Coronavirus Lockdown: my home patch

For almost a month now, during the coronavirus lockdown, I've been taking early morning exercise walks around the same three and a half mile route near my home, on the edge of  this small North Pennine market town, Crook in County Durham. I've known this area of land for 45 years, but have never walked around it so frequently or so regularly. By the time the current emergency ends, maybe in early autumn, I will have known this home patch very well indeed.

Above, the view back down the road, from the beginning of the walk, close to home. Crook, a former mining centre, lies in the bottom of the valley beyond the trees. Rumby hill, to the east of the town, is just visible in the mist.

Further up the hill now, looking back eastwards. This lane is lined with old hawthorns, some old hedges and wide grassy verges that escaped damage from opencast coal mining, which finished here about 25 years ago. After opencasting, the old field pattern was restored, new hedges were planted, dry stone walls built, conifer plantations established and some new mixed hardwood copses planted. 

Fortunately, there is a network of footpaths and bridle tracks across the fields, a legacy of the days when people were employed in local agriculture and mining and they walked to work, or travelled between farms on horseback

There are low hills surrounding, to the east and to the north. This is the view northwards, towards the village of Billy Row. Some of the conifer plantations, like that in the middle distance, were established on old colliery spoil tips - a legacy of the days in the first half of the twentieth when there  were deep coal mines in the valley.

To the west lies Weardale, and the High Pennines. The walls of the barn in the foreground are built entirely from old railway sleepers, another legacy of the days when this valley was full of coal mines, served by a network of railways.

This is an area of relatively low intensity, mixed farming and small holdings, although one of the larger farms on restored opencast land grows some arable crops. This is oilseed rape, known as canola in North America, coming into flower in mid-April, and already attracting a lot of bees.

Most of the farms here are quite small and predominantly grazing pasture for sheep, or sometimes cut for silage in summer.

Red barns, a landmark at the beginning of the walk that has become very familiar over the last few weeks

The world may be in crisis, but the seasons turn and farming goes on. Here pastures are being rolled in late March, to encourage tillering in the grass and to flatten out the uneven surface left my animal hooves on soft ground in winter, which might otherwise damage mowing machinery. Opinions in the farming community differ on how beneficial this is - some say the soil compaction negates any benefits.

A  newly-ploughed field in early April, harrowed a week later and sown. Not sure whether this is resown pasture or an arable crop. Three weeks of dry weather have been helpful for this kind of operation.

It seems to have been a very successful lambing season, with dry and increasingly warm weather.

This is an areas of very mixed livestock farming, with chickens, ducks, alpacas, cattle, donkeys, horses and sheep, especially on the smallholdings.

Over the coming months, walking these footpaths and lanes between 6.30 am and 8.30 am. every day, I'll be watching the seasons unfold over these edgelands, between town and open country.