The North Pennines AONB

The North Pennines was designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in 1988. It is a landscape of high, wild moorland, cut through with settled valleys, and is one of the country's last truly wild places.

wildlife

The North Pennines is renowned for some of the country’s best birdwatching. It is home to many species of upland breeding birds including short-eared owl, golden plover, dunlin, peregrine and black grouse, which has its last English stronghold here. The Merlin too has its UK stronghold on the North Pennines moors.
Many different species of wading birds also breed here, in numbers found nowhere else in England. Lapwing , curlew (the emblem of the AONB), redshank, oystercatcher, and snipe are all common spring and summer visitors to the North Pennines.
Our hay meadows are an internationally important feature, awash with wildflowers during late spring and early summer. Upper Teesdale has several rare alpine plants, such as the Spring Gentian, relics of the last ice age.





heritage

The North Pennines has a rich cultural and industrial heritage. Lead mining in the North Pennines has a long history, reaching its peak during the 18th and 19th centuries, when the North Pennines was the dominant lead producing area in Britain. Today that industry has long since disappeared but Killhope Lead Mining Museum, with its giant working waterwheel and underground visitor mine, enables visitors to experience something of the life and work of the Victorian lead miner.
Methodism was enormously important to the mining communities, and the legacy of this can be seen at High House Chapel and the Weardale Museum at Ireshopeburn. The beautiful High House Chapel is now the oldest Methodist Chapel in the world in continuous weekly use since its foundation in 1760.
The area has inspired a number of authors and artists. J M W Turner produced some dramatic pictures of High Force and Charles Dickens’ visit to Teesdale led him to base Nicholas Nickleby’s Dotheboy’s Hall on Bowes Academy, run by Willian Shaw who was often fined for maltreating boys. W H Auden was a boy of 12 when he first visited Rookhope in 1919. He was to continue to visit the area, both literally and spiritually, throughout his life. He knew the area intimately and references to many local sites can be found in his poetry.
Always my boy of wish returns
To those peat-stained deserted burns
That feed the Wear and Tyne and Tees
And, turning states to strata, sees
How basalt, long oppressed, broke out
In wild revolt at Cauldron Snout
WH Auden. New Year Letter. 1940.

geology

The destiny of the North Pennines was shaped by a geological event which took place 295 million years ago - the formation of the Great Whin Sill. A great volcanic upsurge of molten quartz dolerite intruded into the overlaying strata, completely changing the composition of the various rocks as it flowed upwards, and creating the whinstone crag over which the waterfall of Cauldron Snout now cascades. The characteristic six-sided blocks which form the crag were created by the rapid cooling of the dolerite into a crystalline form.
Another by-product of the formation of the Whin Sill was the creation of sugar limestone, which supports the remarkable range of Alpine plants in upper Teesdale.
A further result was the creation of minerals, most importantly barytes and lead, leading to the, now long gone, mining industry in the North Pennines.

what else?

Well, there's the Killhope riding centre, there's a ski lift in the next valley http://www.skiweardale.co.uk (weather permitting) there's much peace and quiet and there's always the option of a couple of pints of decent beer in front of a log fire....