Richard Mellor
June 12, 2018
The sound of silence isn’t easy to find, but city-dweller Richard Mellor heads to England’s supposed most tranquil spot for a dose of wilderness. Is it really as quiet as they say?
I sit beside Channelbush Sike, a boulder-strewn stream of transparent water, and listen. The current rushes down a couple of chutes. A bee buzzes by; a cuckoo cuckoos. Every so often, I think I hear a car approaching along the track—but it’s just wind sighing through surrounding forest. Other than that? Nope. Nothing.
And that was my hope in visiting this remote corner of Northumberland, found just inside the Cumbrian border and less than 10 miles from Scotland. It’s known as the Kielder Mires (or the Border Mires) thanks to around 60 peat bogs—which store precious amounts of carbon, thus negating the effect of global warming—speckling the boundaries of Kielder Forest.
And one particular 500-meter-by-500-meter-square of one particular Mire (its precise location a secret but somewhere nearby) was specified as Britain’s most peaceful spot in 2006 when the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) produced a ‘tranquillity map’ of the country.
All of which led me to think I desperately needed some quietude. So, reinterpreting the CPRE’s tranquility map as a treasure map, I decided to make for Northumberland. Rather than aiming for a beach or museum, I was traveling specifically to seek wilderness. The nearest rentable cottage to many of the Mires was The Bothy, a spacious, cosy affair inside the three-building Churnsike Lodge, where Victorian grouse hunters have been replaced by ultra-friendly couple, Dawn and Stephen, plus Stephen’s mum, a dog, a cat, some hens and the odd red squirrel.
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I took the train to Newcastle, then the charming Tyne Valley line—the narrowing waterway to one side, remnants of Hadrian’s Wall on the other—on to Haltwhistle. From here, a pre-booked taxi ferried me north along single roads. We crossed RAF Spadeadam, Europe’s largest Electronic Warfare practice range and the place where Blue Streak missiles were assembled. Targets, including a mimic Middle Eastern hamlet, littered the hillside. Then past farms, conifer thickets and thrillingly desolate moorland. “I’ve never been this far up,” said the local cabbie.
There are areas which have recently been ‘cleared’ by the Forestry Commission, a mass of shocked, depilated plains of cleaved trunks and fallen branches. The sense is of an atrocity having recently been committed. Walking across one such, I hear weird drumming noises and encounter mini-gusts of wind. The stillness suddenly feels eerie, and I want to make a phone call, to hear another voice. Too bad: There’s no phone signal for miles.
Mostly, though, I smile. The views are often wonderful—as far as the Lake District while atop White Preston, and to the North Sea from Stripe Sike quarry—and the air blissfully fresh. Instead of London Underground fumes, I smell perfumed pines; instead of car alarms, I hear the prissy calls of a buzzard whose hunting has been interrupted. She swoops off in front of me, maroon-colored and mightily big. I turn in at 10pm after admiring star-filled skies—this is part of the Northumberland International Dark Sky Park—and sleep unusually deeply, feeling faintly primal.
When my three days conclude, I feel energetic and brimming with ideas. On the train home, phone-shouting passengers annoy me less, and simple kindnesses—a door held open, a bag brought down—delight me more. It’s as if I have been recharged, or even restored. Bring it on, London.
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