Nenthead to Thornley Gate

5 July 2011 - Nenthead to Thornley Gate

Distance - 12.4 miles

Weather - Overcast

We stayed at - Thornley House, Thornley Gate, Allendale, Hexham, Northumberland, NE47 9NH  Cost - £62.00

We followed a path called 'Isaac's Tea trail' for some of the day. We weren't sure what it was all about when we stumbled across it. Having looked it up on the web here's what they say about the Tea Trail - initially it seems a strange name, given that there are only tea shops at either end of a long day's walk. A bit like a pub crawl with only two pubs.

We had a steep bit of up to get out of Nenthead, firstly on road, then undefined grassy moorland. The next bit was supposed to be a gentle stroll down a ridge, attempting to follow an undefined track over grassy moorland. Grassy moorland is pretty tiring to walk over if there's no track and especially if you have little legs, so I voted that we create our own custom route. This involved walking past the undefined track and onto a defined, tarmac road, which we followed for just over five miles. As well as being less of a fight, roads are much quicker to walk be cause they're less wiggly and don't tend to have stiles every few hundred yards. Sorry Isaac!

Old lead mining flue

The last section into Allandale Town was interesting. The Quakers

Old lead mining chimney

who ran a lot of the mines around here, were keen on making the processing of lead less dangerous. To that end  they built flues - effectively brick-lined tunnels two miles from the smelting works near Allandale Town, up onto the moor, where they fed chimneys. The flues did two things, they moved the noxious lead sulphurous fumes away from the people and it also meant that some of the lead would condense in the flues rather that be dispersed in the air. They would occasionally scrape the lead off the inside (must have been a horrible task - the flues were only big enough to crawl through).

Allandale town is biggish, with three pubs, a tea room (presumably for Isaac) some giftshops and so on. It's a nice place. Even if it's on the other side of a steep valley from our B&B.