Teesdale

In the western third of the county can be found the Durham Dales of Weardale and Teesdale and the Derwent Valley.

These areas are endowed with rolling hills criss-crossed by stone walls, with spectacularly rugged scenery in the high country: High Force (England’s highest waterfall), Low Force and a number of reservoirs.

It is in County Durham that we find some of the most beautiful wilderness in the world, on the wild and austere fells of Weardale and Teesdale.

It is here that fields of ancient alpine flowers bloom, here where peat-coloured waterfalls cascade over black rocks, here where the grouse nests among the purple heather, and here where the native Swalesdale sheep live a remote and chilly existence.

Teesdale remains one of our favourite areas. The River Tees runs through one of the most picturesque areas of northern England, from the heights of Cross Fell (893 metres about sea level), over High Force (the highest waterfall in Britain), beside the towns of Middleton-in-Teesdale and Barnard Castle, near the historic village of Romaldkirk, and on to the southeast where it eventually runs into the North Sea beside the industrial city of Middlesbrough.

Like the other dales of northern England, Teesdale was created when a glacier flowed down from the mountaintops to the sea during the so-called Ice Age. The Teesdale Glacier was formed about a million years ago; as it followed its pathway from the Pennine Mountains to the North Sea, it carved out the valley now known as Teesdale.

In the upper dale, the Great Whin Sill intrudes in spectacular fashion. The Sill comprises quartz dolerite igneous rock which is extremely resistant to erosion and remains as jagged dark whinstone jutting out from the rolling landscape. It is about 250 million years old.

This rock is found at High Force, which is the name now given to a spectacular 70 feet (21 metre) drop in the River Tees.

The river divides into two and falls into the plunge pool at the base on two sides of the rock formation, leaving a central column of whinstone. When the river is running at high capacity, the water spills out of these paths and joins in the middle to run over the central column as well, creating a single thunderous waterfall of impressive power. When we visited, however, the water was running over only one of the sides.

In its upper reaches, it forms the valley known as Teesdale—today a sparsely-populated farming area dotted with villages and farmhouses, as well as the distinctive Swaledale sheep.

(pick the real sheep!!!)

In previous centuries, the dale was a hive of activity as the rich deposits of lead were mined throughout the upper dale area—at first by the Beauchamp Earls (from the 15th century), and then by the London Lead Mining Company (from 1753 to 1905).

Flint tools found in the peat at the head of the river are believed to date from the Mesolithic Period (12,000–6,000 years ago). Bronze and Iron Age burial mounds still exist in the area. It is said that in the year 1030, Canute (the king of England and Denmark) granted the monks of St Cuthbert, in Durham City, an estate in the area now known as Middleton-in-Teesdale (pictured below).



[The information above is based, in part, on the booklet Middleton-in-Teesdale, pp.22-24, in The Best of Britain Heritage Series (Discovery Publishing)]