It’s a glorious morning with some cloud but plenty of blue, the hint of a breeze and a slight coolness despite the warmth of the sun upon your face. The bridge at Redesmouth is an ugly thing built on the piers of the former one, but the Rede Bridge further upstream is much more pleasing. It appears to be 18th

century and now carries a grassy track between banks thickly wooded, the narrow river flowing peacefully beneath it. The stone has mellowed and the bridge, once new and perhaps intrusive, now seems to have grown out of the landscape. Approaching it, the uneven ground tries hard to sprain your ankles as the path zigzags downhill.

Midges swarm beneath the trees and a few leaves fall although it is only early September. Some ducks fly off, accompanied by the first boom, or rather distant, crumpling sound, from the military training camp at Otterburn. But this valley must have been much noisier when the railway served the surrounding quarries, and, later, when the Kielder dam was being built. The path rises between rowan and hawthorn. You gulp in the sweetly-smelling air and admire the tortoiseshell butterflies that flit beside you, feeling hugely contented, enjoying a gentle stroll under the sun. You pass a small ex-railwaymen’s hut with its brick fireplace. Three horses approach, their smooth coats glistening in the sunlight. Near Broomhope Farm, twenty-odd spoil heaps testify to former quarry workings. Stirrings in the undergrowth generate a clattering flurry of wings and four grouse speed off, intent, it seems, on making an unnecessarily loud and dramatic exit. The path leads through a wood of birch trees, which give way to larches, sunlight filtered by their branches.

You climb to Crag Farm, which resembles a miniature castle, with its castellated walls. The eastern sweep of the valley opens up and West Woodburn is clearly visible below. Past a small quarry, ranks

of thistles release their down onto the breeze. Along the gentle slope towards the River Rede, lie the rectangular earthworks of a former Roman fort – Habitancum – built by the Emperor Severus in the third century AD.