I thought how lovely and how strange a river is. A river is a river, always there, and yet the water flowing through it is never the same water and is never still. It’s always changing and is always on the move. And over time the river itself changes too. It widens and deepens as it rubs and scours, gnaws and kneads, eats and bores its way through the land…
Are people like that? I wondered. Am I like that? Always me, like the river itself, always flowing but always different, like the water flowing in the river, sometimes walking steadily along andante, sometimes surging over rapids furioso, sometimes meandering with hardly any visible movement tranquilo, lento, pianissimo, sometimes gurgling giacoso with pleasure, sometimes sparkling brillante in the sun, sometimes lacrimoso, sometimes appassionato, sometimes misterioso, sometimes pesante, sometimes legato, sometimes staccato, sometimes sospirando, sometimes vivace, and always, I hope, amoroso.
Do I change like a river, widening and deepening, eddying back on myself sometimes, bursting my banks sometimes when there’s too much water, too much life in me, and sometimes dried up from lack of rain? Will the I that is me grow and widen and deepen? Or will I stagnate and become an arid riverbed?
From ‘This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn’ by Aidan Chambers
I'm fortunate to have two rivers close to my home in Blaydon, alongside which I can enjoy a scenic stroll. One, of course, is the Tyne (it is Blaydon-on-Tyne, after all) and the other the Derwent. It's one of four River Derwent in England. To have that many rivers carrying that name is hardly a surprise since it derives from Celt or Old Welsh 'Derw', meaning oak, and 'went', meaning valley. There were plenty of valleys with oaks fifteen hundred or so years ago. It's not just the name Derwent that has multiple occurrences; it's the same for the Avon, of which there are nine across the UK. Again, not surprising, given the name comes from the Welsh ‘afon’ and Celt ‘abona’, meaning river.
Anyway, back to my River Derwent, a tributary of the River Tyne running from the Derwent reservoir across County Durham into Northumberland before spilling into the Tyne.
I took the photo above during a stroll alongside a stretch of the river, around a mile from my house, near its head, as the river makes its final meander through Derwent Walk Country Park and Derwenthaugh Park.
The Derwent Walk Country Park follows the route of what was once the Derwent Valley Railway, while Derwenthaugh Park is the former site of the Derwenthaugh Coke Works, reclaimed for wildlife around the new millennium. The two adjoining parks are now a sprawling area of woodlands, meadows, and wetlands through which the river runs and people, such as I, wander.
There are various trails one can follow through the parks. The longest is the Derwent walk which stretches for some twelve miles following the now-disused railway line. A railway that peaked around a century ago carrying over half a million passengers a year with a regular goods traffic of timber, bricks, and coal to the Derwenthaugh coke works and iron ore on the return trip to Consett. As with many 'branch' lines, the Beeching cuts saw an end to it. And, of course, as ever, there just has to be a Geordie folksong linked to the railway line.
In this case, it’s ‘Wor Nannie’s a Maisor’, a song that was one of my father's favourites and of which he took great delight in singing. In truth, he took immense pleasure in singing generally and had an excellent voice and a wide repertoire. Popular Songs, and those from the Music Halls, Opera, Carols and Hymns. Not sure how he came to know so many of the latter, as the only time I knew him to enter a place of worship was his marriage and those of his children. His singing indicated he was in a good mood. Not so if he was whistling. His whistling was akin to the air raid sirens that warned of impending danger from Nazi bombers during the blitz. It meant time to keep your head down and stay clear.
Enough of my father’s singing; let’s return to Nannie and her exploits. The song is the story, told by the husband, of a married couple who planned to travel to 'toon' to do some shopping but miss their train and end up in a pub within which the wife, 'Nannie', ends up a bit the worse for wear. Here's the chorus in the vernacular.
Aye, wor Nannie's a maisor, and a maisor she'll remain,
As long as aa live, aa'll never forget, the day we lost the train...
Maisor (sometimes spelt Mazer) is Geordie for an eccentric. And in this case, 'lost' means missed. So, leaving Nannie aside, at least the compensation for the literarily lost train service is we now have a beautiful area of countryside, home to a wide variety of birds, from woodpeckers to dippers via nuthatches and blackcaps. Other wildlife includes foxes, badgers, otters, and roe deer.
As well as the birds mentioned above, around twenty years ago, local naturalists released Red Kites into the lower Derwent Valley as part of a project to reintroduce the birds after an absence of 170 years. The project was successful, and one of the trails through the parks has the name the Red Kite trail. It offers the chance to see the birds in flight without disturbing their nesting areas. I've only walked part of the route (an eleven-mile circuit) but have yet to glimpse a red kite. That's not entirely true. I did see a glimpse of a red kite. The Red Kite pub that sits on the edge of the parks. Sadly, separating it and I was the River Derwent.
My photograph is from the 'Butterfly Bridge'. Given that name because butterfly enthusiasts deemed the Derwent Valley a 'paradise' and used the bridge as the meeting point at the beginning of their expeditions. Despite its pretty name, the current footbridge is now purely functional and nondescript in appearance. Sturdy in design, it replaced the far more stunning 1950s stone bridge washed away by a flood in 2011. The bridge stands close to a ford across the river used by the Romans and, during the English civil war, by the heavy artillery unit of Cromwell's army on their way to the Battle of Dunbar.
Thankfully, I've not encountered any marching armies on my walks, just the occasional cyclist, some cheery fellow walkers and several friendly dogs of all shapes and sizes.