Teesdale in the Snow

Today's Guardian Country Diary is an account of a visit to Teesdale, just before the last fall of snow began to thaw. The dale is exceptionally beautiful when it's snow-covered - if you can reach it. This is the view looking upstream in the middle dale from the road just east of Middleton-in-Teesdale (it looks better if you double-click on this image and the one below).

The valley floor here is a patchwork of small farms, famous for their haymeadows which have progressively finer displays of wildlfowers in summer as you travel further up the valley.

All the farms in the dale that belong to the Raby Estate are whitewashed, supposedly because a former Duke was refused shelter during a storm at a farm that he mistakenly believed belonged to a tenant - and he was determined never to make the same mistake again.

These are hay barns at Bowlees, where you can cross the River Tees at Wynch Bridge, a precarious suspension footbridge at a point where the river sweezes through a narrow gorge below. The bridge offers ...

... fine views downstream and ....

... upstream....

... where the waterfalls of Low Force are a scenic feature.

During the coldest weeks of the winter the river froze here, then during a thaw the rising water shattered the ice into four inch-thick plates that were perched on the rocks in midstream and on the riverbank when we visited.

We were heading up-river, towards High Force, into an icy, face-numbing wind blowing down from Dufton Fell ....

.. but nevertheless there were a few signs of spring, even in these freezing conditions; catkins of goat willow forcing their way out from under bud scales.

High Force, the highest waterfall on the river (but not the longest - that's Cauldron Snout, upstream, that tumbles over a lot of rock steps on its way down). When the river is in spate, after a sudden thaw for example, water cascades over both sides of High Force's central rocky pillar but on this visit it was relatively tranquil, although the waterfall's spray had frozen into some impressive stalactites on the rock face.

It was something of a relief to turn our backs to the wind and head for home. This photo sums up the icy chill of the day, with long shadows cast at the end of a short winter afternoon.