Crossings – part iii

The curlews are back.

As a phrase it’s simple and short. You can pack so much into short phrases. In Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’, the pivotal moment in the whole play is written as just ‘He died’. There’s no how or why or wherefore. No big announcement or speech. No high drama. Just two words.

The curlews are back.

it’s four words, granted, but in the upper reaches of the North Pennines it says so much. In any normal winter it would mark the end of it. A return to normal and the reassurance that everything will be OK again. With the numbers of curlew and lapwing and oystercatcher and redshank on the ever decline in the North of England, it marks something of a sigh of relief to hear those first whirring, bubbling, almost alien calls echoing around the fells.

Hearing those sounds also reminds me I’m in the Upper Dale, which is where I got to after leaving Cronkley Bridge. Heading ever onwards, downstream towards the distant sea.

Today the river level is up a bit and the water is running at a fair pace. Not quite in spate, but in a decided hurry nonetheless.

Following the Pennine Way, the path is well marked and maintained, but moves away from the course of the river as it swings right and left and right in big sweeping curves beneath Dime Holm Scar. Up on Bracken Rigg the path flatten out to a brief plateau and the gentle mounds of a bronze age settlement.

The path next meets the river just before the crushing plants of High Force Quarry loom up on the opposite bank. A still very active whinstone quarry, it’s a present reminder of the industrial activity that’s shaped all of the landscape around here. This now barren and wild landscape bears the marks everywhere of centuries of mining and quarrying and the wealth and poverty of those that came to make their fortune from what lies beneath the surface.

But the landscape is vast too, and easily swallows up the industrial workings. A mere dot on the wider view.

 

And opposite, barely visited and overlooked by the rumble of machines and steel and rubber tyres, is one of the most spectacular waterfalls in this part of the Pennines.

Bleabeck Force is the final leap where two becks from way up the fell meet and tumble down in a race to get to the river. From the Tees there is a small concrete beam bridge that gives you a view up the lower cascades and the top of the highest one. A short scramble over the boulders rewards you with a great view of the main fall and plunge pool below. The water levels on these fellside becks and gills are fickle and I’ve walked past this many times and never seen it look quite so spectacular. I’ll definitely make the journey up on a spate day.

Back at the Tees, the river is still in a bit of a hurry. Skipping over the rocky bed which itself is becoming increasingly jarred and jagged with much larger outcrops appearing to grow up from the river bed. These angular intrusions breaking up the flow of the river and churning it white and chaotic.

A quarter of a mile further on the river meets a wall of whinstone and is forced into a narrow channel down one side. The full width of the river – maybe 10 metres or more squeezed into a gap no more than a metre in places. here the water shows it’s true potential. You sense it’s speed and sheer will power.

It’s sprinting now.

Then with one last twist and pirouette it leaps.

and over a 35m vertical drop. In one, two steps.

As it collides with the pool below, large quantities launch back up against the incessant downforce.

This is High Force. The ‘biggest’ waterfall in England. I’m not sure how they quantify these things. It’s not the highest or the widest, but when in full flow it certainly has the largest volume of water per metre drop. Or something like that. Well, it’s impressive and it’s the biggest tourist attraction in the upper dale.

There’s two ways to see this. From the carpark beside the High Force Hotel on the main dale road there’s a very attractive path that leads down the steep gorge to the base of the water falls for a few pounds entrance. Here you get to be as close as you’d want to get o experience the full power of the falls. When it’s in full flow the spray can be so much it’s difficult to see the falls. But the sight of that much water in full motion and the continuous roar is a real experience.

Alternatively, from the Pennine Way on the other side of the river, you can get scarily close to the very top of the falls and watch the water disappearing down to the river below. Further downstream, there’s a little path off the main route that takes you to a small, unmarked viewing clearing where you get to see the whole waterfall in it’s full glory. And this one is free.

Breaking yourself away from watching the waterfall, the path continues through a very ancient juniper forest while the river runs through a steep wooded gorge below and largely unseen for about a mile. The path meets the river again at the next bridge.

It’s bridges we’ve really come to see and this is a fine one. Holwick Head Footbridge links the main Teesdale road with Holwick Head House and the track down towards Holwick village and the Earl of Strathmore’s estates.

Upper Teesdale is split into two major estates – to the north is the Raby estate of Raby Castle and the ownership of the Lord Barnard. It can be distinguished by its whitewashed buildings and dark blue paintwork. To the south of the river at this point is the estate of the Earl of Strathmore who has a country house at Holwick Lodge. Holwick Head Bridge marks a link between the two estates and was originally built by the then Duke of Cleveland in 1896 and was known at the time as the Duke’s Bridge.

It was rebuilt as a single footbridge by Durham County Council in 1998, but still retains the rather grand cast iron gateposts of the original bridge made by Motley and Green of Leeds.

It’s a simple steel girder construction over a central stone pillar with wooden decking. It’s a popular bridge with walkers making circular trips along the river, or just as a stopping place to stand and watch the river run below. But its still only a footbridge. The first proper road bridge across isn’t for another six or seven miles yet which makes you realise just how isolated the south side of the river is. These bridges may be few and far between, but they’re vital for getting around this landscape.

From the top of the bridge the river is busy on its way and largely ignores the passing of people overhead. It may have lost some of its width since High Force, but it’s lost none of its sense of purpose. There’s no slowing down or pausing to catch a breath. It will need all its energy to get past the next bit.

 

 

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in the beginning…

Twelve years is a long time. Twelve years ago was a very different place for most people. Twelve years ago, on a whim, I did something I’d never done before and it’s shaped my life ever since.

March 5th 2005. I don’t normally remember dates of things, but I seem to remember this one. It was a calm, sunny day and we were rowing giant red balls across Grasmere in the heart of the Lake District.

The year before I’d helped create a new festival of art in the landscapes of Cumbria and the Lake District in the North of England. Off the back of that, the local tourist board wanted to know if I could do something to get a bit of media attention for the Lakes out of season. Maybe something big? I think their original idea was something along the lines of a big red nose for Comic Relief. The normal PR stunt thing. But while they were thinking of something 12ft tall, I was thinking something over a mile long.

The original idea was a dotted line weaving the length of Grasmere – north to south. Needless to say the budget didn’t run to that, so a much smaller version was devised whereby the balls would rush towards the southern shore beneath Loughrigg with the balls getting progressively larger to accentuate the perspective.

The piece I believe was to be installed for a week or two. The balls were PVC and commissioned from a fabricator based on a farm in Devon and arrived in three large boxes that fitted in the boot of my Renault Clio. Lengths of sinking line were bought from the Ropemakers in Hawes, Yorkshire and concrete breeze blocks were bought from my local builders merchant in Kirkby Stephen for anchorage.

Grasmere was chosen as it was both a relatively small lake (one mile by half a mile, approx.) and conveniently placed at the edge of two local TV regions in the hope that both would show up and double the coverage. However, Grasmere has a little-known by-law prohibiting the use of powered vessels on it. The only way to get the balls in position was towing them in rowing boats.

The largest ball at 4m diameter. Photo © Tony West

Luckily, the Faeryland Tearooms at the top of the lake had a small fleet of boats to hire and kindly stepped in to help, along with a bunch of artists volunteering for the cause. The prevailing winds off the Helvellyn range blew north to south in the mornings and with a relatively still day the elements were on our side. That’s not to say there’s anything even vaguely easy about towing big inflatable balls the size of a small house 3/4 mile across a lake. There was a small window in mobile phone coverage so the fine-tuning of the installation was done with me halfway up Loughrigg with binoculars and a cell-phone calling the people in what from there looked like very small boats.

Starting to tow out the balls. Photo © Tony West

From the clients’ perspective it worked well. We had TV and radio coverage across the whole of the North of England, some cracking photos and a good news story of artists doing things with the iconic landscapes of the Lake District National Park.

For me it was a very steep learning curve and baptism of fire into doing things of that scale. Among the things I learnt were practical things like the importance of calculating wind drag on large objects on water (they drifted lots), and the general volume of logistics to do something that looks quite simple.

Installing the balls. Photo © Tony West

But I also learnt lots more fundamental things about work of significant scale – the way light and weather affects and adds to the piece; the way colour works in landscapes; the interaction of people in appreciation of scale; what it feels like to experince work of that scale.

The ‘final’ installation

The public were similarly receptive too. We were a little apprehensive as to how people would react to such a bold statement, but the fact that it was temporary, had a very light touch and used the surrounding landscape to become part of the work rather than challenging it drew visitors in their hundreds. We have no idea just how many people came to see it – we weren’t even thinking about that – but the local National Trust Estates Manager reckoned it was thousands based on the carpark use alone.

Me 12 years younger!

We had no idea what the longer term effect would be. Nothing like this had ever been attempted in the Lake District. There was a perception of overprotection from major stakeholders like the National Trust and the Lake District National Park Authority. However, that the piece was successful and very positively received made it so much easier to do similar works in the landscape in the future. Certainly from where I stood it was the piece that created a significant mind change in those organisations.

The following morning the balls had drifted a little. Photo © Tony West

As landscape works go, this was very simple. It was made with very little thought to a wider context or depth of meaning. In the wider scheme of things it’s not a great piece of art. This wasn’t the first piece I’d done outdoors or using the landscape, but in terms of scale it was a new benchmark. I was hooked and almost every piece I’ve created since has a direct link back to that piece.

And it was 12 years ago today.

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