Romaldkirk

From The Kirk Inn, we took Primrose Lane to cross Beer Beck and tracked the River Tees to reach Eggleston Bridge, where the water is wide.

A dipper alighted on the shingle banks. This little rock jigger and underwater feeder was to be our companion for the walk, its image on the waymarks, our route being entirely the Teesdale Way, a circular up and down each bank.

The next delightful distraction was Eggleston Hall, a rare gourmet detour for us. The hall was once a finishing school, but now, a generation on, it’s more ladies who lunch than teen spirit. We were lucky to get a table; the asparagus and pea risotto was delicious.

Their walled ex-kitchen garden is well worth the honesty box ‘fee’ of £1 for a look, with a fern house, plants to buy, edgeless borders, and a roofless church where indoors cherubs are gardened around prettily.

A flat, private, road provided perfect digestion, the cricket pitch one side and a half mile of high banks the other, where Bambi played hide and seek, his white rump camouflaged in the garlic flowers. Here, a huge pipe emerges that brings water from the Tyne to the Tees. It’s hardly used as Teesside’s heavy industry doesn’t drink so much any more.

We climbed to upland pastures, nice old varied ones that brought class views even on a day of dozens of driven showers. It was not weather for flying, and the few that did, the curlews and lapwings, were whipped along at great speeds.

Down at the river, a green lattice steel bridge takes pedestrians over. Check out the confluence with the River Balder, then turn back and up river through the waterside woods.

We passed the Fairy Cupboards of tiny caves and art as parish boundary markers.

The heavy rain bruised the garlic, our boots crushed out more scent.

A heron fished, we strode stepping stones. An errant sheep and her lamb were on the path and we had to hide to let them past as the river here is close, narrowed and fast and it crashes around a mid-channel island and is certainly fleece-soaking fatal.

When the rain stopped, the sunshine zinged with insects, bluebell hillocks shimmered and swallows scooped the washed-off bugs from the river surface.

A farmstead is a ruin, but the only really gloomy spot, and only if you knew it, is Woden Croft, a house that was once one of the brutal ‘Yorkshire Schools’ that Dickens wrote about in Nicholas Nickleby.

Directions

When in doubt look at the map. Check your position at each point. Keep straight on unless otherwise directed.

1. Pass Rose & Crown, Kirk Inn, cross road at corner by church to dead-end road (sign). Green to your right.

2. Across grass on left, 25 yards (fingerpost on right), walled path (waymark), footbridge, wallstile (fingerpost), diagonally across field, wallstile by telegraph pole (waymark).

3. Right by wall, 50 yards, left by fence (sign), follow wall by trees above river, stile, stay by boundary until it angles steep downhill, contour 200 yards to building. Wall stile/fieldgate and right to road. Bridge over River Tees.

4. EITHER: uphill for Eggleston Hall Gardens (pavement) OR: gates on right (fingerpost), private road.

5. Stile on left at fieldgate (waymark), ten yards, stile, path up through wood, steps. Snickelgate into field (waymark), path by wall to your right to corner, diagonally 100 yards to wallstile, ten o’clock uphill, stile/fieldgate (waymarks), pass black shed.

6. Pass house, cross drive, via telegraph pole (waymark), fieldgate (waymark), one o’clock, stepstream and bank to stile/gate (fingerpost), one o’clock downhill via fingerpost on hillside, stile and footbridge (waymark), 11 o ‘clock, cross field, wallstile (fingerpost), 50 yards across field and right by fence (waymark), grass track.

7. Stile/fieldgate (fingerpost), stay by wood, wallstile/fieldgate (fingerpost), 100 yards by wood to wall corner. Viewpoint option here if you turn right uphill 100 yards – steep drop, otherwise straight on with gully/stream to your left (various broken waymarks).

8. Bridge and immediately wallstile on right downhill (waymark), through trees by stream, wallstile, one o’clock for 50 yards, path downhill in gorse (waymark), stile (waymark), cross caravan site. Gate/fieldgate to track (waymark), downhill on track in gorse and angle sharp right to River Tees before crags on far side.

9. Footbridge over River Tees (fingerpost), left for confluence, otherwise right to riverside path (no sign).

10. Stepping stones to stile out of woods (waymark), 100 yards by wood (waymarks on fence to right), cut corner gently uphill between trees, fieldgate between walled orchard and fence above river, track, fieldgate (waymark). At house, gates on right into yard (freestanding fingerpost), through yard, path to right of end barn (waymarks), stile/fieldgate by barn (waymark), field.

11. Stile/fieldgate and fork right 50 yards down to squeezer/ fieldgate (waymarks), path in woods, by river. Uphill through woods.

12. Stile/fieldgate out of woods and keep by wall to your right (waymark), 200 yards, ten o’clock uphill and skirt to left of farm ruins. Wallstile/fieldgate on right (waymark), pass farmyard, farm track 200 yards, after curve right 50 yards across grass to old gated squeezer in hedge (waymarks), cross field, gate in corner (waymark), 11 o’clock, wooden fieldgate (waymark) to path through trees.

Fact file

Distance: Six miles.

General location: Teesdale.

Start: Romaldkirk.

Right of way: Public.

Dogs: Legal.

Date walked: May, 2009.

Road route: Via Barnard Castle.

Car parking: Roadside in Romaldkirk.

Lavatories: None.

Refreshments: Inns at Romaldkirk – The Rose And Crown and The Kirk. Café at Eggleston Hall Gardens.

Tourist and public transport information: Barnard Castle TIC 01833 690909.

Map: Drawn from OS Explorer OL31 North Pennines.

Terrain: Valley.

Difficulty: Moderate.