Travel

A Land Rover, a rooftop tent and the remote beauty of Northumberland


“It must be, what, at least two hours since we last passed anyone?” I say, in a tentatively optimistic tone that might inspire my designated driver (my dad) to talk to me again. I’m in the passenger seat of a shiny black Land Rover, which a few hours ago was forced to make a sharp and apparently unsafe U-turn on a hairpin bend after I — a 33-year-old without a driving licence — read the map wrong. There’s no phone signal, and the road is single-track.

But now we’re rattling our way along a winding road in the Cheviots in Northumberland. The fells are tinged with the dusky mauve of heather and the scenery is subdued and enveloping, affording a feeling of solitude I’ve not experienced anywhere else in the UK. I hazard a joke that forces a smile. OK, I think, we’re getting somewhere. Silence on the roads might be golden, but inside the car it’s just awkward.

It’s day three of our father-and-daughter excursion across England’s most northerly county, where we’ve “wild camped” — albeit with permission, on private lands — in a pop-up tent atop the Land Rover. It’s close quarters for a family trip but so far we’ve enjoyed walks along desolate sandy beaches and unzipped the tent to sunrises over a beautiful forest.

But the drive itself is what brings us to this area of storybook history, once visited by pilgrims, conquered by Normans and invaded by Vikings (in true folkloric fashion, Northumberland has more castles than any other English county). Nowadays, though, there might be more sheep and wild horses than humans: Northumberland is England’s least densely populated county, with just 166 people per square mile (London has 14,494).

Looking out from the cabin of the Land Rover Defender 110 © Julian Germain

The empty expanses might soon become more discovered, however, thanks to the launch of the Northumberland 250 — a circular route, 250 miles long, that takes in many of the county’s sights. It was created by David Cook, a 26-year-old local and former marketeer at a rugby tour travel agency, who now runs Northumberland Defenders, a Land Rover rental service.

GM010411_23X Northumberland 250 map

You can technically start the drive anywhere but in his mind it begins in the quaint river village of Corbridge, which is where he organises pick-up and drop-off of his glossy vehicles. From there, it sweeps around the county, the landscape shifting from countryside to coast and chocolate-box hamlets; it goes as far north as Berwick-upon-Tweed, a few miles from the Scottish border. “If you go to Scotland, you drive through Northumberland, but people rarely stop off,” says Cook. “I’m trying to give a reason for people to make it their final destination.”

The Northumberland 250 is a fresh take on the North Coast 500, the 516-mile drive round the Scottish Highlands that starts from Inverness and whose success has made it something of a test-case among tourist authorities. Launched in 2015 by the North Highland Initiative, a regional development charity, by 2018 it was generating £23mn per year in additional income.

Cook had done the Cabot Trail in Canada and Iceland’s Ring Road, and realised “no one was showcasing Northumberland in its best light”. “Compared to the Lake District and Scotland . . . Northumberland has always just appealed to the older generation.”

The remains of a wall run across fell land
Hadrian’s Wall, looking east from Shield on the Wall, just north of the village of Haltwhistle © Julian Germain

The N250 aims to target a younger, more adventurous crowd, and Cook says there’s much to do. “We’ve got idyllic beaches for surfing, the Cheviots for hiking, there’s bike trails in the forests and lots of wildlife.” History buffs can hike along Hadrian’s Wall — the 73-mile stone boundary erected by the Romans from AD122 — and visit the Duddo stone circle, a mini-Stonehenge from the early Bronze Age. Or perhaps make a pilgrimage to Lindisfarne (also known as Holy Island), the tiny island that’s reachable via a tidal causeway and that was a centre for Christian worship from the 7th century. Today, there’s a ruined medieval priory, a 16th-century castle (renovated by Sir Edwin Lutyens at the start of the 20th) and an unmistakable sense of being sequestered from the modern world.

Meanwhile, stargazers will appreciate the observatory found at the end of a two-mile track just outside the remote village of Kielder. The lack of light pollution here means that these are the darkest skies in the country, and the area has been designated the Northumberland International Dark Sky Park, with a “gold-tier” rating placing it alongside the likes of Death Valley in California.

On our first night camping, we parked up in an undulating field with its own stream on a farm near Rothbury, miles away from any main roads. There, we grilled sardines on a firepit as the sun dimmed, and watched with frosted breath as the cloudless blue above us turned from dusk to ink. Sitting on fold-up camping chairs, we marvelled at how broad the vista was; how big and beaming the moon looked; how fiery Mars was; how sequinned the sky seemed. We counted two shooting stars.

The N250 map, which took 18 months to perfect, is designed to take it all in. Available in paper (£6), digital (free) and GPX-downloadable (£1) formats, most of it is driven on country roads that wend through villages and miles and miles of farmland. Some, like those through the Cheviots, are no wider than some London pavements. My dad — a keen bikesman whom I manipulated into driving the 250 miles by agreeing to do all the cooking — regularly chirps that it would be excellent for cycling. “People see us as a driving route because the North Coast 500 is a driving route,” says Cook. “Really, this is just a route.”

A man and a woman bend over a camping grill in an empty field
Grace Cook and her father cooking dinner on their first night of camping . . . © Julian Germain

Sardines on a grill
 . . . ‘We grilled sardines on a firepit as the sun dimmed’ © Julian Germain

A partnership with Wild With Consent is designed to ease concerns about visitors in cars and campervans spending the night where they shouldn’t, blocking country roads and aggravating locals. Instead, the company arranges for campers to stay alone on remote, privately owned land (from £25 per night) — meaning they can enjoy a “wild camping” experience, rather than being in a crowded organised campsite, but without the risk of being moved on by an angry farmer.

My favourite pitch, at Scotchcoulthard Farm, was up on bumpy fells that we needed the Land Rover’s off-road suspension to reach. Here, I woke at dawn to the rattle of a quad-bike engine and the bark of dogs. Watching the farmer round up the sheep from my sleeping bag was a lovely experience.

“It’s about freedom and self-sufficiency but giving people the comfort of knowing they’ve booked a spot and they’re allowed to be there,” says Grace Fell, founder of Wild With Consent. “And you can pitch up knowing there’s not going to be 10 other tents turn up.”

A primary-school teacher I met in the Cheviots told me the best thing about hiking there is that “no one knows about it”. Ask a local what they love about Northumberland and they’ll all refer to the sense of privacy and space. Boo Chrisp, owner of Low Trewhitt, a farm we camped on near Rothbury, told me she moved here “to live a quiet life”. Says Cook: “Northumberland is so under-the-radar you can walk for days and just not see anyone.”

A small black-and-white dog stands in a field
Sadie the Jack Russell joins in a walk at Scotchcoulthard Farm © Julian Germain

So it’s not surprising the comparison with the Scotland’s North Coast 500 raises some concerns. So successful has that route become that locals have complained of traffic jams and litter, of campervans clogging lay-bys and emptying chemical toilets at the roadside, and of a rise in people staying only one night as they push on to complete the route. Villagers in Applecross described the number of campervans arriving in 2020 as an “onslaught”.

You feel that some Northumberland roads would struggle to cope with the increased load. Already, in hotspots like Bamburgh, there are campervans pitching in car parks. “Some locals have been complaining,” admits Cook. “But those places are busy anyway. What we’re doing is pulling people away from obvious destinations and getting them inland.”

Indeed. The digital map details tea rooms, pubs and cafés along the route. Bamburgh was busy when we passed through but a couple of miles down the road, in Ford, we found a cash-only café called The Old Dairy selling artisan coffee out of an old milking parlour. In Thropton, we strolled into the Cross Keys Inn, a 19th-century coaching house where a band was playing in the beer garden. The owners said they’d had to organise a minibus from neighbouring villages to get people to the gig — with the exception of some cyclists, the Cross Keys doesn’t get much normal tourist trade. A map that might bring in more visitors to try the £5.95 steak sandwich is, then, a good thing.

There’s a modesty to Northumberland that extends well beyond the menu prices. And its castles prove the perfect metaphor. Some do stand proud, but the majority are a blink-and-you’ll-miss-them blemish in a field that’s now farmed. They’re small and poetic, crumbling back towards the earth without signpost or fanfare. Compared with the dramatic spectacles of the Lake District, Snowdonia or the Highlands, Northumberland has a discreet beauty that washes over you with time; beautiful, yes, but not boastful. It’s befitting of the locals’ quiet temperament. “We don’t like to blow our own trumpet,” says Cook. No wonder it feels like England’s best-kept secret. The task now? How to keep it that way.

Details

Grace Cook was a guest of Wild With Consent (wildwithconsent.com). Three nights’ rental of a Land Rover with roof tent and three nights camping at Wild With Consent’s locations costs from £575



READ SOURCE

Business Asia
the authorBusiness Asia

Leave a Reply