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Gateshead and Tyneside (former)Walk Details:
The Walk: |
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This was the final top in our tour of the highest points in the unitary authorities of the north-east. Previously when we’d visited unitary tops that had arisen from the break-up of former metropolitan counties (those in Greater Manchester, Merseyside and the West Midlands) we’d been surprised at how good they’d turned out to be. Unfortunately Tyneside and Teeside had not followed this pattern – with very few exceptions they were as turgid bunch of tops as you could hope to avoid. From looking at the map Currock Hill seemed likely to fit right in.
We decided we needed a decent hill to counteract the county tops in this
area. The obvious choice was Roseberry Topping, the mini-Matterhorn of
Yorkshire that we’d so admired from a distance on the way up. On
the way there we stopped to admire the astounding Angel of the North sculpture,
which becomes even more impressive when you read the statistics about
it on the information panels. Now, if only they had placed the Angel on
one of the unitary tops here, that would have changed things...
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We parked in the entrance to the field where
the top was located and followed a track down the side a a small wood
to emerge into a large grassy field. It was fairly flat, and the highest
point could frankly have been anywhere in the centre of it. We dutifully
wandered down to the end of the field and briefly took in the pleasant
views across the Derwent Valley to the south. We ambled back to the car
thinking that this fairly insipid top rounded off a generally poor collection
in the area. I nipped into the woods to spend a penny and found a five
pence piece – a profit of four pence for yours truly.