A night time walk in Northumberland awakens all your senses, as Graeme Green discovers

Long before fancy gadgets and GPS were invented, people used to get around at night using the stars, moon and planets to navigate. But what did they do when there was cloud? That’s the question I’m asking myself as I stand at the bottom of a hill on an icy winter evening in Northumberland. I’m here to take a Walk in the Dark, a guided hike around Northumberland National Park to learn the basics of night navigation, but the stars are all hidden behind a layer of grey cumulus.

Thankfully, stars are just one part of getting around at night, explains my guide Richard Holmes, a former team leader for Northumberland National Park Search and Rescue, as we set off from Ingram for a three-hour loop that will take us across farmland and moorland, up onto the top of Cochrane Pike, and - as long as we don’t get lost in the gloom - back to where we began.

We start by counting out paces, every 65 of my steps equating to roughly 100 metres. This helps keep track of distances and how far it is to the next marker or ‘collecting point’ (solid objects such as fences, walls or gates that you know to expect from the map). Everything is done in small careful stages, constantly checking our position, as wandering far off track in the dark could be dangerous.

The night sky here is surprising to anyone, like me, who spends most of their time in a big city. Northumberland National Park is the least inhabited national park in England and the lack of large towns or streetlights means a ‘dark sky’ free of artificial light or pink ‘sky glow’. The previous night was cloudless and the sky was filled with stars.

We can still see far more than I’d expected, though, using the light radiating through the clouds from the nearly full moon. My eyes grow more accustomed and I’m soon picking out clumps of trees, fences or cairns that help establish our position. Things, that by day I’d probably ignore or pass by without noticing, suddenly become useful markers on the landscape.

But walking at night is about far more than you can see. “By day, sight is our primary sense,” explains Richard. “At night, your other senses take over. You hear the trees, you hear the streams….. Even feeling with our feet for changes in the path – if it dips or rises – can help us ascertain where we are.”

All these different pieces of information and techniques should be used together. It’s a kind of ‘holistic walking’ using sight, sound, smell, pacing, ‘collecting points’, stars (when they’re out) to help find our way. And no one should go up on the hills without a map and compass, stresses Richard, who’s had to rescue dozens of people from the hills.

At the summit, there’s a bracing wind, but we pause to take in the view of hills and valleys bathed in silvery moonlight. Occasionally, there’s the sound of an owl calling or a disturbed grouse.

“At night, your other senses take over. You hear the trees, you hear the streams…..”

We’d given up on seeing stars, but as we start back down the cloud breaks and out they come. We turn off our headtorches and take in a properly dark sky with gleaming stars. Richard excitedly points out the constellations of Orion and Cassiopela, The Plough, Beetlejuice and Polaris, the North Star. It’s the North Star that is the most crucial to navigation, he explains. “Except for a slight wobble, the North Star doesn’t move. The rest of the stars rotate around it, but the North Star is always fixed, so you can use it as a fixed point to work from.”

Just like fixed points on the ground, the North Star can be used as a marker to check your direction and walk in a straight line, rather than zig-zagging aimlessly across country. Its position also provides bearings for north. Stars rise in the east and set in the west, like the sun, and this information too is useful to finding your way around.

Celestial navigation is an extremely complex process of maths and science, but even knowing these basics can help people find their way out of potentially life-threatening situations.

It’s a cold night so we don’t hang about, but in the warmer summer walks, says Richard, he often lays down on the hillside with his groups to study the night sky in more detail. “People who’ve never really seen a real dark sky, away from urban areas, are often amazed. They see things they’ve never seen before. We might pick out constellations or I show them how to spot a satellite and before you know it they’re picking out four or five satellites and tracking them across the sky. It’s just magical.”

We arrive back at our start point, chilly, but exhilarated and definitely more confident, not just of walking at night but also getting around the countryside by day, having developed my senses and learnt basic techniques to make me more aware of my environment. Developing confidence is a key part of the Walk in the Dark. “Many people are afraid of walking at night,” says Richard. “It is more dangerous at night, but there’s nothing here that isn’t here in the day. Walking at night really changes people’s relationship with the landscape.”

I set off early next day to check out some of the ancient rock art in the area (see box) then drive out to Holy Island (or Lindisfarne, as some of the locals call it). The island is only accessible via a causeway that’s cut off by the tide twice a day, giving the island a nice isolated feel.

To walk around the island takes only around three hours. I look around the village first, which has a surprising number of churches for such a small place (less surprising, I suppose, given the island’s name) and also the impressive ruins of an old priory.

I start my hike from a small harbour where boats are moored and the beach is lined with old overturned ships now used a storage sheds. Along the coast, on a rocky promontory, is Lindisfarne Castle (now a converted hotel) from where I look out to sea at two strange obelisks on the adjacent strip of land (shipping navigation beacons from the 1800s, I discover later).

I’m incredibly lucky – on this winter day, I have sunshine, blue skies and crisp fresh air as I walk along the coastal path, barely passing another soul, with only the sound of curlews and redshanks and waves breaking against the shore.

Stepping into the island’s nature reserve, home to wintering Light-bellied Brent geese (a rare sight in the UK), I pass a sign saying ‘Beware of quicksand and unexploded ordnance’ and so I watch my step as I pass up and over grass-covered sand dunes.

It’s getting late as I make my way along the last stretch, the skies starting to darken, the moon rising. But I’m pretty confident now that I can find my way, even in the dark.

more information…..

• Walks in the Dark are provided by Shepherds Walks (wwwshepherdswalks.co.uk or call 01830 540453). Graeme drove to Northumberland using Europcar (www.europcar.co.uk 0871 384 1089) and stayed in The Hemmel B & B (wwwthehemmelwooler.co.uk, 01668 283 165) just outside Wooler.

* For more on Northumberland go to www.visitnorthumberland.com

Ancient Rock Art

Local historian Stan Beckensail on Northumberland’s rock art:

There are examples of cup-and-ring rock carvings all over Northumberland. The most accessible are at Roughting Linn and Chalton Park Hill (near Ford). Lordenshaws (south of Rothbury) and Westwood Moor (near Wooler). There have been theories that they’re messages from outer space; but that’s absolute rubbish. We’re talking about people farming. hunting and looking after animals in the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. As the rock carvings were put there over 5000 years ago it’s very difficult to know exactly what was in the minds of the people who made them, but what we can say is that the circle is very important in pre-history. If you look at all the monuments of the time – Stonehenge, Avebury, all the stone circles…. they’re all circular. This is obviously very important to how they looked at the universe and the world around them.

“Some of them also come out of burial mounds - which is important – it means they had a religious significance relating to the burial of the dead.”