A Walk to Moot Law

It is a gorgeous, cold, sunny day here in Northumberland - just the weather to go for a good walk, though the boundless views that are to be found here were somewhat spoilt by mistiness.

I set off going south from the village up a hill to the site of an old WW2 Observation Post. The post is marking the place where the underground room has been filled in. Just beside it is the sheet of corrugated cement that was part of the roof

I turned left towards the very top of one of the largest quarries in Northumberland, which was mothballed towards the end of last year. Since then this bit of it has filled with water, which makes it quite beautiful. When it finally closes, much of the area will be reinstated as grazing land, but there will be an area at the very tip as a large pond or small lake nature reserve. As the Quarry extended outwards, they had reinstated as they went, so much of it is grazing already.

Looking to the SW, the fault line marks the end of the limestone that they are quarrying. On the other side of the dip, the Whinstone starts. It runs from Holy Island and right across to the Pennines, with the Roman Wall following its Northern edge for quite a long way. Kirkheaton stands on it and as it is an extremely hard rock, it is very difficult digging graves in the Church Yard!! It does mean that they are never going to want to bring the quarry any nearer to the village, though.

Having taken pictures of the frozen quarry, I walked south again, on an ancient road which was once the route to Hexham. Mr Bowman, at the very end of the 1800's, took his horse and cart that way on market days and took stuff either way for a fee. That little business is now Proudlock's Transport, with great big lorries parked at the bottom of the village and carrying livestock all over the north of England and southern Scotland. From little acorns..... Three of his grandsons still work in the business. The road has not been a proper track for a very long time.

The road has been cut by the quarry and is not seen again until you reach the B road that passes the gate to the quarry at its southern extremity. The very last of it here is at Kirkheaton Gate, where it crossed the Parish boundary. There is still an old gatepost to be seen. I remember when the gate was still there and the track went on. It is sad when historical things like that go.

Here the right of way goes on the outside of the Parish Boundary towards the West. I followed it to the end of the quarry and then cut across up the hill to Moot Law. Here are both the holding tank for our water supply and a medieval platform for a beacon.

The water supply is fed by an aqueduct from 3 different reservoirs, one on the Scottish Border, near to Carter Bar. It goes down to the Whittle Dean Treatment works, between the A69 and the Military Road. I don't know who else it supplies, but part of it is pumped up to the tank on Mootlaw and it then finds its own way down to Kirkheaton, on to Ingoe and Ryal and Matfen. Ironically, the aqueduct passes through Matfen. Ours is the first house on the supply line since they renewed the pipes in about 2000. We were last on the line before that. We now have a really decent pressure and clean water!!!

I walked across to the Beacon site from the tank, just a hundred yards or so. There is a large square platform with a well marked edge. Just in from the edge is a trig point at 258 metres (838 ft), the highest point anywhere in the vicinity. (The village is at 220m/715ft) This is why there is a 365 degree view . It is only spoilt by a strip of wood immediately to the east. Starting from the sea (which I could not see because of poor visibility) and coming round to the north, you see the Simonside Hills and The Cheviot, both covered in snow. On round to the west are the Pennines and then down to the Lake District hills, across the Pennines again and to the Durham hills and round past Newcastle and its surroundings back to the coast which is here hidden by the trees. It was no good trying to photo the view, partly because of the visibility and also because the hills are so far away that they would not make a good picture without specialist equipment.

In the centre of the platform is an irregular mound which is presumably the structure that was used for the beacon.

After that, I turned for home, still a good walk away, down, along, up, along and down to the the gate that I had come through at the start.