Country diary: shadows reveal a road less travelled in recent times

Kingswood, Northumberland: This track, a sunken green line much older than the motor-era road, hugs the hillside at an angle more suitable for horse and cartThe single track road, its potholes patched and repatched like a threadbare jacket, plummets down to the burn and up again in a steep V. Along its unfenced verges, the wind tugs at thistledown and at sparse clumps of gorse, the occasional hawthorn. Goldfinches flurry along. Impervious sheep graze the sloping fields.This is where the Kingswood Burn runs through a cleugh, the Northumberland word for a ravine. Trees cluster the sides, delineating the watercourse, a thick-grown quiet place for owls and deer. There's a mixture of holly and birch, hawthorn and sycamore, and, in the wettest places, alder. I look down on to this snaking wood and, over it, to the zigzag of the narrow road as it crosses ridge after ridge and think about the uphill walk once I have descended to the stream. Continue reading...