today. Our planets, tectonics, plates, lands and seas were arranged quite differently five hundred million years ago. The small piece of the Earth's crust we now call home was then just a few degrees from the South Pole and at the bottom of a deep ocean, being filled with mud and sand and steadily squeezed between two continents. These sediments became Northumberland's oldest rocks, rocks you can still see today in nearby Upper Cocotale. The tectonic plates carrying the continents grew closer, forcing one deep beneath the other. Pressure and heat melted the rocks, and molten magma erupted from volcanic rifts, covering the land with thick lava, a rock which now makes up most of the Cheviot Hills. Magma remaining in the chamber, kilometres deep underground, slowly cooled and crystallized to become the granite of the Cheviot and Hedgehope, only revealed today by millions of years of erosion. Around 350 million years ago, our wandering tectonic plates had reached the equator, and our environment had changed too. Large rivers ran through tropical swamps into warm coral seas, steadily depositing the sandstones, limestones, and coals, the rocks that dominate Kilda today. Earth movements created tension here in the north, and again hot molten magma erupted from volcanoes, like Lumsden Law. Over the next 300 million years, very different environments, from red-hot deserts to seas teeming with life covered northern England. But of those deserts and seas and their rocks, there is little or no sign. All that too was eroded away. The tectonic plates continued their erratic walls, and sixty million years ago lava started to pour out of an enormous rift that was to become the Atlantic Ocean. North America and Europe have been drifting apart ever since. 2.6 million years ago, the Earth's temperature began to fluctuate again. We cooled and then warmed repeatedly. Ice caps extended to lower latitudes. Glaciers grew and then retreated, and as they did, trees and plants recolonized the landscape. Humans arrived and began to exert their influence on the north, clearing forests and settling in the valleys. But it is society's development and our impact on the planet in the last 150 years that far outstrips the previous half a million years of human existence. But let me take you to some places around Kielda that will put some flesh on the bones of that brief summary of its geological past. We've just done 500 million years in about 500 words. We're going to go hopping around the area a bit, but that's because the booklet that this podcast is taken from describes the walks from the shortest to the longest, from barely two kilometres to perhaps more than 2. The Drake Stone is only about one and a half kilometres northwest of Harbottle. You can park at the west end of the village or in the Forestry England car park, even nearer the stone. The Drake Stone is a very large and impressive block of sandstone resting on a craggy hillside with great views east and north over Harbottle and the Northumberland countryside. The rock is carboniferous and around 340 million years old. It is made of the same sandstone, called the fell sandstone, that is the bedrock all around it, and it was probably detached from its original position by the action of ice. Some have said it's a glacially erratic, but it isn't really. An erratic is a rock that moved some distance from its bedrock by an ice sheet. As well as being huge, the stone shows different layers and textures of the sandstone really well. It was once sand and pebbles carried down from the north by a huge, fast-flowing river. The different layers and angles you see in the sandstone show the old channels and underwater dunes. Harbottle Moor, owned by Forestry England, is a nature reserve of Northumberland Wildlife Trust. On the way up to the Drakestone, you pass drifts of bog myrtle. The shrub is aromatic and was used to repel fleas and moths, dye cloth yellow, and flavour beer. The Drakestone is set in upland heather heath, with bilbury on the steepest slopes and peat bogs in the depressions. There are many legends about the Drakestone. People used to believe that if they touched the stone, it cured children of all illnesses. But if you spent the night beside it, you would never leave. We've moved close to Kilda Dam. Falston Moss is a bog, an area of peatland in Kilda Forest, and one of the famous border Myers. Thanks to Forestry England, you can walk over it on a boardwalk. In summer, a central pool comes alive with dragonflies and damselflies. Sphagnum mosses, the main peat forming plants, grow alongside the boardwalk, and so does Bogasford and Cranberry. Across northern and western Northumberland, the ice sheets left behind a landscape of humps and hollows. Shallow lakes formed in these hollows. Gradually sediments and vegetation filled those lakes, and then plants spread over the surrounding country. Over thousands of years, the vegetation in the hollows decayed to peat. The bog started to grow when the climate warmed after the last glaciation around 11,000 years ago. Only 3% of the Earth's land is covered in peat bog, but they are the largest carbon stores we have. They have grown very slowly, only about a millimeter every decade, and they are a crucial resource that we do not want to lose. Species like red grouse, adder, roe deer, common lizard, and hairy egger moth caterpillars live here. The moss is a Northumberland Wildlife Trust Nature Reserve. Park near the dam, it's only a three kilometre return walk. North of Gilsland, that's a village which is half in Northumberland and half in Cumbria, is a small stream. It's called the King Water. Sitting in the bed of the stream, exactly where they grew 340 million years ago, are nine fossil tree stumps. They are the best example of a grove of carboniferous trees in life position in Britain. The largest stump of these primitive trees sits in the stream and is almost 2.5 meters in diameter. It does look like a modern tree stump. You can imagine that they grew to a considerable height. They are called Pittus primeiva, and when looked at under the microscope, show a cell structure typical of a type of seed fern called a ligenopterid pteridosperm. That was hard to say. That's a very much bigger version of the large ferns that grow in New Zealand today. The organic material in these stumps has, over time, been replaced by dolomite and calcite, minerals which percolated down from limestones above and preserved the anatomy of the trees. As you might expect, fossils like these, which can tell us much about the environment so long ago and how early plants and trees developed on Earth, are very, very rare and very delicate. This is a site of special scientific interest, and if you do visit, please take only photographs. Despite, or perhaps because there's an RAF electronic warfare facility close by, the upper reaches of Kingwater are quiet and secluded, sheltered by conifer plantations. Row deer are abundant and there are small wild brown trout in the stream. It's a peaceful place. If you park just before the MOD no entry sign, it's a short three kilometre but rough return hike along a forestry ride to the Kingwater. On a remote hillside, tucked away in the northwest of Northumberland, north of the A68 road to Cartabar, is a dramatic, weathered and worn sandstone escarpment with expansive views over North Northumberland's hills and valleys. These rocks are part of the Fell Sandstone. 340 million years ago, during the early Carboniferous times, there were sand and pebbles on the bed of a vast meandering braided river system flowing across a broad plain. Now they form crags and escarpments in a big arc around the Cheved Hills and across Northumberland. The way the rocks look now, blocky but rounded in shape and texture as pockmarked crags, is mostly the result of weathering during after the last glaciation of northern Britain. As well as the natural rock outcrops, there is a small quarry where you can see sedimentary structures that show evidence of the river origin of this sandstone. The rock outcrops are set among bilbury and heather and have a rich upland lichen assemblage. The lichens include several species that are common in the Scottish Highlands but very rarely found south of the border. The most important of these are Lectoria cementosa, also known from the Kildestone, and Platismartia Norvagica. This is its only confirmed site in England. The Alectoria is one of the species that could be a survivor from our native pine forest. To get to Echo Crags, you can park at Burnus Village. It's an 8km return hike, mostly along forestry tracks, but there is a short, rough section just before you reach the Crags. Akenshaw Burn runs in a small valley within Kilda Forest Park. Start the walk at Matthews Lynn Car Park, or you can shave a couple of kilometres off the walk by using rougher parking further west along the Byrne Valley. Some of the oldest carboniferous rocks in Northumberland are exposed in the banks of Akenshaw Burn. There are bands of two different rocks here, grey mudstones and pale brown cement stones. Cement stones are a form of limestone containing magnesium carbonate as well as calcium carbonate. Here the rocks are tilted at angles and broken by ancient earthquakes, which resulted in a series of geological faults. 350 million years ago, the bands of cement stones were lime-rich mud at the bottom of a warm, salty coastal lagoon that then evaporated. Britain was only five degrees north of the equator then, and the climate was much warmer. In many places the thicker cement zone beds have been quarried for local supplies of lime, which, before the area was a forest, were used to improve the soil. The Akinshaw Burn Valley is home to willows, hazel and alder, and surrounding it are plantations of sitka spruce, grown for timber and planted in the mid-20th century. Before that, the valley was part of a very remote hill farm with moorland of blanket bog and acidic grassland. Row deer are frequent visitors and they are a problem for the foresters. Carboniferous bedrock dominates Kilde Forest. Sandstones and siltstones are the most common rocks, but there are layers of limestone too, and coal, hence the name of the geological period, the Carboniferous. These different types of rocks occur in repeating cycles. That's because 330 million years ago the environment changed regularly. Huge rivers became coastal lagoons and then coral seas, and then swamps. It was the swamps with their rich vegetation that became thick peat. That peat progressively compacted to form the coal seams. Over 100 years ago at Plashett's and other places in this part of the North Tyne Valley, these coals were being mined. The seam at Plaschets was the thickest, reaching around 1.5 meters in thickness. The coal was first worked in the 1850s, and by 1914, 126 men and boys were working in the mine. A miners' village was built at the top of Slater's Incline, and at first a coal-carrying wagonway connected the Border County's railway line that ran along the South Tyne Valley. Mining declined until the mine finally closed in 1964. Much was flooded when Kilda Dam was built, but the foot of the incline is now a ferry landing. You can hike or bike to this one, start at the car park on the north side of the dam and head west around the reservoir's north shore. Greencarts is an old limestone quarry in a clearing in the middle of Wark Forest, a bit of Kilda Forest, and typically full of sitka spruce. The quarry used to produce stone for the forestry roads. Lying on the floor of the quarry are thousands of fossils of large seashells. It's a brachiopod called Giganto Productus, and it reaches 15 centimetres across. There are also fossils of corals and other sea creatures. They're all weathering out of limestone rock in the middle of this forest. These rocks are about 335 million years old. Geologists call the rock the Falores Limestone, and it's from the Carboniferous period. Brachiopods have been around for more than 550 million years, and there are a few species still living today. Limestones, like the Falores limestone, are made of calcium carbonate from the shells and skeletons of billions of sea creatures, including brachiopods, together with carbonate mud. The environment back then was a warm, shallow subtropical sea. The floor of the quarry is a carpet of glaucus sedge and mousier hawkweed, with fairy flax and birds foot trefoil. There are lots of tiny spruce seedlings as well. In the late summer, see if you can find the spikes of autumn gention in the southeast corner of the quarry. Row deer are common, and you will hear great tits and cold tits. If you are very, very lucky, you may see a goshawk. The quarry is quite the hike in, and you might want to bike it. It's in the southern part of Wark Forest. Start from the end of the Tarmac Road to Scotch Coultard, it's a twelve kilometer return trip, or you could take the Pennine Way from just west of Houseads. Just after Catcliffe Reservoir and before Carter Bar on the A sixty eight, there is a big flat topped hill. It's called Lumsden Law. To reach it, park at Burness Village. Same as Echo Crag's start point. This is going to be a fourteen kilometer return hike. Geologists think Lumsden Law could be a volcanic plug. That's lava that's solidified in the neck of a volcano. The law was formed in a similar way and around the same time as the rock that Edinburgh Castle stands on. This volcano erupted about 345 million years ago. It's younger and has a different composition to the Devonian lavas of the Cheviots. While there are a lot of volcanic rocks of this age in Scotland, there are very few like them south of the border. The molten magma cooled to produce a rock called basalt. You can see the rock close up in an old quarry on the law's western flank. A fresh rock face will show some quite large pale rectangular crystals in a darker fine-grained matrix. This rock texture is called porphyritic. The basalt in the quarry has a rich covering of several different lichens. From the law there is a fine view westward across the A68 into Northumberland Wildlife Trust's largest nature reserve, Whiteley Moor. The higher ground of Whiteley has some of the best blanket bog in England, and below it is upland heather heath. We've journeyed west to a remote far northern corner of Cumbria. Surrounded by miles of sitka spruce trees stands a lofty crag. The views into Scotland and across Cumbria are expansive. The landscape here is the same as Northumberland, which lies only a few hundred metres to the east. Although marginally younger than the fell sandstone of the Keelstone and Echo Crags, Christianbury Crag shares the same geological history. It is Carboniferous too. Back then, as the grains and sloping layers in the rocks show, they were sand in a river, draining to a southern sea. Burial under thousands more meters of sediment and uplift into mountains followed. Only after millions of years of erosion did the crags we now see appear. Their disjointed and rugged profile today mean that they look like a small example of a rock city, with sandstone blocks separated by corridors. Before the forest was planted, Christianberry Krag was a prominent landmark. The famous Christianberry Krags featured in the 1754 edition of the Gentleman's magazine, with a full page engraving, and it was compared in stature to the man-made edifice of Stonehenge. It was described in Victorian travelogues as rising grimly from the heathery waste, a haunt of foxes. Walter Scott's fictional characters frequented these rocks, as did real-life murderers and their gamekeeper victim, Thomas Davidson, who was strangled in 1849. If you feel unfit, and you will need to be just to reach the crags and get back, you could also visit his monument five kilometres to the northwest. Today Christenbury Crag is defended by forest and set in superb blanket bog dominated by sphagnum mosses, heathers, cotton grass and deer grass. There are ring oozel, wheatier and windchat around the rocks, and breeding red grouse, dunlin and golden plover on the moor. This is a challenging up and downhill 18 kilometre route along forestry tracks and boggy footpaths. If you are seriously fit though, you might also want to take in Glendew Hill. That's a candidate for England's remote hill, and you could pay your respects at Davidson's Monument on the way back. The last place in the booklet, and in this podcast, and the hardest and longest to reach, harder even than Christianby Crags. You will be tired folk after you've hiked there and back to this one. On the border between England and Scotland is a huge block of fell sandstone that sits in the midst of wild heather moors. In England it's the Keelder Stone. In Scotland it's the Stein, but it's a long way from any road and a real challenge to reach. The layers in the stone vary in grain size and show how sand was, in Carboniferous times, carried south by a large river whose flow rate was constantly changing. The stone is like the Drake Stone and has also been left exposed after millions of years of erosion, particularly by ice during the last glaciation. The ice sheets that eroded and may have detached the stone were active about 20,000 years ago. Like all very large stones, the Keelda Stone has many legends and stories associated with it. One, noted by Sir Walter Scott, says that if you go round it with a shins, that's anti clockwise, three times, it'll bring bad luck. I don't know why you'd want to do that. It is said to be a place where people would meet and families would drop letters during the times of the Border Reavers. Growing on the Kildastone are Cowberry, Bilberry and Crowberry, and on the rock faces, because of the pure air and high humidity, shaggy lichen species. These are declining and rare elsewhere because of their pollution. You may see feral goats here too. This hike starts at Kilda Castle and heads north via Deadwater Fell. It is a twenty kilometre route, one that is pretty rough in stretches. I hope you're feeling better briefed on this wonderful bit of the north, arguably the most remote and wildest part of our region. It's a place where the skies are darker and the stars shine brighter, where ospreys feel safe enough to hunt and to nest, where red squiddles, goshawks, and pine martins all feel at home, and where other long disappeared species may soon be encouraged to make a comeback. It's the Kilda landscape that makes that possible, and it's its rocks that are the literal foundation of that. This is a stunning place, one with a fascinating future and an amazing geological past. I'm hoping that this podcast and the booklet will make you want to hike to these places, bike to them or ride to them. You will visit some of the most out-of-the-way places in England and help you discover just how different our past and its environments have been.