The ruined Dilston Castle overlooks the Devil’s Water just upstream of its confluence with the River Tyne. Here lived James Radcliffe, third Earl of Derwentwater, who became involved with the Jacobite Rebellion and was beheaded for high treason in 1716. Such dramatic history is hard to imagine as you amble through this peaceful valley, some three centuries later.

It’s a bright, blue, blustery day, the wind roaring in the treetops. The path follows a driveway and then leads along a field edge down to the Water, along the neck of an incised meander. The first gorse flowers are beginning to blossom. The valley is steep-sided and thickly treed. A wooden footbridge crosses the 10 metre wide stream, an entire tree fallen across it. Up some stone steps and we are in Nunsbrough Wood. The path leads upstream before crossing the ridge near Ordley and then, rather confusingly, leading downstream. The Heron’s Burn joins the Devil’s Water after tumbling over a series of small waterfalls.

Shafts of sunlight penetrate the wood and illuminate individual trunks and patches of ground. As you move forward, the effect of the light constantly changes. An upper branch of a tree has broken off and been caught by the lower branches, remaining suspended fifteen feet up. As you approach a ditch containing water, its surface wriggles and heaves wildly, and reveals a dozen mature frogs, amid large deposits of spawn.

Across a road that leads to Juniper, you alight on a track that passes what seems to once have been part of a medieval bridge or mill race at Crag Spring, although it has pointed arches and looks almost ecclesiastical. Walking through the wood towards Rawgreen, Christmas trees tap you on the shoulder. The floor is covered with hundreds of bluebells that have yet to flower. Flecks of rain are blown by the wind but only high, thin clouds whip overhead.